Don’t sell your iron lung stock just yet

In 2023, the West Virginia Legislature passed and the governor signed the Equal Protection for Religion Act, which prevents the government from placing excessive limitations on the exercise of religion.

It’s sort of like the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prevents the government from restricting an individual's religious practices.

See the difference there? Neither do I.

The problem is this: This redundant and unnecessary law is now being used as a hook on which to hang other legislation, some of which endangers the health of the state’s men, women and especially children. On his second day in office, before he had even put away the paper clips and pencils, newly-elected Governor Patrick Morrisey announced a religious exemption for childhood vaccines among his first executive actions. It means that any parent can opt out of mandatory childhood vaccinations by simply exercising this so-called religious freedom.  

Morrisey’s announcement on Day 2 of his administration was quite clear. The vaccine exemption is necessary in order to enforce the Equal Protection for Religion Act. He believes that existing vaccine mandates for public school children violate that law, and he wants a plan in place to allow for religious exemptions by February 1.

“We are directing the Office of Public Health to set up a process,” he told reporters. “We believe that the Equal Protection for Religion Act strongly argues in favor of religious and conscientious exemptions.”

At present, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends a fairly long list of vaccinations for children, starting at birth and continuing into adulthood. Certain vaccines are recommended for various age groups according to this chart.

The most common vaccines that most people will recognize prevent polio; chickenpox; measles, mumps and rubella; smallpox; DPT (diptheria, tetanus and pertussis or whooping cough); hepatitis B; RSV; Covid; and the flu. Some of these diseases have theoretically been eradicated, but a nurse told me that even polio could re-emerge under certain circumstances. Medical professionals have argued against religious exemptions because of the risk of the spread of these diseases. 

“It opens the door,” one doctor told a television station. “It’s like unlocking one door of a four-door car. (The car) is no longer locked.”

Before enacting this new vaccine policy, Governor Morrisey might have consulted the state’s medical experts or at least conducted a little research on disease prevention and treatment. If he had, he might have learned that there is no effective treatment to defeat a measles infection, smallpox outbreak or rubella. Over-the-counter fever reducers can help with measles symptoms while the virus runs its course. Smallpox sufferers can drink fluids, take pain and fever medication and antibiotics, but there is no quick and easy cure. And rubella? Well, no treatment shortens the course of a rubella infection.

THIS IS WHY WE HAVE VACCINES.

Instead, Morrisey plans to unleash a herd of opt-out religious anti-vaxxers into the state’s public school system, where one sick, unvaccinated child can infect other unvaccinated children who go home and infect others in their family, who then take the disease to the theater or church or the supermarket or sporting event or birthday party or any gathering of similarly unvaccinated people, and before you know it, there’s a measles epidemic under way.

It has been common practice for the deep red West Virginia Legislature to pass legislation without ever consulting professionals in the field, or – if they do consult professionals – ignoring their advice. It’s also part of West Virginia’s steady march backward into the past, guided by Trumpism, conservative lobbyists, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) or other wealthy donors who control governments in the 21^st Century.  

It’s bad enough that they passed a dubious law made unnecessary by the Bill of Rights, but now they’re spinning it off into more dangerous legislation that ignores qualified medical opinion and expands the risk of disease to our children. If Morrisey persists in driving this agenda, I’d suggest they apply this religious exemption only to private schools or home-schooled children where parents already have a choice and not to public schools that are taxpayer supported.

I’d also suggest that Morrisey’s office put in an order for a shipment of iron lungs, because without vaccines, even polio could be waiting just around the corner.

Don’t take my word for it. Read this: 

When our wants vastly exceed our needs

If your net worth was between $420 and $480 billion, and you earned $1.6 million every hour of every day, imagine what you could do with such enormous wealth. Instead of flying rockets to Mars or building a tunnel to England, you could completely erase homelessness in this country, feed every hungry child, vastly advance research to eradicate childhood cancer and other diseases, build shelters to house every discarded pet, pay teachers a substantial wage supplement which would improve the quality of education, subsidize the salaries of underpaid first responders and help create better health care alternatives for all Americans.

And there are other opportunities far too numerous to mention.

The thought of someone being worth $480,000,000,000 is staggering. Check this out: If I had earned my top salary every year that I worked, instead of building up to it over time, my lifetime earnings over 50 years would have totaled what Elon Musk makes in 3.2 hours. And I only earned that "top" salary one year out of 50. Leading up to that, I had years in which I earned $4,400, $8,000, $12,500 and $24,000. Compare those annual salaries to the $26,667 that Musk earns every minute. As I said, it’s staggering.

