Putting the World At Risk – the Measles, from Asia to Pinellas, Florida

Pinellas health officials investigating measles case amid national scare

 

PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) – A man in Pinellas County was confirmed to have contracted measles, the Florida Department of Health said Thursday, asking health care providers to stay on high alert.

Health officials say the 72-year-old contracted the illness after traveling to Asia.

They are now urging those older than 12 months of age to receive the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine for protection.

According to the CDC, measles is a highly contagious virus that starts with fever, runny nose, cough, red eyes, and sore throat. It’s spread through the air by breathing, coughing or sneezing. Symptoms typically appear about seven to 14 days post infection.

The illness mostly affects children who are not vaccinated, but it can be contracted at any age.

The health department recommends adults be vaccinated with at least one dose of MMR vaccine.

Vaccines are available at no cost to babies, children and teens, and are $85.67 for adults at the following locations in Pinellas County: 

• St. Petersburg: 205 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. N.

• Pinellas Park: 6350 76th Ave. N.

• Mid-County (Largo): 8751 Ulmerton Rd.

• Clearwater: 310 N. Myrtle Ave.

• Tarpon Springs: 301 S. Disston Ave. 

 

To read the article in its original format on WFLA click here.

Judge Finally Sides With Health Officials in New York – Mandated Measles Vaccines

Judge Upholds Mandatory Measles Vaccinations As New York Closes More Schools

 

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.

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.

New York Declares Health Emergency As Measles Spreads In Parts Of 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.

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.

To continue reading NPR click here.

Dale Bigtree, a Dybbuk, Anti-Vaxxer, Measles Host….

Controversial Anti-Vax YouTube Host Accused Of Preying On Ultra-Orthodox Community

 

First, signs went up around Williamsburg in synagogues and grocery stores and on street corners, advertising an international conference call with seven dial-in numbers on four different continents.

Then came robo calls in Yiddish, urging people to talk to their rabbis about children they know who’ve supposedly been injured by vaccines. The group launched a crowdfunding campaign that aimed to educate the “thousands of parents and children [who] are the victims of vaccinations, and don’t even know it,” before GoFundMe pulled it from the site following an inquiry from WNYC.

 

---

Bigtree’s statements were condemned by the Anti-Defamation League. The Auschwitz Memorial in Poland wrote on Twitter that “instrumentalizing the fate of Jews who were persecuted by hateful anti-Semitic ideology and murdered in extermination camps like #Auschwitz with poisonous gas in order to argue against vaccination that saves human lives is a symptom of intellectual and moral degeneration.”

Listen to Gwynne Hogan’s report on WNYC:

But Bigtree has been embraced by the small portion of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community who oppose vaccines.

To continue reading click here.

Playing with Human Life, Biological Warfare and the Ultra-Orthodox – Lawsuit for the Right Harm Others

Biological warfare: Williamsburg residents sue city for right to not vaccinate

Five Williamsburg residents are fighting for the right to not vaccinate themselves and their children amid a growing measles outbreak in Brooklyn, filing suit against the Department of Health in an effort to quash an emergency health declaration that slaps unvaccinated locals with stiff fines.

The plaintiffs, who filed a complaint in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Monday, argued that the roughly 300 known cases of the potentially fatal illness do not justify the city’s decision to override their religious objections to the MMR vaccine, according to their lawyer.

“We don’t think the so-called ‘outbreak’ has reached a level that requires the extreme response of forcing vaccinatio­ns,” said Robert Krakow, a Manhattan attorney specializing in vaccine injury lawsuits.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and city Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot announced on April 9 that unvaccinated residents of four Williamsburg zip codes — where some 250 of the total 285 measles cases had been identified — would be subject to fines of up to $1,000 in response to the outbreak, which has exclusively affected members of the borough’s Orthodox Jewish communities.

And while Krakow’s clients represent a mix of Jewish and Gentile Williamsburg residents, they all object to vaccination on religious grounds and claim the city’s latest move to stem the virus’ spread constitutes a gross overreaction, and that less drastic measures, such as quarantining infected individuals, should have been explored first.

“We don’t think the city should be in the business of forcing people to vaccinate,” said Krakow. “Quarantine can be imposed for the people with active infections.”

The measles virus can be contagious for weeks before symptoms show, and the attorney said he was not aware that several Williamsburg yeshiva’s had been cited by the city for admitting unvaccinated students amid an ongoing exclusion order, including one school where more than 20 students were infected, according to the Health Department.

The plaintiffs further allege that measles can be actually be contracted and spread by the inoculation, and that vaccinating “[enhances] the risk of harm to the public” through a process referred to as viral shedding.

“That’s something that happens, and we don’t know a lot about it,” Krakow said.

Viral shedding refers to the process by which viruses spread, but is a term used by members of the anti-vaccination movement to propagate the myth that vaccines cause outbreaks, according to a Science-Based Medicine report.

To continue reading click here.

Washington Post Editorial Board – People are the Problem, not the Measles – Ignorance and Negligence

Measles isn’t the problem. People are.

Measles, mumps and rubella vaccines at the Rockland County Health Department in Pomona, N.Y., on March 27. (Seth Wenig/AP)

April 7 at 6:39 PM

SET ASIDE for a moment the public-health danger posed by the return of measles, and focus on people, because that is where the problem lies. Declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, measles is having outbreaks in six locations; this year already marks the second-highest case count in two decades. That’s because some people made a decision not to get vaccinated or not to vaccinate their children. It was a negligent decision, and in many cases also an inexcusably ignorant one, that endangered neighbors and strangers alike in quotidian public spaces — schools, stores and airports.

