Morgan Meyer – Anti-Vaxxer in the House

With vaccinations at the forefront of medical research this year, it is important to remember how long before COVID-19 became a concern, Texas was dealing with its own vaccination crisis.

The anti-vaccination movement is flourishing in the United States. There is so much concern the World Health Organization ranked the movement #5 on its Top Ten List of Health Threats for 2019.  Nowhere is the increase of support for vaccine opponents more apparent than in the Texas House of Representatives. The number of ultra-conservative legislators opposed to vaccinations has been growing for several years.

All of this in denial of the obvious benefits of vaccinations, which help prevent enormous numbers of hospitalizations and deaths from a range of diseases.

While data shows that vaccines reduce the instances of illness, hospitalization, and death surrounding influenza and other diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella – one dose of the MMR vaccination is 93% effective against measles, 78% effective against mumps, and 97% effective against rubella; two doses raise the effectiveness against measles to 97% and mumps to 88% – there has been an increase in the number of children, 19-35 months, who remain unvaccinated, from 0.7% in 2013 to 1.1% in 2017.

These small percentages can have real-world consequences for the health of Texans, especially for the families of those who may remain asymptomatic or immune from diseases, but who end up transmitting the disease to other immune-compromised people with whom they interact.

One of the legislators supporting the growing anti-vax movement is House District 108’s Morgan Meyer (R-Dallas).  Despite the documented benefits of vaccination and herd immunity, state lawmakers like Meyer have continued to side with the anti-vaxxer movement. Texans for Vaccine Choice (TFVC) – a leading anti-vaccination organization – gave Meyer a grade of A on its 2017 legislative scorecard, because he voted in their best interests during the 85th session. TFVC also endorsed Meyer’s 2018 reelection bid.  For the 2020 election cycle Meyer earned the “recommended candidate” title in the TFVC 2020 March Primary Voter Guide.

Texas taxpayers and parents have to worry if legislators like Morgan Meyer will follow the science or continue to place vulnerable Texans – seniors, infants, and the immune-compromised – at risk.