Fresno Republican Compares Mandatory Vaccination for School Kids to Forced Internment Camps
Assemblyman Jim Patterson (R-Fresno)At a rally opposing a new California bill that would make vaccination mandatory for public school children, Fresno Republican Assemblyman Jim Patterson compared this simple common-sense public health measure to forced internment camps, the Sacramento Bee reports.
And that wasn’t even the craziest thing said at this rally; another speaker compared it to the Bible story of the Pharaoh ordering the slaughter of first-born Hebrew infants, and to the Tuskegee syphilis experiments on African Americans.
As usual, when called upon to explain his exaggerated fear-mongering rhetoric, Assemblyman Patterson walked it back for the media — then repeated it in slightly less incendiary terms.
Asked after the rally to explain his comments, Patterson said it was a “bad choice of words” but reiterated that SB 277 is “excessively punitive.”
“I think the penalty that is in this bill, which is the isolation of these children - this is an expulsion from private and public school. That smacks of the kinds of things that are the beginnings of discrimination that can go very ugly places,” Patterson said.
(h/t: @davequast.)
