Swine Flu: H1N1 and The Pandemic

Legislators have received numerous e-mails regarding proposed legislation for “forced” vaccinations. Essentially all of the people who have contacted me with negative responses to the proposed legislation base their views on misleading and false information.

The fear is that people can be forced to be vaccinated and can be taken from their homes and placed in quarantine somewhere else. Those fears are unfounded.

The swine flu has the potential to be a major epidemic in Massachusetts and throughout the country. It is essential that laws and regulations be in place to allow authorities to deal with the disease in a way that will minimize its spread. Laws have been on the books in Massachusetts for many, many years allowing almost everything that the proposed law would allow. The purpose of the proposal is to bring many of the existing laws together into a cohesive format so that authorities have a clearer picture of what they can do.

Essentially, here is what the proposal does:

It provides for the implementation of certain measures only if the Governor, based on reasonable cause, declares an emergency to exist. The Governor would not declare an emergency unless he had sufficient information from numerous health care officials that emergency measures need to be implemented.

There is language that says that health officials can stockpile vaccines, can manufacture vaccines and can engage others to do the same. It states clearly in the legislation that anyone who does not wish to be vaccinated cannot be forced to be vaccinated.

It allows health officials to determine that a person or group of people (household for example) who have been infected, pose a serious risk of infecting others should be quarantined. This provision of the bill already exists in other areas of the law and has never been abused to my knowledge. It allows the quarantine to take place in the infected person’s home and does not require that the infected person be removed from their home and taken to some lock-up somewhere. One can imagine situations where an infected person or family might have to be removed from their home. This legislation is not only to allow health officials to deal with the swine flu but any other highly contagious disease. If a family becomes infected with a highly contagious disease and it is determined that the source of their illness is in their home, doesn’t it make sense that the people be removed from the home so that they don’t continue to be infected and so that the source of the infection can be dealt with?

There is a provision that is intended to allow health officials to destroy anything that they deem infected, that cannot otherwise be decontaminated and might be necessary to destroy. The language of that provision may need to be changed to make the intent clearer but that is the intent of the section.

I think the simplest way to describe the overall intent of the legislation is to look back to the Typhoid Mary issue decades ago. If a Typhoid Mary were walking around today infecting people with a disease, does anyone believe that health officials should not have the ability to identify that person and require that she act in a way that prevents her from infecting other people? Of course not. If Typhoid Mary had infected a number of people who could then infect other people, does anyone today believe that health care officials shouldn’t have the ability to provide vaccines for those people who want it? Shouldn’t health officials have the authority to prevent those infected people who choose not to be vaccinated to remain quarantined until they are no longer able to spread the disease?

Like most proposed legislation, this legislation may have areas in which changes need to be made but overall, it is necessary legislation.