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Committee Kills Anti-Vaccine Bill, Amidst Copious Out-of-Stater Testimony in Favor of Putting Public Health at Risk

If Republicans are going to keep telling us that they don’t want out-of-staters bringing harmful legislation to South Dakota, then they need to stop bringing out-of-staters to testify for their own crazy culture-war bills. As with House Bill 1057, the hateful anti-transgender treatment bill, Majority Leader Lee Qualm’s House Bill 1235, his dangerous anti-vaccination bill, brought a passel of out-of-staters to trying whacking South Dakota with their bad ideas. Here’s the witness list from yesterday’s House Health and Human Services hearing:

HB 1235 : revise provisions regarding immunizations.

Presented by: Representative Lee Qualm

Proponents:

  • James Neufuschwauder MD, Michigan
  • Lawrence B Palevsky MD, self, New York
  • Neil Rohe MD, self, Sioux Falls
  • Kevin Barry, self, New York
  • Toni Krehel, self, Florida
  • Stacia Buchholtz, self, Elk Point
  • Catie Clobes, self, Minnesota
  • Mya Olson, self, Bradley SD (Handout(s) 1)

Opponents:

  • Kim Malsam-Rysdon, Department of Health
  • Mike Radke, self, Huron
  • Marty Allison MD, self, Pierre
  • Debbra Houseman, self, Lake Andes
  • Allison Alvine, self, Sioux Falls
  • Nicholas Hill, self, Rapid City
  • Mark Sternhagen, self, Brookings
  • Nathan Lukkes, South Dakota Board of Regents
  • Angie Wehrkamp, self, Sioux Falls
  • Jeremy Cauwels, Sanford Health
  • Susan Hoover, Sanford Health
  • Fernando Bula-Rudas, self, Sioux Falls
  • Wade Pogany, Associated School Boards of South Dakota
  • Molly Satter, Sioux Falls School District
  • Tim Rave, South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations
  • David Owen, South Dakota Chamber of Commerce
  • Sr. Kathleen Bierm, Presentation Sisters
  • Dean Krogman, SD Medical Association
  • Justin G. Smith, Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce
  • Justin Smith, Wellmark
  • Benson Hsu, SD Chapter of American Academy of Pediatrics
  • Jennifer Stalley, South Dakota Nurses Association
  • Jennifer Stalley, Community Healthcare Associations of the Dakotas
  • Jennifer Stalley, Lifescape
  • Aaron Scheibe, South Dakota Academy of Physicians Assistants
  • Mark Deak, South Dakota Health Care Association

Others: Dr. Joshua Clayton, State Epidemiologist

The committee had the good sense to listen to the locals and the majority and kill HB 1235. The only Republicans voting in favor of increasing the risk of measles, mumps, and other epidemics were Representative Julie Frye-Mueller of Rapid City and Representative Tamara St. John of Sisseton. Both are Republicans; both are hazardous to our health and should be permanently electorally quarantined from the Capitol.

17 Comments

  1. Mary Walkes, MSN 2020-02-26 09:26

    My expectations for a “freepress” organization would have been to educate your readers about this proposal with a compiled list of the proponent’s and opponent’s views.

    Are our citizens allowed Full Disclosure of the risks of a medical procedure such as a vaccine injections? Are your readers aware of the toxic ingredients in vaccines? Do they understand that vaccines have been deemed “unavoidably unsafe?”

    How many know that the manufacturers realize billions of dollars profit from the sale of vaccines, yet they have complete immunity from responsibility for safety and efficacy? Were your readers told that in 1986, when this release from liability was granted, the CDC was assigned to provide biannual reports to congress of their oversight? Have you informed your readers that thirty years later in a court challenge, it was determined there have been NO studies, NO reports. Why is it that the decline of our populations’ health with epidemics of auto-immunity has been vigorously ignored?

    Thank you for the opportunity to provide information for your readers. May they enjoy participating in this involuntary 30 year mandated medical experiment without oversight.

