Carly Fiorina explains her all-over-the-map stance on vaccinations. Sort of?

Daily Kos Staff

Saturday August 15, 2015 · 1:00 PM PDT

2015/08/15 · 13:00

Carly Fiorina, Republican presidential candidate, looks on at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma May 23, 2015.   REUTERS/Rick Wilking - RTX1E82L

I'm not quite sure I'm following the logic Republican presidential candidate and former Hewlett Packard horseman of the apocalypse Carly Fiorina is applying to her vaccination "stance," though "stance" is a being a bit charitable here, but let's see if we can work it out together.

Speaking at a town hall on Thursday in Alden, Iowa, Fiorina responded to a question from a mother of five who claimed that one of her children had an adverse reaction to a vaccination, saying “It’s always the parent’s choice.” She continued by referencing her daughter, who Fiorina said was bullied by a school nurse into vaccinating her pre-teen daughter for the Human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease. “Measles is one thing…,” Fiorina said.

But preventing a certain kind of cancer—a mean medical feat, mind you—is, we infer, another.

“When you have highly communicable diseases where you have a vaccine that’s proven, like measles or mumps, then I think a parent can make that choice, but then I think a school district is well within their rights to say, ‘I’m sorry, your child cannot then attend public school,'” Fiorina explained to reporters after the event.

All right, so the policy is that parents should be allowed to not vaccinate their kids against deadly communicable diseases, but schools should then be allowed to deny entry to those children.

“So a parent has to make that trade-off,” she continued. “I think when we’re talking about some of these more esoteric immunizations, then I think absolutely a parent should have a choice and a school district shouldn’t be able to say, ‘sorry, your kid can’t come to school’ for a disease that’s not communicable, that’s not contagious, and where there really isn’t any proof that they’re necessary at this point.”

Which vaccine is she talking about here? We have to guess she means the HPV vaccine, except for the part where HPV is indeed communicable, i.e. contagious, and that the vaccination at this point has plenty of proof behind it, hence all the science-types "bullying" parents into crossing another deadly illness off their child's future medical roulette wheel. But it seems to be esoteric, which I believe is the word Fiorina uses for involving the naughty bits.

Head below the fold for more of Fiorina's "reasoning."

Fiorina, who ran for Senate in California in 2010, said she disagreed with the state’s decision recently to eliminate a parent’s right to not vaccinate their children, even in cases of religious objection.

This is, I'm afraid, an easy one. If your religion says your child might get a potentially deadly disease but you're not allowed to prevent it with a simple series of shots because that would go against God's Will, your religion is stupid and wrong. Shh—no. No more talking. God at no point said you couldn't wear your seat belts because if it is his will that you be catapulted through your windshield and be reduced to a stain on the back of a sleepy trucker's rig, you had better not thwart him on that, nor did he warn against bandaging your gaping wounds because if God says it's time for you to bleed out you had better sit there on your ass and bleed out with dignity, and if you think God wants to give you polio in order to better spread His Holy Infectious Word you're wrong and none of the rest of us have to listen to you.

Where was I? Ah, right. Trying to parse out just what Fiorina's actual policy stance is when it comes to childhood vaccinations. She seems to be strongly for them, except for the one preventing cancer, because that's the one we should defer to religion on, in that a lot of parents don't particularly mind their kid someday getting a preventable cancer if they don't have to explain the birds and the bees to their little princess. On all the others she demands parents be given the right to let their kids get deadly communicable diseases, but also supports the rest of society then shunning those kids as a matter of immunological self-defense, and all of it sounds a great deal more complicated than Just Get Your Damn Shots Already.

There's nothing quite like the rigors of the campaign trail to unclarify a person's belief system. This whole thing smells strongly of just tell me what to say, for God's sake, and I'll say it.

Carly Fiorina explains her all-over-the-map stance on vaccinations. Sort of?

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