The number of people in Rockland County who have come down with mumps has jumped to 152 as part of what state and federal health officials are calling the largest outbreak of the disease nationwide in years.
Just about all local cases of the highly infectious disease are among Orthodox Jewish and Hasidic residents of Monsey and New Square, according to the Rockland Department of Health.
So far, there is no indication that people outside those communities are coming down with mumps, she said.
The outbreak started in August in a Sullivan County, N.Y., summer camp for Orthodox boys, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Health officials traced the outbreak to an 11-year-old camper, who had recently returned from England, where at least 4,000 people have come down with the disease. That camper spread the illness to 25 other people at the camp ranging in age from 9 to 30, with a median age of 12, according to the CDC.
When the campers went home later in the summer, they apparently brought the disease with them to Jewish communities in Rockland and Orange counties, the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, Lakewood, N.J., and Quebec, according to health officials.
The Rockland Department of Health is reaching out to community leaders, including rabbis and yeshiva directors to stress the importance of immunization.
Many of the parents who were interviewed by health officials indicated that they did not immunize their children because of their religious beliefs.
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24 Responses
According to many doctors most of the people who are getting the mumps have been vaccinating and for some reason are getting it anyway. They think it might be a different strain.
maybe I’m ignorant but what Jewish religious belief prohibits vaccination?
It has nothing to do with religious beliefs. It’s plain meshgaas that unfortunately exist in some ‘frum” communities!
Since when do frum people not immunize their children due to religious beliefs? Did the “health officals” interview Christian Scientists?
What religious belief? Is there some issur or chumrah against vaccinations that I never heard of? Vaccinations did not even exist at the time of the Rishonim.
Religous beliefs is when you go to a Rebbe to ask on every little move you do if it should be done or not and the response in this case is regarding the fake speculation that the vaccine causes autism which has never been proved the Rebbe says don’t give it I’ll pray for you. but are our Rebbes today sooo holy?!
#7
After you look past your prejudice against rabbi’s, you should know it’s some health nuts who are perpetuating this position.
Aint got nothing to do with them rabbis
How do kids get into Yeshiva without the vaccination? My “Chassidish” yeshiva would not allow them in without proof of all vaccinations.
And by the way, even with his vaccination my son got a bad case of the mumps.
MY SON WAS VACCINATED, AND RECEIVED A BOOSTER, AND WAS CONSIDERED BY HIS PHYSICIAN TO BE UTD (UP TO DATE) IN ALL OF HIS VACCINATIONS. HE GOT THE MUMPS ANYWAY. BLOOD RESULTS SHOWED THAT THIS WAS THE MUMPS AND NO, NOT ANOTHER “STRAND” OF THE MUMPS.
IT IS UNBECOMING TO THE YESHIVA WORLD NEWS TO IMPLY THAT MANY OF THE PARENTS OF CHILDREN WITH MUMPS DID NOT VACCINATE DUE TO RELIGIOUS REASONS. EVERY PARENT THAT I HAVE SPOKEN TO WHOSE CHILD GOT THE MUMPS DID VACCINATE THEIR CHILDREN. MY PHYSICIAN WAS AT LEAST HONEST; HE SAID, “JUST GOES TO SHOW YOU THAT LIVE VACCINATIONS DON’T REALLLY WORK”.
11- it is unbecoming of you to say that yeshiva world said this when they didnt. look at the link to the journal news website which the quoted.
AND SHUT YOUR CAPS OFF AND STOP YELLING ALREADY
Some people don’t want to vaccinate. What I don’t understand is how the yeshivas let them get away with it. This “religious belives” nonsense might be ok with officials, but the yeshivas shouldn’t stand for it. That said, it seems many of the vacinations children get these days are worthless.
10, the way the mumps vaccine works it is 90% effective. What keeps the other 10% from getting mumps is community vaccination. When the whole community is vaccinated it makes it harder for the disease to spread. So these non-vaccinating idiots are not only hurting their children, they are/can potentially be hurting other children as well.
I just had the mumps, all the poeple I know who just had it where vaccinated. I think the Journal is trying again to smear Orthodox Jews
It is not our religious belief. However, these frum health freaks are coming with signed and notarized letters that they are seventh day adventists and that their religion exempts them. If they sign they are christian we should believe them and kick them out of our schools so they dont mingle with our kinderlich. What a shanda and a farce.
The story was written by an idiot and it was picked up all over the NY metro area.
Our Rabbonim dont tell people not to get vaccinations. Punkt farkert, they say we should. The ones who dont vaccinate their kids are the ones who are afraid of any side effects there may CH”V be from the vaccine or its components.
