As states and countries around the world begin to remove COVID-19 mandates, seven California legislators created the Vaccine Working Group to develop and enact the most extreme COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the country. Based on the bills the group has introduced so far, not only will nearly every private and public school student, pre-school through 12-grade, be forced to get the COVID-19 vaccine, but so will most employees. It will not matter that you work for a church, a non-profit, or at home as an independent contractor. The only exception will be for those with a medical exemption, homeschool students, the unemployed, and workers with a religious exemption.
The most recent of the four vaccine bills already introduced, AB 1993, would require businesses to fire any employee or independent contractors not vaccinated against COVID-19 unless they get an exemption for a medical condition, disability, or religious belief. These bills are nearly all authored or co-authored by members of the Vaccine Work Group, which includes Senators Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), Josh Newman (D-Fullerton), and Assemblymembers Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), Akilah Weber (D-San Diego), Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Napa) and Evan Low (D-Silicon Valley).
The group’s press release states the Vaccine Work Group “is developing cohesive and comprehensive, evidence-based policies to strengthen our ability to stop the spread of COVID and other diseases, while battling misinformation.”
Here are the other vaccines bills the Vaccine Work Group has already released:
SB 871: Student COVID-19 Mandate: This bill requires COVID-19 vaccination for students of all public or private elementary or secondary schools, childcare centers, day nurseries, nursery schools, family day care homes, or development centers. The bill also removes the personal belief exemption for all vaccines as long as the California State Department of Public Health deems the vaccination appropriate. Homeschoolers and students with medical exemptions will not have to comply with this mandate.
SB 866: Teens Can Consent to ALL Vaccines: Allows minors 12 and older to consent to ANY vaccine without parental permission or notification as long as the vaccine is approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration and meets the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (ACIP).
AB 1797: Schools Get Access to Vaccine Records: This bill would make updates to the current California Immunization Registry. Assemblywoman Akilah Weber explained the bill as a recent press conference. The proposed law would make sure all vaccine providers input vaccination data into the registry. It will require that the inputted data include racial demographic information so state officials can see which communities aren’t vaccinating their kids. And it will give school administrators greater access to the registry to determine a child’s vaccination status. The bill details are not yet in print, but should be released in the coming weeks.
