NY Health: Judge Upholds Mandatory Measles Vaccinations As New York Closes More Schools

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Judge Upholds Mandatory Measles Vaccinations As New York Closes More Schools
April 19, 20191:38 AM ET
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A Brooklyn judge on Thursday upheld a mandatory measles vaccinations order. On the same day, the United Talmudical Academy, pictured here, reopened after being closed for failing to comply with a Health Department order that required it to provide medical and attendance records amid a measles outbreak.

Seth Wenig/AP
A Brooklyn judge has sided with New York health officials to uphold a mandatory measles vaccinations order, dismissing a lawsuit from a group of parents who claimed the city had overstepped its authority.

Judge Lawrence Knipel on Thursday refused parents' request to lift the vaccination order that was imposed last week to stem a severe measles outbreak. "A fireman need not obtain the informed consent of the owner before extinguishing a house fire," Knipel wrote in his ruling as quoted by Gothamist. "Vaccination is known to extinguish the fire of contagion."

On the same day, the city announced that it was closing four more schools and issuing three civil summons for parents who had failed to comply with the mandate.

As of Thursday, the New York Department of Health had recorded 359 cases of measles since the outbreak began in October, up from 329 confirmed cases on Monday. The cases are centered in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn.

A group of five parents had sued the city over the mandated measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations, claiming that the current outbreaks do not justify "drastic emergency measures" that override individual rights. The lawsuit argued that the outbreak was not a "clear and present danger to public health."

But the judge disagreed.

"The unvarnished truth is that these diagnoses represent the most significant spike in incidence of measles in the United States in many years and the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn is at its epicenter," he wrote in his opinion, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Robert Krakow, the parents' attorney, said that his clients were disappointed and that they were discussing next steps, according to The Journal. He said he was not surprised by the decision.


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Measles Outbreak 'Accelerates,' Health Officials Warn

In Thursday's release, the city said it had identified three children who were exposed to measles but were still unvaccinated as of last Friday. The cases will go to a hearing, where parents will pay a $1,000 penalty if the violations are upheld, according to the city. Parents who do not appear at the hearing or respond to the summons will be fined $2,000.

The city said its health authority is working with community leaders to ensure schools comply with emergency mandates.

A preschool program at United Talmudical Academy, which was closed for violating a city order that required it to provide medical and attendance records, reopened on Thursday "under Health Department monitoring," the city announced.

"Because of measles' long incubation period, we know this outbreak will get worse before it gets better," said Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot in a press release on Thursday. "However, we can turn the tide by people getting vaccinated, especially before Passover when families and communities will gather."

Prior to the hearing, the city's Board of Health had voted to extend the mandate until the end of the current outbreak. Barbot said on Wednesday that an estimated 500 children aged 1 to 5 in Williamsburg had been vaccinated since the mandate was imposed on April 9, Gothamist reports.

"The purpose of this emergency order isn't to fine people," Barbot said. "It's to stress the urgency and the importance of getting vaccinated and to enlist as many people as possible spreading the message that these vaccines are safe and effective."

According to city data, about 14% of the children aged 1 to 5 in Williamsburg still have not been immunized, Gothamist reports.


NATIONAL
Washington State Senate Passes Bill Removing Exemption For Measles Vaccine

In Washington state, which also has seen a measles outbreak this year, lawmakers in the Senate passed a bill Wednesday that removes the personal belief exemption from MMR vaccinations, as NPR's Laurel Wamsley reports. The bill, which is expected to become law, leaves medical and religious exemptions intact.
 

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New York City is experiencing one of the largest measles outbreaks in the United States in decades, with 285 confirmed cases since the fall, mainly in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn.

On Tuesday, city officials declared a public health emergency, requiring people in four ZIP codes in Brooklyn to get vaccinated or face penalties.


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“We are absolutely certain we have the power to do this,” Mayor de Blasio said at a news conference in Brooklyn. “This is the epicenter of a measles outbreak.”

[Read more about New York City’s public health emergency and the fight against measles.]

[“Monkey, rat and pig DNA”: How misinformation is driving the measles outbreak among ultra-Orthodox Jews.]

The city declared a public health emergency. Now what?

The city is focusing on four ZIP codes in Williamsburg and Borough Park, Brooklyn: 11205, 11206, 11211 and 11249.

Disease detectives figure out who is sick, when they became sick and how they might have gotten sick, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This information helps doctors and health officials trace the source of an outbreak and ultimately contain it.

Or, if you prefer another reference point: A disease detective is like the character Brad Pitt played in the movie “World War Z.”

Will the city vaccinate people against their will?

No.

