Which Lie Did She Tell? Basis of Steiner Hayward’s Vaccine Policy Proved False, Exemptions Down 17%

Yet, the Senator persists in adding additional vaccine policy legislation

NoOnSB442
11 min readMay 1, 2015

May 1, 2015

From Oregon Health Authority this morning:

Oregon’s vaccine exemption rate drops 17 percent

Decrease attributed to more stringent requirements for seeking nonmedical exceptions [Senate Bill 132]

It’s only been 10 weeks since February 17th, the night Oregon Senator Elizabeth Steiner Hayward appeared on the CBS Evening News and kicked off a national assualt on parental rights and informed consent by proposing a bill that would have removed all religious and philosophical exemptions from vaccinations for school-age children in Oregon.

The problem with Senator Steiner Hayward’s policy approach — aside from the obvious assault on freedom — was that the basis for her proposed legislation turns out to have been based on lies and inaccuracies, as a press release from the Oregon Health Authority this morning made abundantly clear:

May 1, 2015

Contact: Jonathan Modie, 971–246–9139, PHD.Communications@state.or.us

Oregon’s vaccine exemption rate drops 17 percent

Decrease attributed to more stringent requirements for seeking nonmedical exceptions

Editors: Stacy de Assis Matthews of the Oregon Immunization Program will be available for interviews today between 10 a.m. and noon in Room 1-C of the Portland State Office Building, 800 NE Oregon St.

Fewer Oregon parents or guardians sought nonmedical exemptions to the state’s school immunization requirements over the last year, according to new data published by the Oregon Public Health Division.

The division’s Oregon Immunization Program found that 5.8 percent of all kindergarteners — 2,693 students — claimed religious, philosophical or other nonmedical exemption to one or more required vaccines. That’s down from 7 percent, or 3,331 students, in 2014, and represents a 17 percent decline.

State law requires that all children in public and private schools, preschools, Head Start and certified child care facilities have up-to-date documentation on their immunizations, or have an exemption.

Public health officials believe the drop in the exemption rate is due to passage of Senate Bill 132A, which was signed into law on June 26, 2013, and went into effect on March 1, 2014. The legislation changes the process for claiming a nonmedical exemption to school and child care immunization requirements.

Parents or guardians choosing a nonmedical exemption are now required to submit to the school or childcare a document showing either a signature from a health care practitioner verifying discussion of the benefits and risks of immunization, or a certificate of completion of an interactive online educational video about the benefits and risks of immunization.

Similar laws in surrounding states have led to swift and significant drops in nonmedical exemption claims: In California, the rate fell 19 percent, while Washington saw a 25 percent decline.

“What Oregon’s new data tell me is that parents and guardians are making truly informed decisions about vaccinations,” said Stacy de Assis Matthews, school law coordinator with the Oregon Immunization Program.

Matthews says it’s not known how, or whether, changes implemented as a result of SB 132A affected parents’ and guardians’ decisions to get their children vaccinated.

“But I believe that the education provided through health care providers and the online module helped many parents realize that the benefits of immunizations far outweighed any risks,” she said.

How Oregon’s vaccination exemption rate compares nationally won’t be known until August or September, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention releases its report on all states’ exemption rates.

The latest exemption data were compiled after School Exclusion Day, Feb. 18, 2015. That is the date by which parents or guardians were required to provide up-to-date immunization or exemption documentation to their children’s schools.

Vaccination exemption rates by individual school will be available in early June.

Additional information on school immunizations can be found at the Immunization Program website at www.healthoregon.org/imm. Follow the Oregon Immunization Program on Facebook.

There Never Was a Problem

If any reporter or legislator had ever taken the time to talk to the Oregon Immunization Program, they would have realized there never has been a problem with vaccination rates in Oregon. Check out these slides from the Oregon Health Authority, showing extremely high vaccination rates:

“Exempt” has never meant “unvaccinated”:

And, the Oregon Health Authority understands exactly why exemption rates in Oregon have grown: additional mandated vaccines added to the school schedule.

Very few people realize that Oregon’s school entry vaccine requirements are one of the highest in the country.

As one simple example, Oregon is one of only 11 states that require Hepatitis A vaccine.

And, the OHA is well aware that exemption rates are higher for newer vaccines and for vaccines for diseases that are NOT communicable, like Hepatitis B and Hepatitis A:

Huh? SB 895, More Vaccine Legislation From Senator Steiner Hayward?

