Oregon’s Covid vaccine problem shows how destructive Trump is

It’s starting to feel a lot like The Handmaid’s Tale, that gripping series about how the United States was taken over by religious zealots who forced women into being raped in order to have children at a time when infertility gripped the world. I came to The Handmaid’s Tale late, but watched it every day until I was able to write about how the conclusion inspired resistance against Trump’s autocracy.

In the series, the only states who remained free of the zealotry were Alaska and Hawaii, if I remember correctly. I have the impression that the West Coast states also were mostly free, but this could be wishful thinking since I live in Oregon.

At any rate, a week ago Oregon, Washington, and California banded together to form the Western Health Alliance, as described in an OPB story. Hawaii joined a day later,

The democratic governors of Oregon, Washington and California are forming a new public health partnership aimed at preserving access to vaccines.

The partnership, called the Western Health Alliance, will develop its own immunization guidelines “informed by respected national medical organizations,” according to a press release Wednesday from Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences. California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk,” the governors said in a joint prepared statement.

Their announcement comes after a week of chaos at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last week, the White House fired CDC Director Susan Monarez, who was appointed by President Trump, after she refused to approve vaccine policies preferred by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Several of the agency’s top career scientists also resigned in protest. On Monday, nine former directors of the CDC, who worked under both Republicans and Democrats, condemned Kennedy’s leadership of the agency in an op-ed in The New York Times.

Today my wife, Laurel, was able to get the updated Covid vaccine at Walgreens. But it was a struggle. Like me, she’s a senior citizen over 65. Both of us have been getting a Covid booster every year since the vaccines became available during the pandemic. This year we got an extra shot six months after the annual Covid shot.

Throughout, we’ve never needed a prescription. This was because of an emergency use authorization that enabled just about anyone who wanted a Covid shot to get one without a prescription. But in his deep ignorance of what truly leads to better health, Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. revoked that authorization at the end of August.

So even though Walgreens had the updated Covid vaccine, and my wife had an appointment to get it, when she arrived at Walgreens last Friday she was told that a prescription was required due to the uncertainty caused by Kennedy’s highly irresponsible action. Laurel was upset, because she is going to travel by plane to visit old college friends in North Carolina near the end of September, so she wanted to get the updated Covid shot three weeks ahead of time in order for it to take full effect before she got on a plane with lots of other people packed closely together.

When my wife contacted her Salem Health doctor, she was told that Salem Health wasn’t writing prescriptions for the vaccine. It appears that Salem Health was caught off guard by the sudden need for a prescription after years of people being able to get a Covid shot without one.

A factor in all this is that the ACIP committee at the Centers for Disease Control, which makes recommendations to the CDC head about vaccine protocols, isn’t meeting until September 18-19. Usually this would be a no-brainer. The Covid vaccines are safe and effective. Many Covid cases are still occurring. The FDA has said that those 65 and older, plus younger people with a chronic underlying health condition, should be getting the vaccine (however, medical groups are saying that everybody should be eligible for the vaccine).

Kennedy has fired the most qualified members of the ACIP committee because they were too scientific and supportive of vaccinations. Kennedy is a quack who has been peddling lies about autism being caused by childhood vaccinations. He’s appointed equally wacko people to become members of the committee, including Catherine Stein.

The Case Western Reserve University medical professor has told other news outlets that she has been contacted about joining the committee. Stein, who teaches epidemiology and population health, has advocated against vaccine mandates and wrote an article in 2021 arguing that coronavirus is not scary. “Our Lord has given us a mission to share the gospel. If we live in fear of death, that weakens our testimony,” she wrote. “Remember, the Lord Jesus did not fear lepers, and leprosy was (and continues to be) a highly contagious infectious disease.”

Wow. Stein would fit right in as a Handmaid’s Tale zealot. And here she is, in line to join the committee that decides what vaccines should be made available to people in this country.

I’m glad that the West Coast states, plus Hawaii, are resisting the destructiveness being caused by the Trump administration, but there’s only so much states can do when it comes to fighting insane federal government policies.

Still, my wife and I are pleased that she was able to get a Covid shot. It just took a few days for Salem Health to figure out how they were going to handle this disturbing new world of a CDC that doesn’t follow science, but the whims of RFK, Jr., who looks really unhealthy himself and has a serious anger problem, judging by how he reacted at a recent Senate hearing to entirely appropriate tough questions.