Don’t want your kids vaccinated against COVID? Then don’t send them to school

There was never a doubt that anti-vax parents would lash out at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s COVID-19 mandate for K-12 schools.

On Monday, they did exactly that by keeping thousands of students out of classrooms for a one-day boycott affecting several school districts around the state.

There were also rallies, including one on the front steps of the state Capitol in downtown Sacramento, attended by more than a thousand people protesting Newsom’s vaccination mandate for public and private school kids.

Many of the attendees had pulled their kids out of school to protest at the Capitol. Some waved banners and signs that read, “My kids, my choice,” “Freedom over fear,” and “My mom calls the shots.”

The “Keep Your Kids Home From School” rally was organized on Facebook by Placer County moms Amber Faddis and Tess Van Dusen. Local speakers at the Sacramento rally included Pastor Greg Fairrington of Rocklin’s Destiny Church, which has been handing out religious exemptions to the COVID vaccine, as well as Rocklin Unified school board member Tiffany Saathoff, who is also a pastor at Destiny.

In San Luis Obispo County, parents demonstrated in front of the county Public Health Department, and hundreds of students missed class. The Paso Robles Joint Unified School District alone reported 1,780 absences; on a normal day only around 760 students miss school.

There were protests in Southern California as well, and in the Central Valley about 200 parents, students and teachers protested in front of public health offices in downtown Fresno, though Fresno and Clovis districts reported daily enrollments Monday that were about average.

In Modesto, scores of parents and students previously protested — stridently — against the vaccine mandate at meetings of the school board and Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors. Attendance Monday was not significantly different from other days, spokespeople said.

The statewide protest was just the latest in a series of confrontations led by parents angry about how COVID is being handled in K-12 school.

There also have been efforts to recall school board members, disruptions of public meetings and rants about students being required to wear face masks inside classrooms.

Some parents have been spreading disinformation by claiming, among other falsehoods, that masks are ineffective and even harmful; that children only get very mild cases of the virus; and that vaccines can cause infertility and alter a child’s DNA.

And now they’re out in force, attacking Newsom’s vaccine mandate.

The governor has made plenty of mistakes in his response to COVID-19 — too many to list, in fact. But he made the right move in mandating that students receive the vaccine, once it’s fully approved for their age groups.

If anything, Newsom didn’t go far enough, since he will allow students to decline the COVID-19 vaccine based on personal beliefs, which generally is interpreted to mean religious or ideological reasons.

Sorry, Governor, but that’s a half-measure that makes no sense.

To enroll in school, children are required to be vaccinated against diseases like measles, mumps and rubella, with no personal belief exemptions allowed.

Why is it any different for COVID? Especially when the mandate won’t take effect until the vaccine has full FDA approval for the corresponding age group.

More than 70,000 Californians have died during this worldwide pandemic, yet students can be exempted from the vaccine for non-medical reasons?

It is true that new COVID cases are declining in California, and that’s a huge relief. But we’ve seen that happen before, only for cases to rise again with the emergence of the Delta variant.

Vaccines are the best protection against disease. Period.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen what happens when too many people “opt out” of getting their shots.

Remember the measles outbreak that occurred in California in 2015, spread by an infected person who visited Disneyland?

After that, the state tightened vaccine requirements to remove personal belief exemptions. While there has still been plenty of pushback from anti-vaxers — and cases of bogus medical exemptions — the state did not experience another large outbreak of measles.

We should apply that same logic to the COVID pandemic.

Let parents scream “my child, my choice” all they like. State officials need to consider the welfare of all Californians, not just a small subset of parents.

If they refuse to have their children vaccinated without a valid reason, the choice is clear: Let them keep their children out of school, and educate them at home.

This editorial was written with contributions from The Modesto Bee, The Fresno Bee and The Sacramento Bee.

This story was originally published October 21, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Don’t want your kids vaccinated against COVID? Then don’t send them to school."