  2. Eve Fisher 2020-02-26 13:30

    I was amazed to see so many wingnuts turned out to testify in favor of this bill, including Mya Olson, founder of Health Freedom South Dakota, who claimed that “this bill is divinely inspired” and argued that there weren’t any outbreaks of disease prior to the state implementing its vaccination requirement in 1971.
    I guess she never heard about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her new husband, Almanzo, getting life-threatening diphtheria. Thankfully, we now have vaccines for that…

  3. Bob Newland 2020-02-26 14:27

    Any time someone says something is “divinely inspired,” something inside me says, “This premise is probably BS.” ( I want to say something else, but Cory’s word nazi prevents it).

  4. grudznick 2020-02-26 16:02

    Out-of-staters are bad. Like the demon weed, they are very bad.

  5. Donald Pay 2020-02-26 16:31

    Some of the older boomers can remember the polio scare, which was staunched by mass vaccinations. I remember our class lining up and marching down to the gym at Mark Twain Elementary School in Sioux Falls. As we walked in, other classes had already gotten their shots. Some kids were whimpering a bit and rubbing their arms. Some of these were faking, trying to spook us.

    I’m sure we had to take something home to our parents to sign, but no one’s parents was going to chance not getting the vaccination unless there was some allergy issue. The TV news was full of kids lying in iron lungs because they couldn’t breath. We kids tried to figure out how serious this might be by holding our breath as long as we could. I think most kids figured out it was better to have the shot, than not be able to breath.

    One of my high school classmates survived polio, but his nerves were affected enough that he walked with a prominent limp. He had gotten polio before they had the vaccine.

  6. John 2020-02-26 17:02

    Donald, I, too remember the mass vaccinations in my town’s arena.
    I also recall my Grandfather’s tales of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic which killed millions in the US & worldwide.

    South Dakota, with its regressive, oldster population should give a crap about COVID-19, and trumps incompetent response, since the death rate is far higher the older a patient is.

    Interim data: https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/f9imnn/age_sex_existing_conditions_of_covid19_cases_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

  7. mike from iowa 2020-02-26 17:47

    My family was quarantined in the mid-fifties when I contracted diphtheria. I was around three. I also remember the polio vaccinations and the “Red” scare of Russia in grade school.

  8. mike from iowa 2020-02-26 17:50

    Out of stater named Hummel is about to become Soo Foo U’s all time leading three point shooter and she hails from my hometown of Cherokee iowa. Sounds like she is a lock for MVP.

    Bigly middle finger to Grudzilla and his unfounded fear of outsiders.

  9. Buckobear 2020-02-26 17:57

    Of course, passage of the bill will just give too many needed folks the excuse to move away.
    Bad enough that the RC schools will be mired in the twentieth century, we’ll never get a COSTCO !!

  10. grudznick 2020-02-26 17:58

    Mr. Mike, because you are from Iowa you don’t understand that grudznick hates the high-brow private colleges, too. Full of out-of-staters, they are.

  11. mike from iowa 2020-02-26 19:54

    Oh gawd, grudzilla. There be an illegal alien spying on South Dakota from the evening sky. It is the planet Venus and it is dirty dancing with the crescent moon up overhead. Even you scowling at it could never diminish the beauty nature has to offer.

  12. leslie 2020-02-26 20:03

    Ever the hater, grdz, eh?

  13. grudznick 2020-02-26 20:25

    grudznick has been voted the most loved Conservative with Common Sense on this here blog for 5 years running. I’m not a hater, like most libbies, I’m a lover!

  14. Debbo 2020-02-26 21:21

    I think the whole pro-plague, pro-coronavirus thing is related to political populism.

    Nobody’s gonna tell us what to do!

    The results are similar in both cases as well.

  15. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2020-02-27 11:56

    I’m glad my daughter will be alive and healthy to participate.

  16. mike from iowa 2020-02-27 12:32

    Loving goats probably ought to stop.

  17. Debbo 2020-02-27 13:41

    Tech has done so many good things, but it’s been fertile soil for conspiracy theories ad nauseam. Nothing is too wacky to promote. 🙄🙄🙄

Comments are closed.