“We will not be forcibly vaccinating individuals,” a City Hall spokeswoman, Marcy Miranda, wrote in an email to The Times. Officials “will work with people to educate them about the safety and importance of vaccines and will issue necessary fines as needed,” she wrote.

Why is measles spreading? Wasn’t it eradicated?

Years ago, the number of confirmed measles cases in the United States dropped to a very low point, but the virus was never eliminated.

In 2000, there were no reported cases of the disease in the United States. In 2004, there were 37 confirmed cases in the country. In 2014, that number jumped to 667, according to the C.D.C.

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In recent years, vaccination rates worldwide fell, largely because of misinformation about the dangers of vaccinations.

To be clear: Vaccines are safe, and not getting vaccinated enables the disease to spread.

What have other places done to stop measles outbreaks?

Rockland County, a suburban area north of the city, tried banning unvaccinated individuals from public spaces, restaurants, shopping areas and houses of worship last month.

A judge recently halted the policy.
 

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Brooklyn man reportedly spread measles to dozens on Midwest trip
By Aaron Feis

April 16, 2019 | 4:19pm | Updated


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A measles-infected Hasidic man traveled from Brooklyn to Michigan, unknowingly becoming Patient Zero in the Midwest by spreading the disease to 39 people before frantic health officials tracked him down, a report said Tuesday.

Shortly after setting out on a cross-country charity fundraising trip last month, the man felt ill and stopped in to see two different doctors along the way, Michigan health authorities told The Washington Post.

The first doctor misdiagnosed the traveler’s cough and fever as bronchitis, while the second shrugged off his rash as an allergic reaction, the report said.

But as the latter doctor thought about the symptoms, he worried that the man — whom officials didn’t publicly name — might have measles and gave the man’s cellphone number to the local health department, the report said.

Health officials frantically tried to reach the walking biohazard, but couldn’t get through because of an issue with his cellphone, kicking off a frenzied street-by-street search through the Detroit area’s Hasidic enclave.

With the help of rabbinical leaders and a longtime member of the local Hatzolah chapter — who thought to look for the man’s blue rental sedan among the community’s multitude of minivans — they found the man, who was stunned by the diagnosis.

“There is only one disease, and you have it,” the Hatzolah member, Steve McGraw, recalled telling the man through a Hebrew translator, according to The Washington Post. “He put his head down and was very emotional. I could tell from the look on his face that he was devastated.

“He was doing the math in his head.”

Over the course of a week, the man had bounced from synagogues to kosher restaurants to the homes of community members who put him up for a night, contacting hundreds of people that health officials now had to track down and test.

“This guy was walking around all over the community and contagious,” McGraw told The Washington Post. “We knew we had a really significant exposure.”

All told, 39 cases were confirmed in Michigan, all among people who had links to the traveler, the report said.

The original carrier had traveled in November 2018 from Israel to Brooklyn, the familiar route by which officials believe the current outbreak came to US soil.

Efforts to curtail the contagion, particularly among Brooklyn’s insular Hasidic enclaves, have been met with fierce resistance by parents dubious of the health effects of the measles vaccine.

Mayor Bill de Blasio last week declared a public health emergency and gave people connected with four predominantly Hasidic Brooklyn ZIP codes 48 hours to get vaccinated or face a $1,000 fine.


Still stonewalled by some, the city Health Department on Monday shuttered a Williamsburg yeshiva’s preschool program because they refused to turn over inoculation records.
 

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New York City Could Shut Down Certain Yeshivas That Allow Unvaccinated Children to Attend School


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BY JAMIE DUCHARME
UPDATED: APRIL 8, 2019 5:15 PM ET | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: MARCH 1, 2019
New York City health officials are threatening to fine or shut down certain Brooklyn yeshivas that allow unvaccinated children to attend school, as a measles outbreak continues to spread within the city’s Orthodox Jewish community.

In December, the Health Department ordered yeshivas and childcare centers in parts of Brooklyn’s Borough Park and Williamsburg neighborhoods to keep children home from school if they had not received the full course of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. But at least one yeshiva, Yeshiva Kehilath Yakov in Williamsburg, broke the city’s mandate in January and allowed an unvaccinated, but asymptomatic, student to return to school. The student turned out to have measles, resulting in more than 40 cases connected to this yeshiva alone, according to health officials.

On Tuesday, the Health Department announced that Williamsburg yeshivas that do not follow the exclusion order will “immediately be issued a violation,” and could face fines or possible closure.

Almost 300 people in New York City have contracted measles since the city’s outbreak began in October, according to health officials. The vast majority of cases have affected children, particularly in Borough Park and Williamsburg. The outbreak’s initial case was acquired when a person visited Israel, where a measles outbreak is in progress, according to health officials.