Preventing the spread of measles requires about 95 percent of a population to be properly vaccinated with the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, usually starting with the first dose at 12 months through 15 months of age, and the second dose at 4 through 6 years old. The vaccine has proved safe and highly effective. But when pools of people neglect to get immunized or fail to stay up to date, they become vulnerable. According to public-health officials, measles is one of the most contagious viruses on Earth; you can catch it just by being in a room where a person with measles has been, up to two hours later. One alert that just went out in Rockland County, N.Y., listed an Uber, two taxis and a supermarket as potential exposure sites.

The outbreak in Rockland County was first met with an executive order barring unvaccinated children from schools, then when the outbreak progressed, it was followed by a state of emergency that bars children and teenagers who are not vaccinated from public places. This measure, which has been temporarily blocked by a local judge, is drastic but arguably necessary. As of last Wednesday, there were 161 confirmed cases, and 83.2 percent of them were unvaccinated individuals. This single outbreak is larger than the total number of cases that occurred in the United States in 2017. The total U.S. case count so far this year, 387, has surpassed last year’s nationwide total of 372.

In many cases, measles outbreaks are traced to travelers from elsewhere in the world where the disease is still endemic. In 2018, three outbreaks in New York state, New York City and New Jersey happened largely in unvaccinated Orthodox Jewish communities,triggered at first by travelers who brought measles back from Israel, where a large outbreak has been underway. Orthodox Jewish leaders said there was no religious edict against vaccination but that some people in the community may have become susceptible to anti-vaccination hysteria that has cropped up elsewhere, based on unfounded fears that vaccines cause autism.

To continue reading in the Washington Post click here.

In 2000 Measles Eliminated from US, in 2019 Record Numbers – A Gift from the “Observant” and the Anti-Vaxxers

NEWSWEEK

MEASLES OUTBREAK SPREADING RAPIDLY, NOW REACHES 19 U.S. STATES AS CDC REPORTS 78 NEW CASES

BY NINA GODLEWSKI ON 4/8/19 AT 3:44 PM EDT

 

A measles outbreak in the United States shows no sign of slowing down, with 78 new cases reported in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) latest update to the totals for 2019. In addition to 78 new cases added from March 28 to April 4, four more states added cases to the list on Monday.

Those states are Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts and Nevada. This brings the total number of states with measles cases to 19.

The CDC released an updated report on cases of measles in 2019.CDC

The complete list of states reporting measles cases, according to the CDC: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas and Washington.

“With these measles outbreaks, we have a perfect storm of an incredibly contagious disease, pockets of unvaccinated people living in close proximity, and growing distrust of vaccines and public health initiatives in those communities,” Dr. Melissa Stockwell, with Columbia University Medical Center, told Newsweek.

So far in 2019, there have been nearly 100 more cases reported than there were in all of 2018, which saw 372 cases. The only year with more reported cases since measles was eliminated from the United States in 2000 was in 2014, which had a total of 667 reported cases.

The CDC, which updates its reported cases every Monday, said, “The majority of people who got measles were unvaccinated.” There have been outbreaks, defined as three or more cases, identified in five states: New York, Washington, New Jersey, California and Michigan.

To continue reading click here.

NYC Yeshivas Face Closure if Children are Not Vaccinated – Williamsburg, NY

BREAKING: NYC Health Dept Orders Williamsburg Yeshivas to Ban Unvaccinated Children OR FACE CLOSURE

The NYC Health Department announced today it has issued Commissioner’s Orders to all Yeshivas in Williamsburg affected by the school exclusion mandate. This means that any school out of compliance will immediately be issued a violation and possible closure.

• In December, the Health Department ordered yeshivas and childcare centers serving the Orthodox Jewish community in the affected ZIP codes in Brooklyn to exclude all unvaccinated students from attending school or daycare until the measles outbreak is declared over.
• In January, one yeshiva in Williamsburg fell out of compliance with the Department’s exclusion mandate, allowing unvaccinated children back into school or daycare. This single yeshiva is connected to more than FORTY CASES, resulting in a large increase in measles cases and the continuation of the outbreak.
• The Health Department has since issued Commissioner’s Orders to all yeshivas in Williamsburg to comply with the mandatory exclusion of unvaccinated children or face violations subject to fines and possible school closure.

The measles outbreak in the Orthodox Jewish community continues to increase at an alarming rate. To date, 285 cases have been confirmed since the beginning of the outbreak in October, with many of these new cases being confirmed in the last 2 months. The vast majority of cases are children under 18 years of age (246 cases), and 39 cases are adults. Most of these measles cases were unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated individuals. There have been no deaths associated with this outbreak, although there have been complications, including 21 hospitalizations and five admissions to the intensive care unit.

Ahead of Passover, the Health Department is urging all New Yorkers—especially those in the Orthodox Jewish community—to get the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine to prevent further spread of the virus. Individuals traveling to areas with ongoing large outbreaks, including Israel, Europe, Upstate New York, and other parts of the United States should make sure they and their children are appropriately vaccinated with MMR.

“As a pediatrician, I know the MMR vaccine is safe and effective. 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,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot. “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.”

Continue reading on Yeshiva World News by clicking here.