Anti-vaxxers can't traffic in violent language then claim ignorance when someone gets hurt
Perhaps the assault on state Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) Wednesday by a professed anti-vaccination advocate was inevitable.
In the four years that the pediatrician-turned-politician has been working to raise the state’s flagging vaccination rates, he’s been the target of such fierce anger from anti-vaccination advocates that their rhetoric at times crossed the line from harsh into violent. Pan has received death threats and been heckled and cursed in committee meetings. He’s been compared to Adolf Hitler and Nazi doctor Josef Mengele at protests and rallies, where his face has been printed on T-shirts and signs covered with splattered blood. Opponents speak and tweet ominously about “war” and having their weapons ready to fight tyranny. They warn that Pan’s bills — SB 277 in 2015 and SB 276 currently pending before the state Legislature — will kill kids.
It’s absurd considering that what Pan is trying to do is keep children from contracting measles and other deadly diseases by stopping their misinformed parents from finding ways around the state’s mandatory public school vaccinations. Pan’s SB 277 ended exemptions from the mandate based on personal or religious beliefs after a measles outbreak at Disneyland in 2015 exposed a dangerous dip in the state’s rates of childhood vaccinations. And SB 276, which comes up for a crucial vote next week, would clamp down on exemptions granted for spurious medical reasons, which have been rising since the loss of other exemptions. Both of the bills are in the best interest of public safety because vaccinations are unquestionably safer than the diseases they protect against.
We’re grateful that this was a relatively mild incident. An agitated man by the name of Austin Bennett confronted Pan on camera as he walked down a Sacramento street and then, frustrated by Pan’s dismissal of his bizarre questions (“Would you drink aluminum?”), whacked the senator on the back of the head as Pan walked away.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-08-22/anti-vaxxer-attack-richard-pan
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Abscesses on the anus of humanity...