“This outbreak is being fueled by a small group of anti-vaxxers in these neighborhoods. They have been spreading dangerous misinformation based on fake science,” Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot said in the new statement. “We stand with the majority of people in this community who have worked hard to protect their children and those at risk. We’ve seen a large increase in the number of people vaccinated in these neighborhoods, but as Passover approaches, we need to do all we can to ensure more people get the vaccine.”


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Measles is a viral infection that causes symptoms including fever, runny nose, cough and a rash that affects the face and body. In severe cases, measles complications can include pneumonia, brain swelling and death. It’s highly contagious and is spread through the air. No one has died from New York City’s measles outbreak, through 21 people have been hospitalized, according to city officials.

Measles was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, but the disease is having a resurgence in several parts of the country — particularly in areas where vaccine resistance is common, including some pockets of the Pacific Northwest. So far this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed 465 cases of measles, already the second-highest number since 2000.

Communities experiencing outbreaks are taking increasingly dramatic measures to stop transmission of the disease. In Rockland County, N.Y., for one, officials banned unvaccinated children from visiting public places, until a judge halted the order last week.
 

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New York Declares Measles Emergency, Requiring Vaccinations in Parts of Brooklyn

New York City on Tuesday declared a health emergency following a measles outbreak in the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn.CreditDemetrius Freeman for The New York Times
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New York City on Tuesday declared a health emergency following a measles outbreak in the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn.CreditCreditDemetrius Freeman for The New York Times


By Tyler Pager and Jeffery C. Mays

  • April 9, 2019
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For months, New York City officials have been fighting a measles outbreak in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn, knowing that the solution — the measles vaccine — was not reaching its target audience.

They tried education and outreach, working with rabbis and distributing thousands of fliers to encourage parents to vaccinate their children. They also tried harsher measures, like a ban on unvaccinated students from going to school.

But with measles cases still on the rise and an anti-vaccination movement spreading, city health officials on Tuesday took a more drastic step to stem one of the largest measles outbreaks in decades.

Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a public health emergency that would require unvaccinated individuals living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to receive the measles vaccine. The mayor said the city would issue violations and possibly fines of $1,000 for those who did not comply.

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City officials conceded that the earlier order in December, which banned unvaccinated students from attending schools in certain sections of Brooklyn, was not effective. Mr. de Blasio said on Tuesday that the city would fine or even temporarily shut down yeshivas that did not abide by the measure.

“There has been some real progress in addressing the issue, but it’s just not working fast enough and it was time to take a more muscular approach,” Mr. de Blasio said.

[What are the religious exemptions to the vaccine?]

To enforce the order, health officials said they did not intend to perform random spot checks on students; instead, as new measles cases arose, officials would check the vaccination records of any individuals who were in contact with those infected.

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“The point here is not to fine people but to make it easier for them to get vaccinated,” Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the city’s health commissioner, said at the news conference.

If someone is fined but still refuses to be vaccinated, Dr. Barbot said that would be handled on a “case-by-case basis, and we’ll have to confer with our legal counsel.”

Across the country, there have been 465 measles cases since the start of 2019, with 78 new cases in the last week alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday.

In 2018, New York and New Jersey accounted for more than half of the measles cases in the country, and the continuing outbreak has led to unusual measures.

In Rockland County, N.Y., a northern suburb of New York City, county health officials last month barred unvaccinated children from public places for 30 days. Last week, however, a judge ruled against the order, temporarily halting it.

spread fear in an ultra-Orthodox community.]

Dr. Paul Offit, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said there was precedent for Mr. de Blasio’s actions, pointing to a massive measles outbreak in Philadelphia in 1991. During that outbreak, officials in that city went even further, getting a court order to force parents to vaccinate their children.

“I think he’s doing the right thing,” Dr. Offit said about Mr. de Blasio. “He’s trying to protect the children and the people of the city.”

He added: “I don’t think it’s your unalienable right as a United States citizen to allow your child to catch and transmit a potentially fatal infection.”

Nonetheless, the resistance to the measles vaccine remains among some ultra-Orthodox in Brooklyn.

Gary Schlesinger, the chief executive of Parcare, a health and medical center with locations in Williamsburg and Borough Park, called the public health emergency a necessary “step in the right direction.”

“Any mother that comes in and says that they don’t want to vaccinate, our providers will tell them please go find another health center,” Mr. Schlesinger said.


She said she had five children and that none had been or would be vaccinated, an action she called “a medical procedure by force.”

“We are marginalized,” she said. “Every minority that has a different opinion is marginalized.”

In nearby South Williamsburg, reaction to the emergency order was mixed. Some agreed with the need for vaccinations, but did not believe the law should require them; others agreed with the mayor.

“He’s right,” said Leo Yesfriedman, a 33-year-old father of four who said he had his family vaccinated.

