Why are there religious exemptions for vaccines?

This week, New York City declared a public health emergency due to a measles outbreak that had worsened since the fall of ultra-Orthodox communities in Brooklyn and which had finally reached the point of crisis. In December, the Department of Health strived to contain the disease by ordering yeshivas and crèches in affected neighborhoods to prevent all unvaccinated children from going to school. school or daycare. Then, in January, at least one yeshiva in Williamsburg ignored the warrant. This failure of compliance has led to an eruption of dozens of new cases.

As well-off gypsies who could send their children to Waldorf schools, where an anti-vaccination culture is cooked in the hot ovens of many sprouted wheat snacks, many of the ultra-Orthodox resist the incursions of modernity. Vaccination mistrust has long been prevalent in some areas of the Hasidic community, but this year, various religious neighborhoods in Brooklyn have been hit by a propaganda campaign to create even more skepticism and fear.

In fact, 2019 announces it as a record year for measles outbreaks, with 465 cases reported in 19 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A large majority of them took place in Brooklyn and in counties in upstate New York and New Jersey, which have large, ultra-Orthodox populations. Approximately 115 cases, however, have been discovered in the states of Michigan and Washington, among the 17 states in the country where it is possible to claim an exemption from "personal belief" for otherwise mandatory vaccines for school-aged children This means that vaccination is essentially a violation of your right to parenthood. philosophy as if it were Fortnite or a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.

Where the immunization law does not contain such vague provisions, exemptions are generally provided for those who claim to oppose vaccination for religious reasons; 47 states have one, including New York. They are problematic for several reasons. First, there is virtually no canonical basis for avoiding vaccines among the world's major religions, most of which existed before Edward Jenner developed the first widely used vaccine against smallpox at the end of the 18th century. Rabbis have since repeatedly insisted on the importance of protecting children through vaccination. Whatever the case may be, religious derogations offer coverage to those who resist vaccines simply because they chose to challenge established scientific knowledge.

Last month, for example, when the Rockland County Health Department, in upstate New York, was sued by parents of unvaccinated children at a local school Waldorf, banned from attending during a measles epidemic in the region, Rockland County is also home to a large Orthodox community – the prosecutor, Thomas Humbach, pointed to these questionable religious objections. At the time, he had said to expect that many of the exemptions granted to the school would be challenged for lack of sincerity.

A few years ago, after a measles outbreak linked to Disneyland, California got rid of its belief exemptions, leaving no parent able to exempt a child from certain strokes due to the fact. Hippie misconceptions or arguments regarding religious necessity. In November A study of the effects of legislation found that vaccination rates for children entering kindergarten in California, California, had reached an all-time high.