My family has first hand experience with what a drug trial looks like and at the start we were presented all the potential problems our participation could bring on. It was our choice to participate, or not! And it was the responsibility of the trial company to care for us if something went wrong. The drug trial in which we'd participated had been going on for years and we tracked every thing that happened during the years we were in the study.
The currently available Covid vaccines, even though they have been fast tracked, don't have the years of information behind them to make our family comfortable with the risks they presents. It should be OUR CHOICE what goes into our bodies. We know people who have died from Covid, we know people who have been irreparably harmed by the vaccine, we know people who have been vaccinated and have gotten Covid, we know plenty of people who got Covid and recovered. I understand the desire to control all the things in the world around you, but you simply can not. Alienating your neighbors, coercing unwilling participants, and denying fundamental human rights to school children and staff is WRONG and it is unconstitutional and it harms all of us, vaccinated or unvaccinated.
Mandating a vaccine for adults or children which doesn't have years of research behind it is foolish. Mandating it without allowing exceptions for conscience is even more so. This is still the United States of America. Bodily autonomy means something here. Freedom means something here.
A petition demanding that all staff and children in schools get vaccinated so children can 'save their childhoods' by not having to wear masks is foolhardy. None of us wants to wear a mask all the time, or have our child wear a mask to school; but our family like many others has done it, we've done all the things that were asked of us to stop the spread of Covid. But this demand is WRONG and I won't sit back and stay silent.
As it stands, even those who are vaccinated are getting sick and passing on Covid, AND still being asked to wear masks everywhere they go. This petition should never see the light of day as legislation (proposed or otherwise). I expect more from my representatives in Richmond.
If you need something to tug on your heart strings as the petitioner felt was necessary, I can supply one. My child experienced an episode of ITP immediately before the start of Covid, some unknown virus caused his body to kill all of his white blood cells to the point that his body was covered in bruises and broken blood vessels. It was horrifying. The major cause for concern was that he might develop a brain bleed and DIE. One of the first questions we were asked at admissions to the hospital was "has he recently been vaccinated?" because vaccines often bring on ITP. Fast forward to January of 2021 and the first post-vaccine death I was made aware of was a Florida doctor who died from ITP. He first developed symptoms of ITP 3 days after his vaccination. He died of a brain bleed within two weeks. If we ever decide to give this vaccine to this child it will not be because we are coerced into doing so. It will be with a full understanding of the known risks from vaccinating or not, and with the acceptance that we can not control everything. It will be in our agency as the parents of this child.
I'll repeat. This petition should never see the light of day as legislation (proposed or otherwise). I expect more from my representatives in Richmond.