He said he had followed news of the measles outbreak. Of people in his community opposed to vaccinations, he said, “It’s a very, very little percentage of crazy people.”



Health officials, noting that Passover will begin next week, were concerned that if children remained unvaccinated, measles could spread at family gatherings here or abroad.

“The outbreak could in fact especially spread because soon it will be Pesach,” the mayor said. “There will be school vacation. There will be more and more families together. The last thing we want to see is more family members afflicted by this disease.”
 

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New York’s Orthodox Jewish community is battling measles outbreaks. Vaccine deniers are to blame.

Rockland County and New York City have declared emergencies because of the outbreaks.


By Julia Belluz@juliaoftorontojulia.belluz@voxmedia.com Updated Apr 10, 2019, 1:22pm EDT
Graphics: Javier Zarracina
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Anti-vaccine advocates have swayed parents in New York to refuse immunizations for their kids, sparking two of the largest measles outbreaks in the state’s recent history, according to local health officials.

As of April 10, at least 285 people in New York City — mainly in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and Borough Park neighborhoods — had fallen ill. In nearby Rockland County, 168 people have caught the virus. The outbreaks have prompted health officials in both areas to declare states of emergency. In the city, officials ordered mandatory immunizations among unvaccinated people on Tuesday, threatening those who opt out with fines. Nearby Rockland took the unusual step of barring anyone under the age of 18 who hadn’t been vaccinated for measles from public places for 30 days in March. That order that was put on hold by a judge ten days later.

What’s notable here is that the affected communities are closely linked: Cases are occurring mostly among unvaccinated or under-vaccinated Orthodox Jews, particularly children. When asked why people are opting out of vaccines, the New York city health department said anti-vaccine propagandists are distributing misinformation in the community.

The fearmongerers include a group called PEACH — or Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health — which appears to be targeting the Jewish community with misinformation about vaccine safety, citing rabbis as authorities, through a hotline and magazines. Brooklyn Orthodox Rabbi William Handler has also been proclaiming the well-debunked link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. Parents who “placate the gods of vaccination” are engaging in “child sacrifice,” he told Vox.

Last fall, when the outbreak started, I talked to Orthodox Jews in New York about the outbreak and their vaccine concerns. And I learned that a minority distrust vaccines — for reasons that have nothing to do with religious doctrine.

Yet the fact that some Orthodox Jews live outside the mainstream, avoid technology, and hold rabbinic opinion in high esteem may leave them particularly vulnerable to anti-vaxxers.

”Being a religious Jew, you also get used to having a minority viewpoint,” said Alexander Rapaport, the CEO of the Masbia Soup Kitchen Network in Brooklyn, and a public face of the Hasidic community. “So if something is not mainstream, it doesn’t take you away from believing it.”

He also explained that some Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn go to school together, worship together, and live and travel together. This means a few unvaccinated people living in close proximity can be dangerous. But it also means making inroads with public health messages requires extra effort. “We see government invest in public health awareness a lot,” Rapaport said. “But it never trickles down to Yiddish speakers or people who don’t own TV sets.”

The story in New York is familiar: Other tight-knit communities — like the Somali-Americancommunity in Minnesota, the Amish in Ohio, and, more recently, Russian-language immigrants in Washington — have recently fallen victim to measles outbreaks as a result of vaccine refusal. This New York outbreak is a reminder of how vulnerable more insular groups can be to anti-vaxxers, and the unique challenges for public health advocates in countering their messages in these communities.

Measles was eliminated in the US in 2000 — but outbreaks linked to vaccine refusal have been popping up in insular communities
There’s one fact that makes the measles virus really scary: It’s one of the most infectious diseases known to man. A person with measles can cough in a room, leave, and — if you are unvaccinated — hours later, you could catch the virus from the droplets in the air that they left behind. No other virus can do that.

So if you’re not vaccinated, it’s extremely easy to catch measles. In an unimmunized population, one person with measles can infect 12 to 18 others. That’s way higher than other viruses like Ebola, HIV, or Sars.

By 2000, because of widespread vaccination, the virus was declared eliminated in the United States: Enough people were immunized that outbreaks were uncommon, and deaths from measles were scarcely heard of.

But in order for any vaccine to be effective, you need to have a certain percentage of people in a population immunized. That’s what’s known as “herd immunity,” and it means diseases can’t spread through populations very easily. With the MMR vaccine, 95 percent of people need to get the shot. So just a few people refusing vaccines can be dangerous.

Measles_cases__4_.jpg
Javier Zarracina/Vox
Since 2000, we’ve seen outbreaks every year in populations with lower levels of vaccine uptake, totaling between 37 and 667 cases. The virus typically spreads when unvaccinated travelers visit places where measles is circulating widely and bring it back to other unvaccinated or under-vaccinated people in a close-knit community where some parents have been opting out of vaccines for their kids.

