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Old 03-13-2019, 09:15 PM   #1405
FlameOn
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Pro-disease parents are now suing to keep their un-vaccinated kids in school during a measles outbreak. Luckily judge agreed with the State.

Quote:
As New York’s Rockland County grapples with a large and lengthy outbreak of measles, a group of anti-vaccine parents sued officials for temporarily barring their unvaccinated children from school—and the county is not having it.

In a fiery response, Rockland County Attorney Thomas Humbach forcefully defended the legality of the county’s move, which was intended to thwart the spread of disease. He also went so far as to cast doubt on the validity of the religious exemptions the parents had used to opt their children out of required vaccinations.

“The [Rockland County Health] Commissioner, Dr. Patricia Ruppert, has every legal right, under New York State's Public Health Law and the County's Sanitary Code, to take every necessary step to stop the outbreak of measles in this county,” Humbach said in a statement released to the press.

“[T]he right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death,” Humbach wrote. Moreover, he added, “[t]hese religious exemptions run the gamut from references to organized Christian doctrine to a generalized spirituality. As the case progresses, we expect several of the exemptions to be challenged as not evincing a sincere religious belief against vaccination.”

Rockland’s battle with measles began late last September, when an international traveler arrived with a suspected case. Since then, other international travelers have arrived in the county with the extremely infectious, sometimes-fatal disease.

In all, the county has confirmed 145 cases of measles, almost all of which are in children and teens (84 percent). That includes 22 cases (15 percent) in infants less than a year old—the age when babies can receive their first dose of vaccine against measles. Overall, around 90 percent of those infected are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. The remaining 10 percent of infected people had an unknown vaccination status.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in the case denied issuing a temporary injunction that would allow the 44 students to return to school. "The plaintiffs have not demonstrated that public interest weighs in favor of granting an injunction,” the judge concluded. He did not immediately set the next court date for the case and reportedly told Sussman that the case may have better success in state court.

Rockland is just one of six locations in the country now experiencing a measles outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has documented 228 confirmed measles cases in 12 states, including New York, since the start of the year.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019...ring-outbreak/
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