Enlarge / A person wearing a tinfoil hat on September 20, 2019. (credit: Getty | Bridget Bennett)

In the latest efforts by Republican lawmakers to enshrine into law Americans’ right to freely spread deadly infectious diseases to each other, the Missouri House this week advanced a bill that would bar governments, schools, and employers from mandating certain vaccines—as well as things like vaccine microchips, which do not exist.

The bill, HB 700 (PDF), was sponsored by Rep. Bill Hardwick, a Republican from Waynesville. Hardwick told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he believed people “lost their minds” during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that legally barring officials and employers from requiring life-saving vaccination, even among health care workers, feels “like it’s the right thing to do.”

The bill specifically bars requirements for people to receive COVID-19 vaccines. But it doesn’t stop there. It also bars any requirements for people to receive “a dose of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA),” thus barring requirements for any future mRNA-based vaccines, should they be needed in upcoming pandemics or outbreaks. It also bars requirements for “any treatment or procedure intended or designed to edit or alter human deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) or the human genome,” and “any mechanical or electronic device” that would be placed “under the skin.”