Unvaccinated high school student just banned from school – VICE News



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A Kentucky judge on Tuesday decided to prevent a Kentucky high school student from going to clbad because he would not get vaccinated against chicken pox.

Jerome Kunkel, an 18-year-old student at Assumption Academy, a kindergarten to grade 12 Catholic school in northern Kentucky, sued his local health board for preventing students without the vaccine from going to school. school and extracurricular activities last month, according to USA Today. .

Kunkel's lawyer, Christopher Wiest, told Cincinnati Enquirer that the teenager was "devastated" by the decision of Boone County Circuit Judge James Schrand and argued that the ban was not effective. to contain an epidemic that began last month. Local Health Department lawyer Jeff Mando told the newspaper that the judge's ruling "upheld the health department's mission to protect the public health and well-being of the people of northern Kentucky" .

About 30 students from the Assumption Academy were prevented from going to school during the ban, including Kunkel, as about 32 students were diagnosed with chickenpox since early February. The evidence presented in court on Monday showed that about 18% of school students had been vaccinated, according to Enquirer, against a 90% vaccination rate across the state. . Kunkel, however, has not contracted chickenpox, according to the Washington Post, and he has legally refused vaccination for religious reasons.

Kunkel is not opposed to all vaccinations, but opposes varicella vaccine for religious reasons, since it was developed in the 1960s using cell lines of two fetuses obtained from voluntary and legal abortions.

A Kentucky judge on Tuesday decided to prevent a Kentucky high school student from going to clbad because he would not get vaccinated against chicken pox.

Jerome Kunkel, an 18-year-old student at Assumption Academy, a kindergarten to grade 12 Catholic school in northern Kentucky, sued his local health board for preventing students without the vaccine from going to school. school and extracurricular activities last month, according to USA Today. .

Kunkel's lawyer, Christopher Wiest, told Cincinnati Enquirer that the teenager was "devastated" by the decision of Boone County Circuit Judge James Schrand and argued that the ban was not effective. to contain an epidemic that began last month. Local Health Department lawyer Jeff Mando told the newspaper that the judge's ruling "upheld the health department's mission to protect the public health and well-being of the people of northern Kentucky" .

About 30 students from the Assumption Academy were prevented from going to school during the ban, including Kunkel, as about 32 students were diagnosed with chickenpox since early February. The evidence presented in court on Monday showed that about 18% of school students had been vaccinated, according to Enquirer, against a 90% vaccination rate across the state. . Kunkel, however, has not contracted chickenpox, according to the Washington Post, and he has legally refused vaccination for religious reasons.

Kunkel is not opposed to all vaccinations, but opposes varicella vaccine for religious reasons, since it was developed in the 1960s using cell lines of two fetuses obtained from voluntary and legal abortions.

Kunkel's family claimed the ban was a measure of religious retaliation, violated their rights to the First Amendment and forced the teenager to miss the last basketball game of his high school career. County health departments have the general power to institute quarantine as they see fit in case of illness. The Northern Kentucky Department of Health will allow students without proof of vaccination or immunity to return to school 21 days after the onset of chicken pox for the last student or staff member ill.

While each state requires that children receive routine immunizations, the majority of states also allow students to withdraw for religious or moral reasons.

Religious exemptions for vaccines have been the focus of attention since the beginning of a measles epidemic that swept the US county of Rockland, New York, which recently banned unvaccinated people from leaving space public, which has disliked some members of the recent Orthodox Jewish Orthodontic measles epidemic. A chickenpox epidemic in North Carolina last fall, the worst year in decades, was blamed on religious exemptions for vaccination.

Cover: A syringe filled with water with a sticker for a varicella vaccine in a medical office in Berlin on March 4, 2015. Photo: Lukas Schulze / picture-alliance / dpa / AP Images

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