But there’s more. Looking beyond the billionaire oligarchs now running this country, there is so much money being thrown around on professional sports, entertainment, luxury cars, designer clothes, guns, hobbies, recreation and donations to megachurches  – the list goes on – that it’s hard to explain how any child could go to bed hungry every night, yet 1 in every 5 children do just that.

Here’s one example: Did you ever watch the credits at the end of a movie? Why does it take so many people to produce two hours of film? The average seems to be in the neighborhood of 700 but could be as many as 4,000 or more for a blockbuster with special effects.

I once watched an hour-long documentary where two people sat in chairs and talked. The closing credits went on for several minutes and had to include at least 300 people. To film two people sitting in chairs. Talking. I could have done it with a couple of stage lights and an iPhone.    

And then there are the salaries. Established actors on popular TV shows can earn between $100,000 to $1 million per episode. Movie actors like Keanu Reeves ($30 million), Johnny Depp ($35 million), Robert Downey Jr. and Will Smith ($40 million) also do quite nicely, thank you very much.

At the same time, I watch a lot of older movies on Turner Classics that are just as good if not better than current offerings, but were made by 30 people and little to no budget. Humphrey Bogart earned an average of $750 a week for his work in movies while Barbara Stanwyck earned around $100,000 – for an entire year. I contend that movies aren’t getting better, just more expensive.

And then there’s sports. Major League Baseball salaries in 2024 ranged from a high of $315 million (New York Mets) to a “low” of $62 million (Oakland A’s). Shohei Ohtani of the L.A. Dodgers was signed for $700 million, but deferred $680 million for 10 years.

The National Football League has a salary cap of $255 million per team, and there are 32 teams, so 255 million x 32 = $8.1 billion (give or take a couple of bucks). Most starting quarterbacks are in the $50-60 million range. The minimum salary for a first-year NFL player in 2024 was $795,000. The minimum increases to $870,000 in the second year and $940,000 in the third year. Seems like a liveable wage to me.

And then there’s basketball, hockey, tennis, golf – all of the other sports – plus college athletics with head coaches earning upwards of $13 million and players now eligible for thousands, tens of thousands or millions under the Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) provision. Now that’s staggering as well.

So what’s my point?

My point is that there are millions, billions even trillions of dollars out there in the world for the myriad things that people want – and a willingness to spend every last dollar – but we somehow find it difficult to dig up any money whatsoever for the things that some people really need, such as food, shelter, clothing, health care, transportation, education and prescription drugs. Doesn’t it make you wonder why that is?

Why are people willing to spend hundreds of dollars on football tickets or concert tickets or the latest iPhone or this season’s fashions or (getting political now) gold boots or leather-bound Chinese Bibles or commemorative coins but unwilling to help fund a school lunch program in their home town?

Why can’t some of those billions of dollars be put to better use? I believe they can.

Now I know what you’re probably thinking, that what I’m proposing amounts to outright socialism. You know, equal distribution of wealth among all of the people. But that’s not the case at all. A socialist government would require that all wealth be pooled and handed out equally to every citizen. My suggestion is that owners of so much wealth have virtually unlimited opportunities to benefit society and to do so voluntarily while still maintaining much of their accumulated net worth.

My liberal mind can’t understand why a fabulously wealthy individual wouldn’t WANT to do good things for society instead of throwing away money to try and bring it down. Wouldn’t that benefit the rich guy to surround himself with good things and happy people while setting forth a legacy worth pursuing?

"Here lies Richie Rich. He had more money than Croesus but he helped a lot of people."

Why can’t a football player live a nice life on $795,000 a year? I know I could. Why can’t 200 people make a movie instead of 700? Is there some redundancy there? And why can’t voters understand that they can get what they want as well as what they need if they’d just stop voting against their own best interest?

Somewhere in the background I hear the voice of Gordon Gecko saying, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” but I think he is wrong. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins, and that can’t be good in any context, religion or belief.

You can call me naïve and probably I am, but I’ve lived 74 years with the belief that it’s easy to know the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, wise and foolish, intelligent and dumb. I can’t say I always did the good, right, wise and intelligent thing … but I’m pretty sure I knew what they were.