That’s what happened in two of the largest recent measles outbreaks in the US since the disease was eliminated. In 2014, measles spread among unvaccinated Amish people in Ohio after a missionary brought the virus back from the Philippines. And in 2017, a traveler sparked an outbreak in an unvaccinated Somali-American community in Minnesota.

In New York, the current outbreaks also originated with travelers who had recently visited Israel, where a massive measles epidemic is currently underway. The travelers returned to the US and spread it among unvaccinated or under-vaccinated New Yorkers.

But this is not an isolated incident. The Orthodox Jewish community has already faced numerous outbreaks ofvaccine-preventable diseases in recent years, including whooping cough and mumps. As recently as 2013, another measles outbreak involving 58 cases became the largest in the city since 1992, nearly a decade before measles was eliminated, and cost the city $400,000 to contain.

The reason parents aren’t vaccinating in New York
Most of the people I spoke to for this story had no concerns about vaccine safety and happily vaccinate their families. The majority view is also that there’s no religious reason to avoid vaccines.

“From a religious point of view, people have to vaccinate,” Rabbi David Niederman, executive director and president of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, told me. Instead, people have a duty to protect their families and the most vulnerable in their communities. “Anything that causes harm — you have to do whatever you can to [avoid] that.”

Yet Rabbinic authority, and the argument about avoiding harm, is being used by anti-vaccine campaigners as a vehicle to spread misinformation.

Consider the story of Rachel,* an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn. When her eldest child was 18 months old, she brought her baby to the doctor for the MMR vaccine. Soon after, the girl came down with a fever that climbed up to 106 and eventually had to be hospitalized.

“The doctor said there was no correlation with the vaccine,” the mother of seven, ranging in age 11 months to 15 years, recalls. But Rachel was skeptical. After that, she noticed her daughter was getting sick all the time. “Ear infections, viruses. I lived at the doctor’s office.” She thought vaccines might be the culprit.

So she read up on the shots in PEACH’s pamphlets, watched the anti-vaccine documentary Vaxxed, and talked to her neighbors in her Brooklyn Orthodox Jewish community.

“The rabbis that don’t think vaccines are the right way to go keep a low profile,” she said, “but I could name you a bunch of them.”

She read and heard about things that concerned her. The ingredients in vaccines didn’t seem safe or healthy, and she heard rumors of neighbors whose kids got autism right after their shots. (For the record, data on thousands of people over the past half-century have found vaccines are overwhelmingly safe and effective.)

So over the years, Rachel has vaccinated her kids “less and less.” Her two youngest aren’t immunized at all.

Nowadays, between bringing her children to school and changing diapers, the stay-at-home mom hosts a library in her home, where parents can borrow books about vaccines and discuss what they read. The library includes both pro- and anti-vaccine books. “People can read and decide for themselves.”

Her library is advertised in anti-vaccine materials that are being spread in Rachel’s community,and she’s now part of the minority who resists vaccines — one that’s helped spark two of the largest measles outbreaks in recent US history.

“It has been very difficult to dissuade parents”
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PEACH
Some of Rachel’s concerns are reflected in the Vaccine Safety Handbook, purportedly produced out of Brooklyn by the PEACH group. (The group declined to be interviewed for this story.) The book carries the slogan, “You can always vaccinate later. You can never unvaccinate,” pages of misinformation about vaccines, including the well-debunked link with autism, as well as advice from rabbis about the “Biblical commandment” to avoid putting one’s life or health in danger — including the danger of vaccines.

Another source of vaccine misinformation is Rabbi William Handler, who also holds the view that vaccines cause autism — and shares it with parents. “I explain to parents that public health authorities like [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] are not interested in individual children,” he said. The best way to avoid potential harm is to avoid getting immunized, he advises. “[Parents] don’t want to play Russian roulette with their children. It’s like child sacrifice.”

Though large-scale studies involving thousands of participants in several countries have failed to establish a link between the MMR vaccine and the mental developmental disorder, it’s the autism views that the New York City health department hears a lot of.

“Unfortunately the concern about whether there’s any linkage has really lingered and [because of] misinformation, and it has been very difficult to dissuade parents,” Jane Zucker, New York City’s assistant commissioner of the bureau of immunization, told Vox. “We hear they want to wait until the child is older so they know the child doesn’t have autism, then get the child vaccinated.”

The challenge of countering anti-vaccine rhetoric in isolated communities
New York State does not allow parents to refuse vaccines forphilosophical reasons, though parents can get exemptions for health and religious reasons. Once children reach school, they have to present evidence that their kids have been vaccinated, unless they have been granted an exemption.

