While the anti-vaxxers are largely responsible for the recent measles outbreak in many Orthodox Jewish communities in the United States and Israel, another anti-vaxxer community is being fingered in another viral outbreak.
At least 36 students at a North Carolina school with a heavy anti-vaccine population have been sickened following an outbreak of the chickenpox virus, health officials said.
The outbreak, formally known as varicella, hit Asheville Waldorf School in Ashville, according to a news release from Buncombe County Health & Human Services.
Health officials warned that the best way to prevent becoming infected with the virus is to be “fully immunized.”
“We want to be clear: vaccination is the best protection from chickenpox,” Dr. Jennifer Mullendore, the county medical director, said. “Two doses of varicella vaccine can offer significant protection against childhood chickenpox and shingles as an adult.”
“When we see high numbers of unimmunized children and adults, we know that an illness like chickenpox can spread easily throughout the community- into our playgrounds, grocery stores, and sports teams.”
The private school, the Asheville Citizen-Times reported, “has one of the highest vaccination religious exemption rates in North Carolina.”
Asheville Waldorf, in the 2017-2018 school year, “had a higher rate of religious exemptions for vaccinations than all but two other schools in the state.”
Of the school’s 152 students, 110 have not received the chickenpox vaccine, Fox News reported.
(Sources: Fox news / CNN / NY Post)
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13 Responses
Its chicken pox!! For crying out loud, we all went thru it. Everything carried risks. You can have a cold and it becomes pneumonia Chas v’shalom. Is the next headline going to be “COLD VIRUS spreads thru unvaccinated population. Anti vaxxers at it again!” Relax! Yes chicken pox has risks but come on! We are becoming a bunch of sick wimps!!
Yes, definitely.
The anti vaxxers are also responsible for the yeshiva admission crisis (for our Lakewood chevra), tuition crisis, housing crisis, shidduch crisis, age-gap crisis, kiddush club crisis, smoking crisis, playing around in Israel crisis, wearing tight pants crisis, Pesach vacation extravagance crisis, extravagant Chassuna crisis, Indian hair shaitel crisis, taaruvos in bungalow colony crisis, etc, etc… The askanim can cancel the upcoming Agudah convention. No need for it. Every problem and challenge facing our community can be solved by simply getting your vaccination shots.
> His1
You are wrong to be so dismissive. It can be very serious, for example, for those who are pregnant (especially to the unborn). Those, like me who need inhalers for asthma, could have a compromised immunity (from the inhalers). And so forth.
Oh goodness, please tell me youre being funny. We vaccinate to protect those with compromised immunity!!! Yea mumps, measles… isn’t generally fatal but for newborns and sickly it could very possible be!
It’s a selfish attitude, we’re all achrayis for each other, that is why we vaccinate.
This just proves that the anti vaxers are the only normal ones. Why else would chicken pox make headlines?? But don’t worry, in twenty or thirty years when chicken pox is history, it will be A deadly disease just like measles. And cause panic attacks across the nation
The chicken pox vaccine is setting up a scenario whereby children do not get the illness at the age when it is a nuisance of a lousy week and are at risk of having the imperfect immunity wear off just when they are old enough to be at far greater risk of serious complications. I would like to see good studies done on the public health risk this poses.
Can you please report to us how many children are diagnosed with cancer? How many have severe and life threatening allergies that will effect them for the rest of their lives? How many are on the autistic spectrum? How many suffer from autoimmune disease? If you, and your mainstream media sources care about public health, lets address the actual public health issues. Some kids missing a week of school for a mildly itchy rash has become national issue? All this is accomplishing is pinning people against each other, and distracting from the real issues.
Oh and by the way, besides varicella being one of the dirtiest vaccines for one of the most common childhood illnesses, use of vaccine has decreased the age for shingles. Since the vaccine does NOT confer lifelong immunity, recipients are more susceptible to what was once a disease of the elderly. But DONT WORRY we have a vaccine now for shingles.
I hate to break it to you. All of you hopeless vaccine lovers …. vaccines account for about 14 of the THOUSANDS of germs one can get sick with and which can all be fatal or life threatening to immune compromised, pregnant, and others. So when you figure out a solution for all of those… then you can argue. Moral of the story: build your immune system and pray to hashem for continued health.
I’m not dismissive. I recognize that there are potential risks of having chicken pox but the vast majority of ppl who contract it come thru no worse for he wear with maybe a few pox scars. I have a son who developed a seizure disorder with the first seizure happening the day after his second Mmr shot. Can I absolutely know for sure t was from the shot? Can I absolutely know for sure it wasn’t? No to both. But it certainly makes me terrified to bring in my other kids for their shots. Does that make me an anti vaxxer now? I give my kids the dtap and mmr with my heart in my throat but I certainly won’t give them chicken pox shot which is NOT dangerous in the majority of people, and definitely not hpv which carries a sognificantly higher risk of complications from the actual vaccine than it does for my bH frum, responsible kids actually getting the disease. All my kids had chicken pox and emerged unscathed. All my kids had the mmr shot but I can’t say the same about their emerging from it.
To georgeg: If my parents would’ve allowed me to safely get the illness as my older sibling did, I’d be thrilled. Now, since I’m immunized via vaccine, I have to check my titers each time I conceive. Even with titers, I’m still susceptible to catching it while pregnant. Thanks a lot! (yes, in a perfect world – no one would get the disease, but the world isn’t perfect and there will always be people who don’t/can’t vaccinate or are non-responders)
I now make sure that each of my children are exposed to chickenpox before they reach school age. At least they’ll be protected for life.
I have to wonder if these commentators are really so ignorant or what else may be their motivation.
To quote Wikipedia “The chickenpox vaccine first became commercially available in 1984”.
It was not until the mid-1990’s that it gained widespread usage.
But in any case, studies have shown that the cases of shingles started its climb since 1945. That is almost 40 years *before* the first commercial use of the chicken pox vaccine.
My suspicion is what I have always posted. As better nutrition and general medical treatment increased, those people who would have otherwise not produced offspring (either because of death or debilitation) when “hit” by a disease like chicken-pox were now able to procreate. That genetically passed on the “weakness” to the next generations.
So until we can genetically “fix” these genetic weaknesses (and some day that will come), we can either do what it takes to enable them to survive and thrive and (as a side-affect) pass on their genetic inheritance or else let them die (either actually or by lack of offspring due to debilitation).
And it is shocking beyond belief how many comments here are aimed at the latter option.
re: Chicken pox: “However, the actual risk of any complications occurring is low. It’s rare to get chickenpox when you’re pregnant.”
Not giving the MMR is murder: One on the sicknesses avoided with MMR shot can cause severe life crippling birth defects for the ones that survive pregnancy.
SOLUTION: every choson kallah needs to check titers – its a very simple blood test even for people who got shots.