New York Assembly Health Committee passed two very bad vaccine-related bills, and two very bad bills were withdrawn 

Update from John Gilmore and Autism Action Network

5-17-23

Yesterday, the New York Assembly Health Committee passed two very bad vaccine bills, and a few days ago two very bad bills were withdrawn from further consideration by the Assembly. 

The bad bills passed by the committee are A276b and A7154. A276b, if it becomes law, will for the first time eliminate parents’ right to decide, or even know, what vaccines their children are given. It would allow any vaccine intended to prevent sexually-transmitted infections to be given to children at whatever the minimum age is for that product set by the FDA, that includes shots for hepatitis b, HPV, and monkey pox, and the group of drugs called “PrEP” that is used to prevent HIV.

A similar law in Washington DC was voided by a United States Court because federal law requires that a Vaccine Information Statement approved by the FDA be given to a child’s parent prior to giving a vaccine. States may not pick and choose which US laws they will or will not follow. 

The vote on A276b was almost on straight party lines. All 8 Republicans were joined by Democrats Aileen Gunther and Nader Sayegh, to vote No. The remaining 16 Democrats voted Yes. Last week, Democrats Daniel Rosenthal, Michaelle Solages, and Rodneyese Bichotte Hermelyn, as well as Sayegh and Gunther publicly said they opposed A276a, an earlier version of the bill. There are no substantive differences in the bill. It is not clear what convinced them to change their votes. 

A7154 was passed as well. This bill removes the obligation of medical workers to get the permission of people receiving a vaccine before a record of the shot is recorded in the state database. If a person requests that the shot not be recorded, then the medical worker is supposed to respect the patient’s wishes. But there is no penalty if they do not. This is an important step towards a completely involuntary vaccine records database which is a necessity for enforcing vaccine passports. The bill was passed on a straight party line vote with all Democrats except Nader Sayegh voting Yes and all the Republicans voting No.

NY Asm. Jeffrey Dinowitz (Riverdale-D) withdrew two of his bills from consideration last Thuesday that would have mandated COVID shots, A2178 for K-12 student, and A2143 for college college students.

Sen. Brad Hoylman still has a bill (S624) that would require college students to get COVID shots. But without an identical bill in the Assembly it cannot become law. 

We are not sure why Dinowitz withdrew his bills. Neither had accrued any co-sponsors, which is indicative of a lack of support among his colleagues. The World Health Organization announced a few weeks that it no longer supports universal use by children of COVID shots, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends that all children get the COVID Shot. 

Whatever the reason, this is very good news indeed. 

Perhaps as a bone thrown to Jeffrey Dinowitz, the leading drug company shill in the Assembly, the Health Committee passed his A837, a very old bill that requires the state to record and publish on the web the number of medical exemptions from vaccine mandates at every school in the state. This bill predates the repeal of the religious exemption in 2019. Except the New York State Department of Health has had a website doing this since 2015. The bill was passed on a straight party line vote with all Democrats except Nader Sayegh voting Yes, and all the Republicans voted no.

One last bill A3997 introduced by Ed Flood, a good bill, was also voted on. A3997 prohibits mandatory COVID shots for anything; school, college, employment, access to buildings, etc. All the Democrats voted against it except for Nader Sayegh, and all the Republicans voted for it going down to defeat 17-9.

A276B and A7154 will have to be voted on by the Senate Health Committee, and perhaps other committees, and on the floor of both houses before they can be sent to the Governor. There are no further votes scheduled as of yet.  So there are still several barriers to these awful bills moving forward. Stay tuned for further action alerts.