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State House Updates

Extreme Legislation Will Prolong the Pandemic, Not End It

The legislative filing period for the New Hampshire House of Representatives for the 2022 session ended last week with a flurry of bills that will tie the hands of public health officials when it comes to ending the COVID pandemic and when it comes to fighting communicable diseases in the future.

The legislative filing period for the New Hampshire House of Representatives for the 2022 session ended last week with a flurry of bills that will tie the hands of public health officials when it comes to ending the COVID pandemic and when it comes to fighting communicable diseases in the future.

(Note: This is an expanded version of a commentary published in the Portsmouth Herald.)

In a year of critical moments in the state legislature when it comes to public health, we had five more doozies last week:

But perhaps the most disturbing event in New Hampshire last week when it came to the pandemic is one that seems to have escaped the notice of all but a few in the media. Friday at 4:00 p.m. was the deadline for members of the New Hampshire House of Representatives to submit new bills for the 2022 session. A quick look at the list (see the bottom of this article) shows GOP state representatives filed a staggering 46 bills related to COVID and public health. While the full language of these bills is not yet available, the titles are evidence of an extraordinary campaign to not only handicap public health officials in their efforts to end the pandemic, but also to severely restrict New Hampshire’s ability to contain the spread of communicable diseases in the future.

The extreme nature and the broad scope of these bills are deeply troubling to anyone who would like to see the deaths, hospitalizations, and the pandemic’s toll on our economy come to an end.

The list includes legislation that would prohibit face coverings in schools, ban employer vaccination requirements, ban businesses and employers from requiring proof of vaccination, ban the enforcement of federal vaccination requirements, and prohibit employers from taking action against employees refusing to be vaccinated. Another extreme measure would classify mask use by children in schools as child abuse, with mandatory reporting required by teachers. Also on the list are bills that would allow the over-the-counter allow sale of horse dewormer (a debunked COVID treatment) without a prescription and that would restrict use of the state vaccine registry to a point where it would be largely useless.

Something worth reflecting on in this moment is that our personal freedoms have never included the right to risk infecting others with a deadly illness. Public health measures, including requiring vaccinations, have been part of the landscape in our schools for many years. They were put there by people eager to avoid the unnecessary death and suffering common in prior generations. Although they have been challenged over the years, vaccination requirements have been consistently upheld by our courts—including the US Supreme Court.

History also reminds us that vaccination requirements for communicable diseases are almost as old as America itself. In 1777, George Washington issued an order that all troops under his command be inoculated against smallpox—a decision that helped the Continental Army survive a very difficult year. Had smallpox raged through his troop at that critical juncture, it’s very possible the war would have ended with the British as the victors.

But one of the best arguments for vaccination requirements isn’t from a dusty book on a shelf. It’s found in our very own New Hampshire Constitution. Article 3 of the Bill of Rights acknowledges that there are times when our natural rights and personal freedom must be weighed against our responsibility to the greater good. “When men enter into a state of society,” it reads, “they surrender up some of their natural rights to that society, in order to ensure the protection of others.”

That concept—the protection of others—has always been one of our strongest values as Americans and as Granite Staters. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the pandemic is that so many people, including some of our state’s top leaders, seem so willing to cast a key part of our identity aside to score political points and feed anti-public health narratives.

As In-DepthNH reporter Gary Rayno said in a commentary last month, “It is time to stop the gaslighting and reward people who have done what they could to stop the pandemic, not the ones who refuse.”

Thanks to the Delta variant, COVID is again surging in New Hampshire, straining our hospitals and ending more lives before their time.

Now is the time to work together and to do the hard things that are necessary to end the reign of COVID over our state and our country. Not to take ill-considered and divisive actions that will only prolong it by handcuffing the people who have the knowledge and the tools to end it.

Public Health, Vaccine, and Masking Bills Filed by NH Legislators as of Friday Sept. 17

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David Meuse