Zucker says vaccine levels in Jewish schools in New York City look average, although religious schools have more religious exemptions than non-religious schools. And before kids get to school, there’s a problem in Williamsburg: It has one of the lowest rates of vaccine coverage among young children, ages 19 to 35 months, in the city.

So it was no surprise to Zucker that the children currently affected by measles in this outbreak were all too young to be in school. According to the city health department, the Williamsburg and Borough Park measles cases involved only small children, ages ranging from seven months to 4 years old. (Rockland declined to provide details about the affected, citing privacy concerns.)

That means there’s a cohort of kids for which state vaccine laws aren’t applicable, and who are vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases.

“Once the kids get into school we know we have good vaccine uptake,” said Zucker. “It’s the delay, though, and that’s what’s linked to this outbreak.”

Reaching vaccine-hesitant parents isn’t easy, however. The public health department has sent notifications to schools and hospitals with large Orthodox Jewish populations, done outreach, and placed ads and distributed posters in Orthodox papers in both Yiddish and English.

Public health officials need to intervene before outbreaks start
But they need to try harder, community leaders said, and intervene before outbreaks start.

“We have a language barrier, a culture barrier,” said Rabbi Avi Greenstein, executive director of the Boro Park Jewish Community Council, in one of the affected areas, “and it only makes sense the health department should reach out to [our community].”

After outbreaks, posters about the importance of vaccines from the public health department will show up in community centers and neighborhood bodegas, said Alexander Rapaport, the Masbia Soup Kitchen CEO. But, “The posters from the city are reactionary,” he added, and not enough is being done to educate people ahead of outbreaks.

In a recent Facebook post, Rapaport also shared his view that the city vaccine mandate might backfire. “Instead of spending some real numbers on marketing and awareness they are trying coercion tactics. It will not work,” he wrote. “Spend some real money on a pro-vaccination message.”

Measles_immunization__1_.jpg
Javier Zarracina/Vox
Prior to the mandate, the outbreak led to a surge in MMR vaccine uptake among children in the city, according to data from New York City’s health department last fall.

So maybe the health emergency will be an opportunity to change people’s views. “It’s becoming increasingly clear if people take the position [not to vaccinate], they are an irresponsible person, an irresponsible parent,” Greenstein reiterated. “This is the challenge for the community.”

* We did not use Rachel’s real name because she was concerned about privacy and backlash about her views.
 

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/19/health/new-york-measles-outbreak-passover-williamsburg/index.html

New York (CNN)As one of the holiest Jewish celebrations of the year arrives, families in the Hasidic section of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, face a dilemma.

"Say you have six kids that want to come to the Seder, with all the grandchildren," said Eli Banash, 32, a member of the Orthodox community who works in Williamsburg.

"Grandmother wants everybody to come. One family didn't vaccinate the kids. Five did. The five families are saying, 'We're not coming unless they don't come!' With Passover, it's going to intensify."

A persistent measles outbreak has hit this ultra-Orthodox enclave and led city officials to declare a public health emergency.

Passover, which begins at sundown Friday and ends April 27, marks the Exodus story from the Bible and is celebrated with large gatherings and ceremonial meals. But community leaders and health officials fear the holiday may further fuel the spread of the highly contagious disease.

Already, 359 cases of measles have been confirmed in Brooklyn and Queens since October, mostly in Williamsburg. The outbreak began when, according to health officials, an unvaccinated child became infected with the illness while visiting Israel.

"The concern is that with Passover and increased travel, we're going to be putting more people at risk," said New York City's health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot.

Across the country, measles cases have jumped to the second-highest level in a quarter century, with 555 cases confirmed in 20 states, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Because of measles' long incubation period, we know this outbreak will get worse before it gets better," Barbot said in a statement this week.


A pamphlet directed at Orthodox communities helped fuel the fear of vaccines

In Hasidic Williamsburg, bearded men walk hurriedly in long frock coats crowned by black hats. Women in ankle-length skirts push strollers on crowded sidewalks and Hasidic boys with spiraling side curls dart through the streets in bunches.

In an insular community where some don't take kindly to intrusion, residents blame the outbreak largely on a hardline minority opposed to vaccinations, or anti-vaxers. The close-knit neighborhood -- where residents explain the insularity as a way of preserving the community's identity -- has seen heightened tension in some families, especially as Passover preparations got underway.

A sign warns residents of a measles outbreak in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Blima Marcus, a nurse and past president of the Orthodox Jewish Nurses Association, has been holding small workshops with the nurses in Brooklyn and New Jersey to educate members of the ultra-Orthodox community who are fearful of vaccines.

