I have been told by multiple sources who watched the Appropriations Committee hearing on SB 276 on Thursday May 16, 2019, that Senator Pan stated that the bill had been/or would be amended to remove the review/rescission of current vaccine medical exemptions.

But I would note that as of this morning, Friday May 17th, the new amendment is not up on the legislative website. So, for now, it’s just talk.

My first (and continued) reaction honestly, was (is) relief. Through these posts, and my representation of Dr. Ken Stoller in the San Francisco Administrative Subpoena matter, I’ve heard some very disturbing stories about children who have been repeatedly injured from vaccines and how their pediatricians continue to insist on adherence to the vaccine schedule, despite the serious harm they (both the vaccines and the pediatricians) are causing. That seems crazy to me. In desperation, these families have sought their way to physicians like Ken Stoller who have a better understanding of vaccine injury than most pediatricians, and many of them have received a vaccine exemption even though they don’t meet the technical CDC contraindication standards.

While that kind of exemption writing was specifically allowed under SB 277, Senator Pan and others have suffered memory lapses, or now basically say, “hey, we were just kidding, we really meant CDC contraindications (and CDC precautions) even though we had to delete that from the original bill because you vaccine concerned made such a stink about it.” And now he is shocked that doctors are following his own words. Reminds me of Claude Raines’ line in Cassablanca when he said to Bogie: “Gambling in this establishment, Monsieur Rick, I am shocked!!”

Bottom line: SB 276 is meant to finish the job that couldn’t be done last time around (or almost finish it).

Nonetheless, I am relieved that the current vaccine exempt won’t have the prospect of losing their medical exemptions.

I also saw that some on FB have called out Senator Pan for being a hypocrite, in that if he really believed the vaccine exempt were dangerous, why isn’t he sticking with rescinding the exemptions of all these public risk kids?

REALLY! ARE YOU F**ING KIDDING ME! TAKE THE W, PARTIAL THOUGH IT MIGHT BE.

Or more politely, I don’t see it as hypercritical for Senator Pan to amend his bill to remove the rescission of existing exemptions. He’s a politician, and to get things done, politicians have to compromise. You folks made such a stink about all the kids who would lose their exemptions that he had to back down to push his bill through the Senate Appropriations Committee. You folks did that, which is how the process works. But you can’t call the guy out because you beat him down on this.

Take the interim and partial win and keep working and explaining to the Assembly why California needs physicians writing broad based medical exemptions, based on what Senator Pan told you legislators back then, at least until you have actual hard evidence that California citizens are being actually harmed by the 3000 extra medical exemptions that have been written last year.

Ask them to demand to see the actual evidence connecting these exemptions to all or even a majority of the new measles cases. I can’t speak to the rest of the state, but I’ve read that 28 of the 38 measles cases in the Bay area this year are in adults who have traveled abroad who were unvaccinated or had secondary vaccine failure. Maybe the legislators should mandate titer testing and revaccination of all adults, instead of picking-on the kids. Seems like a more effective solution to solve the actual problem, at least if the Bay area is representative of other parts of the state. But my guess is that’s not going to fly because adults have rights, for now at least, and kids are easier targets, sad as it is to say.

Rick Jaffe, Esq.
rickjaffeesquire@gmail.com