Some North Carolina legislators obviously believe we would all be better off in the dark days before vaccines became available that stopped the scourges of smallpox, pneumonia, whooping cough, measles, chicken pox and polio. A current bill in the General Assembly, HB 558, could make it unlawful to mandate vaccinations against any illness.
As someone who lost a baby brother to pneumonia, who suffered through the measles and chicken pox, who knew parents who lost children to polio and who was always grateful her children did not have to fear those diseases, I ask: Have you lost your ever-loving minds?
We would be the only state that would not sensibly mandate a series of vaccinations to protect all children. We would be back in the dark ages.
As a country, we have reached the stage, thought miraculous 75 or 100 years ago, when a large segment of our population can expect to live into their 80’s or 90’s, and live healthily. Stop the vaccinations and we doom future North Carolina generations to living with disease and living shorter lives.
Tell every state representative and senator that this is a dreadful bill.
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Unfortunately there is another egregious example of legislative overreach. HB 496 would take away the authority of towns, cities and counties to regulate the removal of trees from private property without the express authorization of the General Assembly. This smells bad. This smells like a senator or representative having a grudge against his town, city or county.
But the really bad part is that it would mean Wake Forest, a town that prides itself as a Tree City USA and which annually celebrates Arbor Day, would no longer be able to require that a developer protect specimen trees or groves of trees. “Our current tree preservation standards would be stricken,” Courtney Tanner, the town’s planning department director, said.
Mayor Vivian Jones, at the request of the N.C. League of Municipalities, will speak against the proposed bill at a General Assembly committee meeting. Let us hope she is able to persuade the committee to dump the bill.
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