By Paul Hyde
One of the most dangerous places you could be during the pandemic was in South Carolina.
With our low vaccination rate, we had the 10th highest COVID death rate in the nation in 2021, the worst year of the pandemic.
Many South Carolinians — let’s be honest — defied federal and state public-health guidelines. Many didn’t get vaccinated, didn’t wear masks and socially distance.
We scoffed. We shook our fist at the federal government. Defiance is a traditional value in the state that was the first to secede from the Union.
Our state motto is “While I Breathe I Hope,” but perhaps it should be “You’re Not the Boss of Me.”
We placed an individual’s supposed right-to-infect above public health.
Gov. Henry McMaster was one of the last governors to issue “home or work” orders and limit capacity at retail business. A month later, in May 2020, McMaster became one of the first governors to reopen his state, and COVID cases soared.
As early as May 2021, McMaster battled mask mandates and banned state and local governments from requiring proof of vaccination to access public services and facilities.
McMaster fiercely fought vaccine mandates as well.
Though vaccination was, and is, our best defense against COVID, we ended up with only 60% of South Carolinians fully vaccinated.
We waved the white flag at COVID and it overran us.
Learning from tragedy
In fairness, a majority of South Carolinians, especially older adults, did get fully vaccinated and responsibly observed other health-care protocols.
Still, thousands of South Carolinians suffered, and many died from COVID. It seems like South Carolina’s leaders would learn something from this tragic experience.
We should be promoting vaccination and other sensible practices, rather than discouraging them.
Instead, a state Senate subcommittee recently approved an anti-vax policy that could limit the public’s access to illness-preventing and life-saving vaccines in a pandemic.
This is jaw-droppingly irresponsible.
The legislation, sponsored by Spartanburg County Sen. Shane Martin, would ban South Carolina businesses from requiring COVID vaccines that have been authorized on an emergency-use basis, according to reporting by the Gazette’s Abraham Kenmore.
Employers who violated the ban could be fined and sent to prison.
The state also would not be allowed to buy, store, distribute and/or administer emergency-approved vaccines in a public health crisis, according to the legislation advanced by the Senate Medical Affairs subcommittee.
In short, the proposal would tie the hands of business and government in trying to prevent illness and save lives in a pandemic.
The misguided legislation specifically takes aim at the sort of safe and effective COVID vaccines approved in 2020 by the federal government on an emergency basis.
Those vaccines and others saved as many as 20 million lives worldwide in just the first year.
Under Martin’s proposal, state public health officials could provide only vaccines and treatments fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The legislation seems to be motivated by unreasonable fears about vaccines approved under emergency-use authorization.
Safe and effective
But the reason the U.S. Food and Drug Administration provided emergency authorization for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in December 2020 was because the nation was in the throes of a deadly pandemic.
In approving the emergency vaccines, the FDA acted responsibly. The first Pfizer vaccine was authorized in December 2020 after a “thorough evaluation by the agency’s career scientists to ensure this vaccine met FDA’s rigorous, scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality.”
When former President Donald Trump announced Operation Warp Speed on May 15, 2020, he promised vaccines would be developed in record time, and they would be safe and effective.
The Trump administration marshaled unprecedented federal resources, succeeding in the goal of developing and promoting life-saving and illness-preventing COVID vaccines.
Operation Warp Speed should be considered one of the former president’s finest accomplishments.
Martin spoke of his legislation not as a measure to prevent illness and death but as an attempt to defy supposed “draconian and often compulsory measures” enacted by the federal government.
But Americans overwhelmingly support vaccines and, during the pandemic, a majority supported COVID vaccine mandates.
I think about the military and first-responder heroes in my own family who put their lives on the line every day for their community and nation. By contrast, a little shot to help protect public health doesn’t seem like much sacrifice at all.
Cooler heads need to prevail on vaccine policy to prevent illness and save lives. State leaders should promote vaccination rather than limiting vaccines and stoking irrational fear.
Paul Hyde is a longtime journalist and teacher in the Upstate. He worked 18 years for the Greenville News as a columnist, editorial writer, education reporter and arts writer. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Clemson and Harvard universities. He has written for the Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News and USA Today, among other publications. He currently is a regular contributor to the Greenville Journal, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Classical Voice North America.