For those not paying close attention, the decline in Personal Belief Exemptions (PBEs) by parents in Oregon matches perfectly the implementation of a required video module that all parents seeking a vaccine exemption are required to watch in order to turn in their exemption form. The module, created by Senate Bill 132 in the 2013 legislative session, became mandatory in March of 2014, and the 17% decline is for the time period AFTER the module viewing became law. As the OHA says in their press release today:

“Public health officials believe the drop in the exemption rate is due to passage of Senate Bill 132A, which was signed into law on June 26, 2013, and went into effect on March 1, 2014. The legislation changes the process for claiming a nonmedical exemption to school and child care immunization requirements.”

Senator Steiner Hayward proclaimed on the CBS Evening News that the module wasn’t working and needed to be scrapped in favor of a policy — Senate Bill 442 — that would have made all vaccines mandatory for all children in Oregon.

Not only was Senator Steiner Hayward forced to withdraw SB 442 due to a lack of support for the bill from her own party, but it now appears that her very public proclamations of SB 132’s ineffectiveness were at best premature and more accurately dangerously premature, misguided, and, as of today, simply wrong.

Senate Bill 132 is working, and it’s working for reasons that experts on vaccine policy would understand completely, allow us to explain:

Vaccinations are a private and personal medical procedure that every parent takes on with their newborns. The most important relationship in the vaccination model is the relationship between a parent and their medical provider, most typically a pediatrician. What’s required to ensure vaccine compliance? Trust, plain and simple.

Pediatrics, the medical journal of the AAP, is rife with published studies examining what causes parents to vaccinate or NOT vaccinate their children, and the lessons for anyone willing to take the time to listen are crystal clear: high vaccination rates are EARNED through a trusting and open relationship between a medical provider and his or her client, the parent of the child.

Consider a study from Dr. James Taylor of the University of Washington. Looking at 15 pediatric offices in 11 states, what did Taylor and his colleagues find?

“Individual provider behavior may be the most important determinant of the immunization status of children”

The list of studies that support the importance of the provider-parent relationship could fill 10 pages, and this is perhaps the single biggest risk of any “mandatory” vaccination program: the delicate construct of trust and informed consent is broken through a medical procedure perceived as mandatory.

Conversely, shaming, blaming, and scaring parents, aside from being relatively crude and obtuse tools for compliance, have also been proven to do nothing to increase vaccination rates and recent studies from Pediatrics show they risk REDUCING rates. Dartmouth’s Dr. Brendan Nyhan and colleagues looked at some of the messaging used to try and increase measles vaccine compliance and discovered an insight that most people probably grasp intuitively:

“Current public health communications about vaccines may not be effective. For some parents, they may actually increase misperceptions or reduce vaccination intention. Attempts to increase concerns about communicable diseases or correct false claims about vaccines may be especially likely to be counterproductive. More study of pro-vaccine messaging is needed.”

The study author offered his own opinion:

“Nyhan thinks that these parents are suspicious of the scientists and that the pro-vaccine movement is trying to pull a fast one on them. ‘People think, ‘what are they trying to convince me?’’ he explained. ‘The ‘don’t worry, don’t worry, everything is safe’ approach is not often effective, because they think ‘why are they trying so hard to reassure me that everything is safe?”

What’s the lesson from all these published studies? A trusted doctor increases vaccination rates; trying to scare, shame, or coerce people does the opposite.

Despite the glaring success of Senate Bill 132 — and the embarrassment any normal person would feel from declaring something that turned out to be completely untrue — Senator Elizabeth Steiner Hayward is pressing to introduce another vaccine compliance bill, Senate Bill 895, which would require unprecedented (no other state has the rules SB 895 would enforce) disclosure by schools of vaccination behavior of each school’s students (but not their faculty and staff, a puzzling omission from the bill). Namely, both the student population’s exemption rates and vaccination rate broken out by vaccine.

Senator Steiner Hayward has offered two explanations for the need for SB 895:

i) to provide parents of medically fragile children with vaccination rate information at their school, and

ii) to spark a “community conversation” about vaccination.

