Currently, children attending school in Georgia are required to be vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, meningitis, chickenpox, hepatitis A, and polio. For some of these diseases, as many as five doses may be required for a school-aged child. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Georgia Institute of Technology, both based in Atlanta, Georgia, have been instrumental in developing these vaccines and vaccine delivery systems that have allowed kids to be treated with safe and effective preventive medications for generations.

Before these vaccines were available, the number of children dying from each disease in a single year wasn’t huge—nothing like the numbers of people falling to COVID-19 today. Measles might take away 500 children in a year while leaving another 1,000 with lasting brain damage. Similar numbers would fall to mumps. In its peak year, polio killed 3,152 people in America, most of them children. Another 54,000 were left with some level of paralysis. Pertussis—whooping cough—was the biggest of the regular reapers of children, taking some 9,000 a year before there were vaccines.

Really, in any given year, the threat to any individual child was small; the kind that would have a modern television pundit calculating that 99.9% chance of survival. But those children ran this gauntlet again the next year, and the next. The cumulative threat was great enough that the difference was enormous.

In 2000, less than 2% of deaths in the United States were for people under 20. In 1900, 30% of all deaths were among children under 5. That’s the difference that the elimination of childhood diseases has made.

And that’s what a new bill in Georgia would roll back.

The bill before the Georgia legislature goes under the guise of prohibiting “state and local governments from mandating vaccine passports.” 

If there’s any doubt about what is considered a part of state or local government, the bill specifically calls out: “Every state department, agency, board, bureau, office, commission, public  corporation, and authority;  Every county, municipal corporation, school district, or other political subdivision of this state; Every department, agency, board, bureau, office, commission, authority, or similar body of each such county, municipal corporation, or other political subdivision of this state; and Every city, county, regional, or other authority established pursuant to the laws of this state.”  If there’s anything not covered there, it’s hard to think of what it might be.

If there’s any thought that this might apply only to vaccines related to COVID-19, that’s made clear in the remainder of this very, very short bill.

“No agency shall require proof of any vaccination of any person as a condition of providing any service or access to any facility, issuing any license, permit, or other type of authorization, or performing any duty of such agency. No agency, through any rule, regulation, ordinance, resolution, or other action shall  require that any person or private entity require proof of vaccination of any person as a  condition of providing any service or access to any facility, or as a condition of such person or private entity’s performance of any regular activity by such person or private  entity.”

Under this law, no school can require vaccination—of any sort—for children. Or teachers. The same would be true of any other organization, including county health departments or government-affiliated hospitals.  And if there is any thought that some other provision of Georgia law might nullify this effect, that’s not the case:

All laws and parts of laws in conflict with this Act are repealed. 

This is a law that has 17 sponsors in the Georgia general assembly. It’s a law designed by people who are willing to see the landscape littered with small tombstones if that’s what it takes to own the libs.

Don’t let it be said that Republicans aren’t willing to sacrifice. They’ll put their own kids and grandkids on the altar. Just not themselves. Because they’ve all been vaccinated. 

And it’s not the only such bill under consideration.