Editorial: Pass California’s reasonable vaccination bill

California’s effort to tighten school vaccination requirements is reasonable, scientific and needed. But that has not stopped vaccine opponents from turning a true public service into one of the ugliest fights to hit the Capitol in a while.

The latest example of the hysteria mustered by opponents was served up Tuesday by Assembly Member Jim Patterson of Fresno. Speaking at a rally in Sacramento of people opposed to Senate Bill 277, Patterson compared the legislation’s outcomes to forced internment camps.

The Sacramento Bee’s Jeremy B. White reported that Patterson said: “I wouldn’t call it a concentration camp, but they’re suggesting (children) go some place other than public school.”

Patterson said later in his speech that he “thought we apologized for internment camps,” an apparent reference to the separation and confinement of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Apparently realizing that his comments were over the top, Patterson told White afterward that it was a “bad choice of words” but the lawmaker stuck to his contention that SB 277 is “excessively punitive.”

Just to be clear, under SB 277 unvaccinated children would have to get a medical exemption from a physician or be home-schooled.

We believe that these boundaries make sense, given the risk to public health.

This is not an extreme bill, but the vitriol and incivility around it have become problematic. State lawmakers have received death threats. Capitol phone lines have been crashed by mass out-of-state call-ins. A health care lobbyist has been cyberstalked and harassed by vaccine resisters who mistakenly believed she was shilling for drug makers.

Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, the pediatrician who has co-authored Senate Bill 277, has been called a child killer, depicted as Hitler and has endured photos of his home being posted on Facebook, with his home phone number and address.

Last week, opponents of SB 277 filed recall papers against Pan. In addition, Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, has been served with an intent to recall, by vaccine resisters in Santa Cruz who have joined forces with the local Republican Party there. Twice now, threats and protests at his district office have so frightened his staffers that they asked to be escorted home by the California Highway Patrol.

Vaccine resisters have targeted at least five other state senators for recall — all so that a misguided minority can duck their social obligation to vaccinate their children. This argument has to be settled; it already has gone too far.

Here are the facts:

▪ Immunization is one of society’s great public health achievements. Some may be too young to remember, but it has not been that long in this country since polio, pertussis, rubella, measles and other communicable diseases could sweep through a community in a matter of weeks and claim hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.

▪ For the public to remain protected, vaccination rates have to remain above a critical mass; otherwise childhood diseases will again spread, threatening the lives of infants, the elderly and the medically fragile.

▪ ”Herd immunity” generally translates into between 90% and 95% percent of school-aged children. But in recent years, in communities from West Los Angeles to Santa Cruz and Marin County, parents used California’s “personal belief exemption” to avoid getting their children vaccinated, and rates dipped far below that. Better information has helped, but not quickly enough.

A recent poll found that 67% of Californians believe children should be vaccinated to attend school, and more than 80% believe vaccines are safe and healthy. The science backs them.

Pass SB 277 and let’s be done with it.

This story was originally published June 9, 2015 at 8:05 AM with the headline "Editorial: Pass California’s reasonable vaccination bill."