What TX State Senator Bob Hall Doesn't Know Could Kill You

DALLAS, TX — In medicine, the first rule is to do no harm. Luckily for State Sen. Bob Hall, legislators are bound by no such contstraints.

Hall hails from Edgewood, a mere 60 miles from Dallas. But in terms of thinking like an educated person, his home address might as well be the Primordial Ooze.

Many will remember Hall fell quickly in line with the mistaken (at best) notion pushed by then-president Trump that hydroxychloroquine was shown to be effective against the coronavirus. That idea, that an anti-malaria drug could provide COVID-19 patients with some relief, was debunked by medical practitioners close to a year ago.

Not content to promote crackpot theories that don't work, Hall has been devoting his time lately to undermining public faith in drugs that do. Is that dangerous to do when 70 percent of the Texas population remains unvaccinated?

The question answers itself.

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Only weeks ago, Hall introduced a proposal which would prevent private or public entities from requiring vaccinations for employees. And, if that wasn't backward-thinking enough, the Republican also suggests that the unvaccinated need protection from "discrimination" for their choice to remain a risk to public health.

As quoted in The Texas Tribune, Hall states "the mere fact that a person has not received a specific vaccine does not make them a threat to others’ health and safety. In contrast, vaccines they have elected not to have may very well be a threat to their own health and safety.”

Errr, no.

What Hall is leaning into fairly heavily is the fact that all of the vaccines by the various manufacturers were approved quickly for emergency use, and did not undergo trials that could have kept their approval years in the making. So, yes, they're not guaranteed. No, they have not been subjected to years of scrutiny. But to suggest that someone is better off wandering around in the middle of a rampaging pandemic with no protection whatsoever is textbook irresponsibility.

Texas already has a law on the books that applies well to Hall's promotion of quackery and foolhardy behavior. It's called reckless endangerment, and refers to a person who "intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly causes bodily injury to another, including the person's spouse; (2) intentionally or knowingly threatens another with imminent bodily injury, including the person's spouse."

Hall has no medical background to speak of, since his degree is in electrical engineering and his work experience comes from time spent in the U.S. Air Force and his own consulting business related to defense and aerospace.

It bears repeating that the pandemic has always been a delicate balancing act between illness and lives lost versus smothering the economy through shutdown. Before the vaccines arrived, there was little that public officials could do but try to keep people washing their hands, wearing their masks and staying apart.

The vaccines changed all that. And now Hall would like to sabotage the effort to get past COVID-19 by telling Texas businesses that they should have no right to compel their employees to submit to an “irreversible medical procedure.”

Nearly 70 percent of the Lone Star State is still at risk of serious illness or death. By using his megaphone as a public servant to trash science, Hall could lose the state thousands of lives — or more.

It's not quite the same as someone yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater. It's exactly like the theater being on fire and someone yelling at you not to trust the water or the firemen.

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