A Letter From Austin #4: A Stab in the Vax
Governor Abbott Says He Knows What’s Best for Texas Business
The big news here this week, aside from the Longhorns’ collapse against OU on the gridiron last Saturday, is Greg Abbott. The governor continues to grab headlines with his tack to the political right. Once a moderate fraternity house Republican along the lines of George W. Bush, a pretty boy in a Polo shirt, Abbott is now a rootin’ tootin’ git-out-yer-guns-I-smell-a-Tesla-type conservative. And he’s no great fan of newfangled modern medicine.
A few weeks ago, Abbott issued an order prohibiting governmental entities, including schools and colleges, from requiring staff and/or students to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. He did this despite the fact that Texas school districts already require that students be vaccinated for, among other things, hepatitis-B, chickenpox, tetanus, polio, meningitis, and the measles. Thus, no kid can attend a public school or college in Texas unless he/she has been vaccinated against meningitis and can prove it, through a form signed or stamped by a licensed physician, or submits a complicated form “opting out” of the vaccine for “reasons of conscience,” a form that cannot be photocopied, which requires a “working printer,” and which explains that the vaccine is only around 90% effective. Furthermore, all students entering the University of Texas must read and acknowledge an “informational statement” about bacterial meningitis before taking classes.
According to the CDC, the last recorded measles death in the United States occurred in 2015. Have you heard of a student with a bad case of meningitis lately? No? That’s probably because he or she has been vaccinated against it. Contrast the aggressive enforcement of meningitis vaccinations by the State of Texas with its treatment of Covid vaccines, which Greg Abbott has now actually prohibited institutions like schools and colleges from requiring.
But that’s not all. This week the governor issued an order, Executive Order GA-40, prohibiting private businesses from requiring an employee to receive the Covid vaccination if the employee objects to the shots for reasons of “personal conscience, based on a religious belief, or for medical reasons, including prior recovery from Covid-19.”
The order was apparently occasioned by the Biden Administration’s announced intention to mandate that businesses with over 100 employees require their employees to either get vaccinated or provide test results weekly showing that they are not infected with the coronavirus. The announcement of this and similar measures caused an uproar in right-wing circles, where people have seized upon a number of strange arguments and even stranger alternative therapies — malaria treatment; a horse de-wormer; liquid bleach — to avoid taking the shots. Just so we’re clear, what we’re talking about here is a vaccination (in various varieties) sanctioned and indeed fast-tracked by the Trump Administration; taken by Governor Abbott, President Trump, Senator Ted Cruz, and just about every other politician one can name; approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration; and developed to combat a disease that has caused some 700,000 deaths in the United States in the past two years.
Furthermore, in the not-so-distant past, before the vaccine was approved by the FDA, Abbott issued an order ALLOWING businesses to require vaccinations. Abbott’s Monday order is a reversal from his position earlier this year, when the Pfizer vaccine received final approval. At the time, Abbott’s spokesperson said that businesses did have the option of mandating vaccination for employees, and explaining that “private businesses don’t need government running their business.”
Now, evidently, they do.
Many businesses are ignoring Abbott’s posturing. Some do substantial business with the federal government, which has mandated vaccination for the companies’ employees. Others simply think that not doing all they can to prevent a Covid outbreak in the workplace is short-sighted. Abbott, who has spent his working life on the public payroll, doesn’t seem to understand the toll that Covid is taking on business staffing and operations. And that’s aside from the health risks posed to both employees and the people they come into contact with. Ted Shaw, president of the Texas Hospital Association, questioned the wisdom of the order. “Texas hospitals strongly oppose efforts underway to hamstring them from being able to require vaccination of their own staff, many of whom are at the bedside every day with children and adults who are vulnerable to Covid-19.”
What changed? Did Greg Abbott lock himself in a sophisticated laboratory somewhere to study the chemical composition of the vaccine? Did he discover some discrepancy in the CDC’s Covid statistics that caused him to gather his highly educated medical advisors around him to reconsider his stance on the vaccine? Of course not. He’s doing his Gumby thing for the sake of political expediency.
The fact is, Governor Abbott is facing political pressure from two right-wing rivals. One is Don Huffines, a former state senator from Dallas who has called for, among other things, abolition of all property taxes. Since Texas doesn’t have an income tax, it is unclear where money would come from to run the government, but that’s something that Huffines will presumably address later.
The other right-wing gadfly is former congressman and “intellectual” Alan West, who has seized on the Covid-19 pandemic as the perfect opportunity to practice his politics of shouting; he has promised, for example, to “vehemently crush” anyone backing vaccine mandates. Unfortunately, West has been forced to take a brief break from his anti-vaccine scaremongering this week. It seems he’s in the hospital with, um, Covid.
Welcome to Texas! And stay tuned for more political posturing in the very near future.
