Lalain Reyeg administers a COVID-19 booster vaccine and an influenza vaccine to Army veteran Gary Nasakaitis at the Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital on Sept. 24, 2021 in Hines, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
The Montana House of Representatives on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly against House Bill 371, a measure that would have banned mRNA vaccines — used primarily in COVID-19 vaccines and booster shots — and made it a misdemeanor to administer the shots.
Introduced by Greg Kmetz, R-Miles City, the contentious bill revealed deep-held beliefs by some lawmakers about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine technology that became common during the global coronavirus pandemic.
Currently, the Food and Drug Administration has approved mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines and boosters from Moderna and Pfizer. The FDA has also approved a Moderna mRNA vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus.
Kmetz said he became politically active during the pandemic, starting when then-Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, ordered non-essential businesses to temporarily close down. He said his wife lost her job in the healthcare field for not getting vaccinated, and a friend’s grandson was hospitalized for one of the rare side effects attributed to the COVID-19 vaccines.
“If an individual is told a product will prevent them from getting sick, and yet the actual outcome of taking the product does not result in that effect, then the product is a scam,” Kmetz said. “Another thing that really bothers me is all vaccine manufacturers are 100% free from all liability … We are talking about a real bad product, and people have absolutely no recourse for damage.”
Rep. Brian Close, D-Bozeman, gave his own story in opposition to the bill. Close said he has an autoimmune disease, and diabetes, and if he got COVID-19, he would be at high risk for ending up on a ventilator or dying.
“Every six months I get my COVID booster so I can stand here and serve my constituents and my family,” Close said. “There’s thousands of people in Montana with compromised immune systems or who can’t afford to travel out of state to get a COVID vaccine.”
Rep. Melody Cunningham, a Missoula Democrat, shared her experience working in hospitals and hospice care during the pandemic and the “tsunami of death” she witnessed before a vaccine was available to the public. She also criticized criminalizing what is a life-saving treatment, and removing individual freedom for healthcare officials and individuals to make their own informed decisions.
Additional proponents to the bill claimed the COVID-19 vaccines had led to many fatalities and increases in other conditions such as cancer and myocarditis, many using personal anecdotes to illustrate their points.
But, Rep. John Fitzpatrick, R-Anaconda, said he opposed the legislation on three grounds — “history, Montana legacy, and numbers.”
He said advancements in medical treatments during the last hundred years were key in increasing life expectancy and overall population health in America. He also pointed to two people from Montana who were key in helping develop vaccine technology nearly a century ago.
One, Maurice Hilleman, helped develop vaccines for meningitis and pneumonia, measles, mumps, hepatitis A and B and more. Millions of lives each year are saved because of the work Hilleman, a Montana State University graduate, accomplished, Fitzpatrick said.
But, Fitzpatrick’s main reason to oppose the bill was rooted in hard numbers.
While he acknowledged that proponents talked about side effects from the vaccine and alleged increases in fatalities or other diseases, those numbers pale in comparison to the hundreds of millions of vaccine doses administered in the U.S., he said.
According to the World Health Organization, 67% of global citizens have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine. In the United States, more than 670 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered, more than 95% of which were mRNA-based vaccines.
“Covid is 390 times more deadly than the vaccine,” he said. “The purpose we come for in this building is to craft public policy for the welfare of our constituents. And we’re being asked to adopt a public policy that promotes what? It promotes death.
“This is bad policy, this bill needs to be parked in the red parking lot.”.
House lawmakers voted against the bill 34-66.
Kmetz has another bill, House Bill 418, which would criminalize mRNA vaccine use in animals.