From the publisher

The anti-vaccination politics rolling across the country - much like a pandemic - have gotten so bad that the Alaska state Senate could not even manage to pass a bill last Friday allowing more telemedicine without lawmakers amending it into a debate over personal liberty.

Much of the discussion had no connection whatsoever to patients and doctors working together online to diagnose and treat ailments often totally unrelated to COVID-19.

The Senate amendments were targeted at blocking businesses, state agencies and local governments from requiring vaccinations of workers or customers.

The measure later died in the House, succumbing to a terminal case of excessive politics.

It's time that Alaska, and the nation, find a vaccine against politicizing public health. There was no need to turn a telemedicine bill into a test of who can hold the reelection flag of freedom the highest.

Eagle River Sen. Lora Reinbold, who never misses an opportunity to pick a fight over vaccinations or face masks, told her colleagues the amendments "protect individual liberties."

But a Reinbold amendment adopted by the Senate essentially told businesses how to run their operations, denying them the right to make their own health decisions.

The amendments might have been Reinbold's parting shots before she left town for the Legislature's special session. The senator, who has been banned from Alaska Airlines for refusing to follow federal law and wear a face mask, wanted to get out of Juneau on Saturday, the last day Delta Airlines operated its summer flights into the capital city, though she later changed her travel plans to stick around.

Bethel Sen. Lyman Hoffman shared a different view of personal liberties with his colleagues. Alaska hospitals are overloaded with COVID-19 cases, setting new records on consecutive days last week. Rural hospitals in particular are finding it difficult to transfer patients who need more care to urban medical centers overwhelmed with COVID patients.

The Norton Sound Regional Hospital has had to call several out-of-town hospitals to find an open bed for non-COVID patients who need specialized care they cannot get in Nome.

Speaking against the anti-vaccination amendments, Hoffman asked his colleagues: "What about the rights of the people who are walking the streets of America? They're continuing to die."

Alaska was up to 451 deaths as of Tuesday. Almost 85% of the people who died between January and early September were unvaccinated, state public health officials report. And many of the latest wave of patients are younger and generally healthy - before they caught the virus.

President Joe Biden last week announced the federal government will require employers with more than 100 workers to require vaccinations, or weekly testing, in a push to escalate the fight against the deadly virus that is sickening and killing more Americans than it has in months.

Biden's decision prompted an infectious political response nationwide, not just in the Alaska Senate. Some outbursts were extreme, even for today's divisive politics. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said he will fight "to the gates of hell to protect the liberty and livelihood of every South Carolinian."

I thought the admission gates were in heaven and that hell took all comers.

It's time to tone down the anti-vaccination politics and not let it infect other public policy discussions, such as telemedicine. If people don't want to get a shot, that's their right. But it doesn't give them a right to expose everyone else to the risk.

Maybe they could discuss it with their doctor online.