The fears were fueled in part by a slick 40-page booklet being distributed in Orthodox enclaves about the dangers of vaccines. The booklet is directly aimed at the Orthodox community, partly written in Hebrew and filled with snippets from the Torah. Yet Marcus and Orthodox Jewish leaders say there is nothing in Jewish law that prohibits vaccinations.

Signs warn of the dangers of a persistent measles outbreak in Williamsburg.

The booklet was created by a group called PEACH, or Parents Educating and Advocating for Children's Health. Attempts to reach the organization for comment have been unsuccessful.
"People figured it's a fringe magazine and didn't pay a lot of attention to it, but I think what we're realizing now is that it had a much larger impact than anyone ever realized," Marcus said.
'Every night, people are arguing'

Burach Kahan, 25, said he had his youngest child, 9 months old, vaccinated this week. His two other children are vaccinated. He said he started a separate family text group where most of his 13 siblings can only talk about vaccines and the measles outbreak.

"One of my sisters is very scared," he said. "Most of her friends are anti-vaccine and she forwards all their messages. She brought (up vaccines) on the regular group and everyone was busy all day and night fighting."

"People will argue throughout the holiday," said Shaya Hershko, 22, who had his 14-month-old daughter vaccinated against the measles before a family Passover trip to Canada. "Every night, people are arguing. The people you argue with about everything -- your arguing partners."

Hershko, who lives in Williamsburg, frequently argues with his sister-in-law in upstate Orange County, New York. He says she is an adherent of alternative medicine and refuses to vaccinate her children.

Orange County had seen 20 confirmed measles cases, while neighboring Rockland County -- with 190 cases -- tried to bar unvaccinated children from public places until a judge prohibited officials from enforcing that rule.

"I have a lot of friends that didn't want to give the shots but I figured that a doctor knows better than my friends know," said Hershko's wife, Friny, 20. "The people that don't give the shots are actually a little bit looked down because the schools and everybody are making like a big deal."

New York health officials announced last week that in the neighborhoods affected by the outbreak, anyone who has not been vaccinated against measles or cannot show evidence of immunity could face a $1,000 fine.

Nurses are fighting misinformation

On Monday, the health department said a Williamsburg child-care program was closed "for repeatedly failing to provide access to medical and attendance records." Schools and child care programs are required to maintain records on-site, and unvaccinated students and staff are prohibited from attending.

The child care program has reopened, but health officials said Thursday that four other city schools and pre-schools will close imminently for failing to comply with the department orders.

Marcus and a group of other nurses have researched and refuted each piece of misinformation in the PEACH booklet, and plan to soon publish a rebuttal to be distributed in Orthodox communities.

The nurses have also been meeting with mothers in Williamsburg and other Orthodox communities, Marcus said.

"I feel really bad for these women whose internal instincts of motherhood and protecting their children have been exploited by this movement and now are feeling that heat and feeling that backlash and are being kind of attacked for their medical choices," she said.

"I talk to these women and I say you're trying to use Jewish law to defend not vaccinating.

Instead, you're deliberately trying to harm them. It's almost kind of like breaking your child's bone in the hope that when it grows back it will be stronger," she said.

"We listen to them and take them seriously on an issue where they're usually mocked," Marcus said.
 

tallblacknyc

Rising Star
Certified Pussy Poster
Yeah pale skins having their every century black plagues... Cacs/jews always getting purged by god... It's why they want to integrate with us cause our immune systems are strong and God doesn't cleanse other races like them.. Like I said a long time ago..put white people on a continent by themselves without any assistance or interference from anybody else and watch them go extinct in less than a century
 

playahaitian

Rising Star
Certified Pussy Poster
Yeah pale skins having their every century black plagues... Cacs/jews always getting purged by god... It's why they want to integrate with us cause our immune systems are strong and God doesn't cleanse other races like them.. Like I said a long time ago..put white people on a continent by themselves without any assistance or interference from anybody else and watch them go extinct in less than a century

and now kids like with compromised immune systems gotta watch out every where we go

I know a lot parents in BK not going to parks or any crowded spots.
 

tallblacknyc

Rising Star
Certified Pussy Poster
Another L for NY. Fucking measles... What year is it there, 1920? What a fucking dump.
Jews got measels... Heard they about to move to dc and play electronica music and eat kosher chicken dipped in mumbo mayo sauce

Pale skins dying in ny and in dc they having raves in the street outside tmobile stores
 

playahaitian

Rising Star
Certified Pussy Poster
Brooklyn yeshiva breaks out in fines — $13,000 in all — for failure to comply NYC health department orders on measles epidemic

By STEPHEN REX BROWN
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
MAY 31, 2019 | 5:50 PM


LEDKWFJBHNBAXMPH7JOZKYGZ5Q.JPG

Zalmen Morganstern, of the United Talmudical Academy (Jesse Ward/for New York Daily News)



A Brooklyn yeshiva was slapped with $13,000 in fines Friday for repeated failure to comply with emergency measures to combat the measles outbreak.

