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posted by mrpg on Friday May 28 2021, @11:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-could-go-wrong dept.

Ohio lawmakers want to abolish vaccine requirements:

[...] Lawmakers are working on legislation to call off the lottery immediately. They're also trying to head off any plans for "vaccine passports." And last month, they introduced a sweeping antivaccination bill that would essentially demolish public health and vaccination requirements in the state—and not just requirements for COVID-19 vaccines, requirements for any vaccine.

[...] State Rep. Beth Liston (D-Dublin) blasted the bill, telling The Columbus Dispatch, "Not only would it prevent schools, businesses and communities from putting safety measures in pace related to COVID, it will impact the health of our children... This bill applies to all vaccines—polio, measles, meningitis, etc. If it becomes law we will see worsening measles outbreaks, meningitis in the dorms, and children once again suffering from polio."

[...] "At its core, this proposal would destroy our current public health framework that prevents outbreaks of potentially lethal diseases, threatens the stability of our economy as it recovers from a devastating pandemic and jeopardizes the way we live, learn, work and celebrate life," the letter said.

[...] "HB 248 would put all Ohioans at risk while increasing the cost of health care for families, individuals and businesses," spokesperson Dan Williamson said. "This proposal applies to all immunizations, including childhood vaccines. If passed, this legislation could reverse decades of immunity from life-threatening, but vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, mumps, hepatitis, meningitis and tuberculosis."

Also: Ohio GOP lawmakers, citing 'need to protect' from vaccines, seek to expand exemptions, nix COVID passports


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 29 2021, @01:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 29 2021, @01:39PM (#1140016)

    The papers that have done this have engaged in a very disingenuous thing, whether intentionally or not. They look at the life expectancy at a given age, and simply apply that to deaths. So if somebody at e.g. 50 has a life expectancy of 40 more years and dies a death attributed to COVID then it's counted as 40 years of lost life.

    It seems reasonable, but it's not because of extremely important nuance. COVID is relatively harmless for people without preexisting conditions. And these preexisting conditions are often severe - diabetes, cancer, heart disease, etc. And when somebody dies of cancer but has COVID, it is counted as a COVID death. This is not to inflate the numbers but because of the inverse of what I said. COVID is brutal on folks with major preexisting conditions and so even if the cancer is what "really" killed them, it's entirely possible that COVID may have accelerated the death.

    Anyhow, the point of this is that you need to account for present health status when measuring years of life lost. A 50 year old with diabetes and terminal cancer who's death is marked as a COVID death, has a rather dramatically different life expectancy than a 50 year old in good health. Because of the nature of COVID (minimal effect on healthy, relatively severe effects on unhealthy) this is an extreme bias that renders these sort of studies on years of life lost not only meaningless but grossly misleading.

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