The news story failed to mention that the kids and adults like some relatives of mine who got the mumps, WERE VACCINATED and the fish-wrap should, if they were decent journalists, explain why that is.
I’m in Eretz Yisroel and my son got mumps a few weeks ago (part of the same outbreak), and then my wife did. Both had gotten a first MMR AND A BOOSTER!!! The efficacy is definitely much less than 90%!
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/imm/immmum.shtml
“Is the mumps virus circulating in New York Cityin November 2009 different from the usual mumps strain?
No, the same strain has caused other outbreaks in the United States and the United Kingdom. The current MMR vaccine covers this strain.
Why are so many cases occurring in vaccinated people?
Studies suggest that the mumps vaccine is 76% to 95% effective. That means that for every 100 people vaccinated, 76 to 95 of them will be fully protected but 5 to 24 will remain susceptible to the disease. (By comparison, the measles vaccine is about 98% effective.) Though mumps vaccination cannot protect everyone, it greatly reduces the number of people who get sick when exposed to the virus. If a community maintains a high vaccination rate, the risk of exposure declines too.”
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/imm/immmum.shtml
Although I wish that the companies would make a stronger vaccine against mumps, but right now that they don’t, why is it going around the frum communities? I would venture to say because of something called herd immunity. This means that since most people are vaccinated, it keeps the incidence very low. I feel these health-nuts who don’t vaccinate are not just putting their lives at risk, but they diminish the herd immunity & therefore put even those who did vaccinate at risk! Where are the Rabbonim to say -that if you don’t vaccinate -you can’t send your child to Yeshiva? Legally there is a loophole, as some have posted.
“Since August 21, 2009, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH) has been investigating an outbreak of mumps that began among children from Borough Park who attended summer camp in Upstate New York. Cases of mumps have continued to occur in Borough Park since the onset of the school year. At this time, there are 57 confirmed or probable cases and additional suspect cases are under investigation. Cases have ranged in age from 1 to 42 years, with the majority occurring among children age 10-15 years. Twenty-five per cent of cases either did not have two doses of mumps containing vaccine or had unknown vaccination status, while the remaining 75% had two documented doses of mumps containing vaccine.”
Notice that they say 25% did not have 2 doses, but do not tell how many were under 1 and not old enough for the vaccine or were not yet in the 4-5 age range when the second shot is given. Also, how many were like me? I’m old enough to have been born when the recommendation was for only one MMR. I only got a second MMR after I was found not to be immune to rubella in my first pregnancy. My parents followed the recommendation of the day and I got one shot at 18 mos of age. I’m guessing there are plenty of others like me who may have never gotten a second vaccination. Between those under 1, “unknown” and only had one dose, it doesn’t seem like there is a rash of “non-vaccinaters” in our midst.
Health – when I was in nursing school there was a PhD candidate doing research on epidemics in the frum community (in this instance it was shigella, so vaccination is not an issue and was popping up more in the Orthodox community than the community at large). One of the things that they found was that there we have far more repetitive interpersonal contacts with each other – minyan, shiurim, schools, camps, eating in one another’s homes, eating in the same restaurants. If some random kid has mumps in a public school – how many repetitive contacts does he within the community? Maybe his school class or daycare. Now imagine a frum kid with the same scenario – he is going to be exposing people in minyan, in school, at the friend’s house his family ate last shabbos before he was symptomatic and on and on. They really made a good case for “epidemics” in the frum community because of this. The only other theory was that we have worse hygiene – would you like to support that theory?
FWIW – everyone I know who had gotten mumps has had 2 MMR vaccinations. I think that in an effort to shirk the “it’s those crazy Orthodox” label, we are maligning the “healthnuts” out there. Surely no one thinks that we have fallen below 90% vaccination rates in our communities that would start to affect herd immunity? I can tell you having worked as a nurse in a very large Jewish girls’ camp, I can recall exactly *1* unvaccinated camper in 5 years.
it is illogical to blame this outbreak on the “unvaxed” population. Obviously that 75% who were fully “vaxed” were just as easily susceptible, and capable of spreading mumps as the other 25% (some of whom had at least 1 documented dose). In addition, people with 1 dose and 2 doses are considered equally immune. The additional dose is for those who for some reason did not pick up immunity the first time. I strongly suggest that people do their own research and ask qualified unbiased people for advice reguarding vaccination.
This disease is also very serious in Israel, mostly in the MIR YESHIVA and around american bochrim. About 30 bochrim have already had or has “the mumps” and almost all of them were vaccinated. There is nothing one can do but prey to hashem that this horrible outbreak goes away.