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EDITORIAL: End vaccination exemptions for children entering school

The Citizens' Voice - 4/11/2019

April 11-- Apr. 11--New York City declared a public health emergency Tuesday due to the rapid spread of measles in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Williamsburg and Borough Park, Brooklyn.

Of 285 confirmed cases since the outbreak began in the fall, 21 have led to hospitalizations, including five admissions to intensive care units. Under the emergency order, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would require unvaccinated individuals in the outbreak area to receive the measles vaccine or face fines of up to $1,000 per person. Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the city's health commissioner, said the city will make it easy for people to receive vaccinations.

City officials pointed out that many Orthodox Jewish religious leaders in Brooklyn have urged their congregations to obtain vaccinations for themselves and their children. But many people, they said, had been misled by pseudo-science propaganda, delivered via the internet and through old-fashioned flyers, falsely tying vaccinations to autism and other conditions.

"The measles vaccine works. It is safe, it is effective, it is time-tested," de Blasio said.

Indeed it does work. And it works not only for the individual receiving the vaccine, but for the entire community by providing what is known as "herd immunity" -- that is, when a high enough percentage of the population is vaccinated, an infectious agent can't spread because it can't find a vulnerable host.

The Brooklyn case, measles outbreaks in the Pacific Northwest, and a contagion of mumps at Temple University in Philadelphia, should prompt state legislatures end all religious and personal philosophical exemptions to vaccinations that are required for children entering elementary school.

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(c)2019 The Citizens' Voice (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.)

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