At that time, Natalie Luna Rose was spokeswoman for the Vail district, and I interviewed her about the situation. Now she’s on the Tucson Unified School District board.
She wondered, when we talked Friday, “If TUSD has an outbreak of whooping cough, are we not allowed to ask those children to be quarantined for 21 days?”
Ducey’s increasing accommodation of anti-vax, COVID-questioning conservatism is causing this confusion.
There was a time, a long two years ago, when Ducey was perfectly clear in his stance on vaccinations. In 2019, legislators introduced bills that would have eroded vaccinations among children by, among other things, making it easier for parents to get their kids exempted from the shots.
“I’m not going to sign any law that doesn’t promote or extend vaccinations in the state of Arizona,” Ducey said in February 2019.
“Because this involves public health, I think it’s important for people to know that we are pro-vaccination in the state of Arizona,” he went on. “We want to see more of our kids being vaccinated rather than fewer.”
That was then, at a time when vaccination skepticism was an outlier position among Republicans. Now, paradoxically, the pandemic has super-charged vaccine and virus denialism in the party. It’s the nightly fare on Fox News and other channels.