United Talmudical Academy in Williamsburg was hit the hefty fines for 11 violations at four different locations.


In some cases, certain staffers couldn’t produce proof they’d been vaccinated. In others, school staff told inspectors they had no immunization records available for any staff or students. At the school’s Keap St. location two students aged 7 and 8 attended class on April 10 despite being on an “exclusion list” barring them from attending, records show.

The fines were imposed by an Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings judge, who presided over hearings at the agency’s Brooklyn office.



Two representatives of the yeshiva said during a hearing on Thursday that the missing staff immunization records were the result of a mixup .

[More New York] City Hall taking out trash hauler accused of cleaning up Staten Island murder »
One school official, Zalmen Morganstern, handed over a stack of documents he said were vaccination records for staff.

“I think it was a misunderstanding — I would equally blame the Department of Health and our staff,” said Aaron Mendel, an advocate for the school.

“We believe it’s a partnership. We partner with the Department of Health to fight that outbreak.”

[More New York] Two pedestrians hurt as out-of-control truck mounts Brooklyn sidewalk »
But an attorney for the Health Department and an inspector said school staff repeatedly refused to comply with an emergency order issued by the city on April 1 to combat a record number of measles cases. At least eight addresses associated with the chain of yeshivas face violations.

“The outbreak is very serious,” Health Department attorney Loraine Peone said.



[More New York] Babyfaced teen arraigned in Brooklyn stabbing death »
On Thursday the Centers for Disease Control reported 971 cases of measles in the United States so far this year. That is the highest number of cases since 1994, when 963 were reported for the entire year. The outbreak is concentrated in New York’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. The number of confirmed cases in the city has reached 550, with the vast majority occurring in Williamsburg.

Some people, known as anti-vaxxers, wrongly believe that the measles vaccine is worse than the disease itself. The virus is highly contagious, causes a rash and is especially harmful to young kids.
 

playahaitian

Rising Star
Certified Pussy Poster
Brooklyn yeshiva breaks out in fines — $13,000 in all — for failure to comply NYC health department orders on measles epidemic

By STEPHEN REX BROWN
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
MAY 31, 2019 | 5:50 PM


LEDKWFJBHNBAXMPH7JOZKYGZ5Q.JPG

Zalmen Morganstern, of the United Talmudical Academy (Jesse Ward/for New York Daily News)



A Brooklyn yeshiva was slapped with $13,000 in fines Friday for repeated failure to comply with emergency measures to combat the measles outbreak.

United Talmudical Academy in Williamsburg was hit the hefty fines for 11 violations at four different locations.


In some cases, certain staffers couldn’t produce proof they’d been vaccinated. In others, school staff told inspectors they had no immunization records available for any staff or students. At the school’s Keap St. location two students aged 7 and 8 attended class on April 10 despite being on an “exclusion list” barring them from attending, records show.

The fines were imposed by an Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings judge, who presided over hearings at the agency’s Brooklyn office.



Two representatives of the yeshiva said during a hearing on Thursday that the missing staff immunization records were the result of a mixup .

[More New York] City Hall taking out trash hauler accused of cleaning up Staten Island murder »
One school official, Zalmen Morganstern, handed over a stack of documents he said were vaccination records for staff.

“I think it was a misunderstanding — I would equally blame the Department of Health and our staff,” said Aaron Mendel, an advocate for the school.

“We believe it’s a partnership. We partner with the Department of Health to fight that outbreak.”

[More New York] Two pedestrians hurt as out-of-control truck mounts Brooklyn sidewalk »
But an attorney for the Health Department and an inspector said school staff repeatedly refused to comply with an emergency order issued by the city on April 1 to combat a record number of measles cases. At least eight addresses associated with the chain of yeshivas face violations.

“The outbreak is very serious,” Health Department attorney Loraine Peone said.



[More New York] Babyfaced teen arraigned in Brooklyn stabbing death »
On Thursday the Centers for Disease Control reported 971 cases of measles in the United States so far this year. That is the highest number of cases since 1994, when 963 were reported for the entire year. The outbreak is concentrated in New York’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. The number of confirmed cases in the city has reached 550, with the vast majority occurring in Williamsburg.

Some people, known as anti-vaxxers, wrongly believe that the measles vaccine is worse than the disease itself. The virus is highly contagious, causes a rash and is especially harmful to young kids.

@tallblacknyc

Only $13K...

surprised?
 
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