Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com 

(With apologies to the Twilight Zone creators)

You’re about to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of anger and fear but of hypocrisy. A journey into a place where bipartisan thought is extinguished by blind obedience. A dimension that diminishes a state. It refuses to listen to cries for moderation and compromise. It’s a place where no position is too extreme. Bizarre becomes reality. There’s a signpost up ahead. 

You’ve entered the Golden Dome Zone.

There’s certainly something weird happening under that Golden Dome. Senate File 360 would have made it a simple misdemeanor in Iowa to provide or administer a gene-based vaccines like the mRNA ones for COVID-19. Republicans on a subcommittee advanced this bill, but it did not get through the full Senate Health and Human Services Committee before the “funnel” deadline on March 7.

But did it really die?

Republican State Senator Doug Campbell, who introduced the legislation, has said, “That bill is gone.” But he predicted the bill would be revamped to remove the criminal penalties, and more closely align with House File 712, which would require vaccine manufactures to waive immunity from lawsuits in order to make their products available in Iowa.

House File 712, introduced by State Representative Charley Thomson, is also dead for now. Although it got through a subcommittee, it did not come before the House Judiciary Committee before the funnel deadline.

However, both bills sent a chilling message: anti-vaccine members of the Iowa House and Senate are willing to impose their beliefs on all Iowans. Also, one or both bills may be resurrected as amendments attached to another bill near the end of the legislative session.

Although some are trying to rewrite recent history, they can’t. Before gene-based vaccines were widely available, schools were closed, businesses shuttered, funerals and weddings canceled, and thousands of Iowans died from COVID-19.

Even if these bills never become law, it sends a warning to vaccine manufacturers that they could face frivolous lawsuit risks in Iowa from anti-vaccine litigants.  Manufacturers of all vaccines—not just mRNA ones—may avoid our state or raise the cost so few can afford the shots. Iowans would lose.

Why is the MAGA Party so intent on making it hard to be vaccinated?

In 2020, President Donald Trump embraced unproven cures for COVID-19 even though scientific experts rejected them. For example, when he suggested hydroxychloroquine, with no medical evidence supporting it, thousands of prescriptions were requested. It didn’t work.

He also suggested injecting bleach to fight COVID-19. At one point, with no scientific evidence he claimed, “You know a lot of people think that it goes away with the heat-as the heat comes in. Typically, it will go away in April.” 

Many of his followers suffer from another type of virus. It’s called TWS (Trump Worship Syndrome). They believe their leader over science.

These anti-vaccine bills are another sign that Republicans support big government crowding into our doctor’s examination room. 

Iowa legislators have pretended to be teachers, public librarians, professors, in loco parents, gender experts, and doctors again and again when it’s about patient choice.

There appears to be a red-state competition to see which can be the most extreme. Iowa’s not the only state attacking vaccines. Idaho has proposed a 10-year pause on gene therapy. Montana had similar legislation, but it narrowly failed. In Florida, the state surgeon general urged doctors to stop recommending gene-based COVID-19 vaccines.

Finally, state lawmakers frequently look in the mirror and see a U.S. senator, member of Congress, or even a a cabinet member. In this political environment, proposing this type of legislation helps advance careers, because it feeds the GOP base. Politicians love attention. The right-wing noise machine (television, talk radio, podcasts) feeds on extremism.

Yes, vaccination is a personal decision—but there’s also community safety to consider. The recent measles outbreak in Texas shows that not being vaccinated can harm the whole community. Politicians are free to feed their base, but it’s dangerous when they peddle medical nonsense as fact.

We need to escape the Golden Dome Zone by replacing bizarre solutions with real solutions helping real people.

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Top image is by BaLL LunLa, available via Shutterstock.