Parents of medically fragile, or immunocompromised children, take precautions with their children that most mortal parents would struggle to understand. A child who could die from catching a common cold will not be attending public school, for obvious reasons. It’s our opinion that the “immunocompromised child” explanation for SB 895 is both insincere and could easily be refuted by interviewing parents of immunocompromised children, as mom Jean Ghantous eloquently explains:

“If my child were at a stage of treatment in which she was very immunocompromised, she would not be in school. My daughter missed most of fourth grade and a good portion of fifth, not because she was so sick, but because others were sick. Despite a nearly 100% vaccine compliance rate at our school, there were regular outbreaks of shingles, occurring after chicken pox vaccine boosters, influenza and other illnesses. Please note that, even in areas in which vaccine compliance is extremely high, there are still outbreaks of disease that are not caused by the unvaccinated.”

As this slide clearly demonstrates, an immunocompromised child is hardly protected in a school environment:

And, given that neither teachers nor staff are part of the requirement for reporting in SB 895 can we at least agree that any information provided would be “incomplete” (and therefore useless to a medically fragile child)?

Senator Steiner Hayward’s more common explanation for the need for SB 895 — to increase “community conversation” at the school level — is a deeply troubling euphemism for creating an environment of suspicion and coercion that would likely backfire from its intended effect.

Let’s look at 895 at a day-to-day level and try to imagine this “community conversation” taking place:

- A “report card” on school-level immunization rates by vaccine is issued by the school and mailed to every parent

- Some of the student immunization rates are either perceived to be low or are actually low compared to either state or national averages (the law is vague on what, exactly, the school needs to report as reference points)

So, parents are presented with immunization rates at the school. What exactly is Senator Steiner Hayward hoping will be discussed? The only conversation we can construct in imagining the outcome is this:

Parent 1: Hey, did you see our MMR rate, it’s kind of low, huh?

Parent 2: Yeah.

Parent 1: I wonder who’s not vaccinating?

Parent 2: Yeah, me too.

Parent 1: Let’s see if we can find out more from the office.

We struggle to believe that anyone wouldn’t understand how SB 895 will lead to a “shame and blame” environment in the school setting. Which leads us to our final point:

shame and blame do not work for increasing vaccination rates, the science on that is clear. SB 132 is working, why are we still talking about vaccine policy legislation?

SB 132 strikes a delicate balance between privacy and information. The 1-hour video module is dense with information about vaccines, parents are required to watch it, but they do so in the privacy of their own home. Then, parents interact with their medical provider to make a decision for their child. The result? 17% lower exemption rates.

SB 132 is working, why mess with a policy that is already supported by the data, already supported by many published studies and instead risk passing a bill that may in fact do the opposite of its intended purpose?

And, can we be cynical for a moment? Why did Senator Steiner Hayward push so hard and tell so many lies about needless legislation in Oregon? Why did Senator Steiner Hayward magically appear with legislation to lessen vaccine mandates at the exact same moment than 20+ other states did the same thing? With a coordinated attack of this magnitude, how naive are we all willing to be?

The fact of the matter is that Merck, under the direction of former CDC Director Julie Gerberding, is in every State Capitol lobbying legislators every day. As frustrating as Senator Steiner Hayward is, she is but one of many legislator sock puppets around the country for an industry with a simple plan: remove the ability of any consumer (our children) to NOT have to use our products.

Who benefitted the most from the measles scare of 2015? Bloomberg reports:

This article was written by several well-meaning Oregonians who are big fans of medical freedom and informed consent who apparently have nothing better to do than crunch numbers. We have nothing to gain or lose financially from the passage of this bill. We have proudly joined a movement of a few thousand Oregonians fighting this legislation, the organizing website can be found here: www.NoOnSB442.com. We have written a series of articles on this topic, in chronological order they include:

Part 1: The truth about Oregon’s vaccination rates

Part 2: Who cried wolf in Oregon

Part 3: What’s NACCHO got to do with Oregon’s vaccine exemption fight?

Part 4: Exemption-gate in Oregon?

Part 5: No mas, Senator Steiner Hayward, no mas

Part 6: Oregon Senator Steiner Hayward: Blameshifter in Chief

Part 7: Senator Steiner Hayward’s SB 673: Drilling for Mandatory Gardasil Shots for Kids?

Part 8: Sneaky Steiner Hayward’s “Lilly Rider”: 23rd Hour Change to SB 895

Part 9: Senate Bill 895: a Parent’s Guide to Senator Steiner Hayward’s last stand

Part 10: The Truth About Vaccines and the Immunocompromised

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NoOnSB442
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