Good: HB 4355 — to require the governing board of a higher education institution to publish a list of required textbooks, and whether they are open resource or free. The board must also disclose if students will be automatically charged for a textbook or digital access to courseware. The language also requires students be informed in required course software collects and uses students’ data. College is already astronomically expensive — and that’s before having to purchase course-specific material. Too often, students pay hundreds of dollars for a textbook they may use a handful of times and only get a fraction of the price during buy-back events. This bill is a fairly simple way to help control the ballooning cost of higher education and make materials more accessible to all students.
Bad: SB 576 — to ensure an employee who is denied a religious or medical exemption for an employer’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and quits the job remains eligible for unemployment insurance. It’s pretty hard to be denied both a medical and religious exemption for the COVID vaccine, which means that person must have made it very obvious they wouldn’t get vaccinated for political or unfounded reasons. Usually, when someone quits, they are not eligible for unemployment unless they can prove “good cause.” Refusing to get a medically and scientifically sound vaccine during a global health emergency is not a “good cause,” and these people should not be rewarded for endangering others. This bill has already passed the Senate.
Stupid: HB 4620 — to provide parents the option to have their children vaccinated as a condition to entry of schools; forbids schools from requiring masks on children under age 18; allows those 18 and over to make their own decisions regarding vaccinations as a condition of entry to colleges and trade schools in West Virginia; forbids colleges and trade schools from requiring masks at their campuses for students 18 and over; and forbids businesses from requiring vaccines or masks as a condition of employment or entry into an establishment.
This one is a whole list of stupid and requires extra space to address all the absurdity. It seeks to unravel public health measures undertaken throughout the pandemic — the very rules and guidance that have helped save lives. Wearing masks has helped slow the spread of COVID-19 in our communities and schools. Vaccination is still the best defense against a virus that has killed more than 6,000 West Virginians and 900,000 Americans.
HB 4620 even goes as far as to revoke school vaccination requirements that have been in place for decades. We’ve previously discussed how anti-vax laws have led to outbreaks of diseases like measles that were considered eradicated in the U.S. As one 2015 study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology states, “Childhood vaccination, and in particular measles and tetanus vaccination, is associated with substantial reductions in childhood mortality.”
On top of that, although the revised “guidelines,” as the bill calls them, are aimed at public health, the vagueness in the language around masks (“for the prevention of disease or otherwise”) could impact workplaces where masks are the norm. Will doctors be allowed to forgo masks when they do surgery? How about engineers working with chemicals that produce noxious gases? Or carpenters and masons whose work produces microscope debris? While employers won’t be allowed to mandate the employees wear masks, will employees be allowed to sue for workplace injury that results from not wearing a face covering on the job?
This is another one of those culture war bills that pumps up the highly conservative base and creates a bunch of problems while solving none.
