Marin Voice: Student vaccine mandate is best approach to slow spread of COVID-19

Vaccine mandates are not easy, but they work.

Gov. Gavin Newsom understands there is overwhelming support for mandates. We should applaud his extraordinary leadership demonstrated by announcing California will add the coronavirus vaccine to the list of vaccinations required for students to attend school beginning in the 2022-23 school year.

There will be opposition, but for people who are able to be vaccinated, when faced with the decision of getting a child vaccinated or keeping the child home from school, very few people will choose homeschooling.

We learned this after Senate Bill 277 was passed in 2015. It repealed the personal belief exemption for childhood vaccinations. Once vaccines become the expected behavior, more communities will see results like Marin County, where 98% of eligible residents have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

Prior to SB 277, Marin had the lowest vaccination rates in the state. Public health officials knew that low vaccination compliance caused the widely publicized 2015 Disneyland measles outbreak and it brought home the risks posed by lost herd immunity. Then seven years old, our son, who was being treated for leukemia at the time, made headlines when he testified in support of SB 277. He helped build momentum for increased vaccination rates in California — especially here in Marin.

Without mandates, infectious diseases like coronavirus pose a very real threat to people who are too young or too medically fragile to get vaccinated. To put a finer point on it, vaccine refusal is not simply a matter of “personal freedom,” it has the potential to endanger the safety and lives of others.

Just a few years ago, our elected officials in Sacramento showed extraordinary courage and resilience, resisting pressure to abandon efforts to strengthen vaccine requirements. Tiburon’s Reed Union School Board and the Marin Board of Supervisors passed resolutions endorsing legislation to help mandate vaccines. Assemblyman Marc Levine held a press conference with our son. They urged then Gov. Jerry Brown to sign the legislation into law, which he did swiftly.  In the years since, vaccination rates in Marin climbed from 85% for incoming kindergartners to nearly 95%.

SB 277 also served as a needed step to swing public opinion in favor of vaccines. That’s one reason Marin has one of the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates in the nation. Not surprisingly, it also has one of the lowest hospitalization and death rates — proof that vaccines save lives. California’s success in eliminating personal belief exemptions illustrated that it is possible to effectively counter misinformation and fears raised by the anti-vaccination movement, and to mobilize public support for legislation. Mandates are not easy, but they work.

No innovation in the history of medicine has saved more lives than vaccines, which is why it is so frustrating to see that there are many parts of the nation where, even with wide availability of vaccines, infection spread continues and coronavirus hospitalizations are still overwhelming health care systems. The U.S. has now recorded more than 700,000 COVID-19 deaths. The alarming delta variant surge has been most devastating in states and communities with low rates of vaccination.

Newsom’s action reinforces similar moves by school officials in Los Angeles, Oakland and other communities with low vaccination rates who desperately need mandates to keep their students safe, especially the most vulnerable who cannot be vaccinated. In Marin, a vaccine mandate would be a formality where 98% of eligible people have already gotten a shot, and it would send a strong endorsement to those communities where this disease is widely circulating.

As Halloween approaches, parents of young children are breathing a bit easier compared to 2020, as it is looking likely children ages 5-11 will soon be able to get vaccines protecting them from COVID-19. Marin’s Public Health Officer Dr. Matt Willis and his team of dedicated public health workers work tirelessly to listen to parents’ concerns and are preparing vaccination clinics at schools, making it easier to maintain Marin’s success and prevent this illness from spreading in the community.

While children may not seem to be at high risk for severe COVID-19 disease, their vaccination improves herd immunity, which slows spread of disease across all age groups, a crucial step to ending this pandemic.

Carl and Jodi Krawitt are Corte Madera residents.