Kansas senator Roger Marshall advocates for measles vaccinations amid growing cases | Opinion
Good on Roger Marshall.
I don’t say those words about Kansas’ junior senator very often, so let’s savor them a bit. Marshall, after all, has been under scrutiny lately after hightailing it from a Western Kansas meeting with constituents who were cranky about how Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s partnership is putting their livelihoods’ at risk.
He has been taking a lot of heat since then.
But now the senator has done something good. Really. Truly. Honestly.
It happened last Thursday. Faced with a growing number of measles cases nationwide — some of those infections have been deadly — and with the virus starting to make an appearance in the Sunflower State, Marshall’s office sent out a statement suggesting that maybe Kansans should consider getting vaccinated.
“Given the increase in cases of measles in Kansas,” Marshall said in the statement, “everyone should talk to their own doctor about their health needs and the need for a booster shot or vaccination.”
Short. Sweet. Not overly aggressive. But still: It was the responsible thing for Marshall to do.
Make America Healthy Again
Now, you could also argue that it’s the least that Marshall could do — in addition to being a senator, he’s a doctor. Promoting the easiest, simplest way of protecting your health and the health of your loved ones ought to be second nature, right?
Maybe, maybe not.
Marshall has a history of providing “sketchy” medical advice about viruses and vaccines, the Associated Press reported back in 2021.
More recently, the senator helped launch the “Make America Healthy Again” caucus in Congress — a slogan mostly associated with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic. Indeed, Kennedy has responded to the measles outbreak largely by talking up the (dubious) benefits of cod liver oil and vitamins.
So it’s not a given that Marshall would gently encourage Kansans to consider vaccination. Let’s be glad he did.
Now if he could just talk to some of his fellow Republicans in Topeka.
Loosening requirements for ‘ethical beliefs’
The same day Marshall sent out his statement, the GOP-controlled Kansas House passed a bill that unites state-sponsored child care programs in one office. Reasonable enough, except for one thing: An amendment to the bill loosens vaccine requirements in child care settings, making it easier for folks with “theistic and non-theistic moral and ethical beliefs” to get an exception.
Because kids famously don’t pass around germs and illnesses in day care, I guess.
It’s a terrible idea — and a great way to put the health of the youngest Kansans at risk without much of an upside.
“We know that when vaccine rates go down, vaccine-preventable diseases spread more easily in close settings such as child care environments and schools,” Kansas Action for Children, a nonprofit advocacy agency, said in its own statement after the bill passed the House.
KAC actually supported the bill before the late amendment. No longer.
“At a time when there are 10 measles cases in Southwest Kansas and other states that have even seen deaths,” the agency said in its statement. “Now is not the time to loosen any immunization requirements.”
What’s frustrating about all this is that there was a moment not so long ago when measles had been virtually wiped out in the United States. Kids were spared not just illness, but also the prospect of death — 400 or more Americans annually died from the virus before vaccinations started in 1963 — or the long-term neurological problems that afflict some people who get the virus.
Vaccines did that. Not cod liver oil.
Now that work is being undone. Which is the opposite of making America healthy again. What a tragic, needless waste.
Roger Marshall got the question right last week. The Kansas House didn’t. Maybe the Kansas Senate can fix the bill. But one thing is for sure: It’s exhausting to keep fighting battles for public health we thought had been won long ago.