State law lists which vaccinations are required to attend school, with no personal exemption, but that law was drawn up years before there was such a thing as COVID-19. Only students with a legitimate medical issue can attend school — private or public — unvaccinated for measles, mumps, diphtheria and seven other diseases, almost all of them contagious.
State intervention is needed, in a stronger form than Gov. Gavin Newsom has offered so far, but also planned in a nuanced way. Parents’ resistance to COVID-19 vaccination flies in the face of science, but at the same time, inoculating people against this virus isn’t the same as administering the measles vaccine or other standard childhood immunizations.
The most bulletproof way to go would be new legislation adding the COVID-19 vaccine to the list of required childhood immunizations, but that’s not necessarily the most effective way to go about it. COVID-19 isn’t like chickenpox, for which inoculation plus a booster is enough for all of childhood. We don’t know how the coronavirus will change, or if a vaccine shot will be needed every year.
