While much of the attention in the ongoing measles outbreak has focused on student vaccination requirements and exemptions, less attention has been paid to another group in the nation’s classrooms: Teachers and staff members, who, by and large, are not required to be vaccinated.
In most states, there is no law dictating which vaccines teachers and school staff workers are required to get. Some states provide a list of recommended vaccines, but there is no requirement or follow-up for teachers to receive them.
So when a measles case surfaced at a California high school, it was easy for officials to review student records, but there were no immunization records on file for employees.
That meant all 24 teachers and staff exposed to the employee with measles had to prove their immunity — records that, for most, were decades old.
The issue has surfaced from time to time in state legislatures and is likely to be raised again in response to the latest outbreak, which originated at Disneyland in December and has spread to a half dozen states and Mexico. Most of those who fell ill were not vaccinated. As of Friday, public health officials said 114 people had contracted measles.
“I was definitely shocked,” Rep. Joanna Cole, a Democrat in the Vermont Legislature, said when she learned in 2012 that there were no teacher vaccination requirements in her state. There are still no requirements today. “I guess we all just assumed that they would have them.”
Cole and other legislators and parents across the U.S. believe the blanket presumption that teachers are up to date on their vaccines should be re-examined. They note that most of those sickened in the current outbreak are adults, and that schools are one of the top places for the spread of communicable disease.
“I will be surprised if we don’t see some changes in the next year to year and a half,” said Kristen Amundson, executive director of the National Association of School Boards of Education.
Already, some states are considering measles legislation. In Vermont, Democratic Rep. George Till says legislators will try this year to eliminate philosophical exemptions for students and require that teachers be up to date on the same vaccines students must receive.
“If we’re trying to limit the spread in school, why just students?” Till said. A similar bill he introduced in 2012 was defeated amid strong opposition from anti-vaccine groups, and he expects another battle.
In Colorado, pro-vaccination groups have been pushing the Department of Human Services to require vaccinations for workers at child care facilities, another area with uneven employee immunization standards. Measles cases have been confirmed at day care facilities in Chicago and Santa Monica, California.
Barbara Loe Fisher, director of the National Vaccine Information Center, a Virginia-based nonprofit that favors letting parents decide whether to vaccinate, said the discussion on vaccination requirements has started to expand from schoolchildren to certain adult professions. She said her organization has a number of concerns about requiring teacher vaccinations, including safety and job protection for those who cannot or choose not to be immunized.
“I think at the end of the day, the most important principle to protect is the right to make an informed voluntary decision, and that includes teachers,” she said.
At Vista Murrieta High School in California’s Riverside County, a middle class community between Los Angeles and San Diego, all teachers and staff who had been exposed to the measles were able to return to work within one to three days. Teachers who were born before 1957 were immediately excused, assuming they had either had gotten measles as a child or been exposed to the disease.
Kathy Ericson, president of the Murrieta Teachers Association, said the instructors were willing to do “whatever needs to be done” to protect students. But she stopped short of saying whether vaccination or proof of immunization should be required for employment.
“Most of us don’t have our shot records,” she said. “It would be a hard thing to go back and prove.”
Several parents with students in Murrieta Valley schools said they believed it was important for teachers to show proof of immunity or get vaccinated to protect their children and others too young or vulnerable to get the vaccines themselves.
“It is everyone’s responsibility to keep students healthy and safe,” said Sherrie Zettlemoyer, the mother of two elementary-school students. “I believe if you can be vaccinated you should.”
(AP)
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9 Responses
Just wondering. Out of the 114 who are sick, how many are injured and how many died…..
The FDA states on thier website that vaccination is mdication.
Why are we medicating our kids & filling thier precious blood-stream with so much filth & poisons?
If you believe vaccines work, what are you so nervous about? What can the unvaccinated healthy kids do already? Arent the vaccinated protected?
The answer is the Government is running our lives & we are afraid to fight or just have no time. We may loose our programs? Its all about $ & political pressure. I feel like I send my kids to a doctors office when I send them to school everyday. The schools are all advocating for the corrupt health dept. Cuz they have to! They are being threatened to loose funding if they dont show a 100% vacination rate amongst the students. Is the administrator or principle up to date? Trust me, they are not. Just drug up the kids & get as much funding as possible. Get informed & research what the doctors are doing to our kids because of political pressure. Much more people are realizing these days that vaccines are no good & thats why we are being attacked so much.
To #2. Vaccines work. Smallpox have been eradicated, polio is almost unheard of, even chickenpox today is a rare occurrence and there are plenty of other vaccines that have removed many of the deadly and debilitating childhood illnesses that were common just a few generations ago. The problem with those who refuse to take the vaccines is that they expose others – some who are too young to be immunized or those who are immunocompromised and are therefore ineligible to be vaccinated, to these diseases.
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/138913/rav-belsky-on-opponents-of-metzitzah-bpeh-they-dont-understand-the-field.html
CDC Director is the goilem fooling the oilem
Picture this:
Little Sarala was only nine years old when she received her diagnosis.
LEUKEMIA. The dreaded word shook her parents and entire family to the core. Innocent little Sarala was the life of the party, leader among her friends, and beloved to all. Her family and friends davened and rallied with all their might for a bone marrow donor to be found. With little choice and no time to wait, the doctors purified Sarala’s own bone marrow and had it reimplanted into her. Finally, Sarala was in remission. Her family welcomed her home with tears of relief and thanks to Hashem.
Alas, Sarala’s journey with illness was not over. Four years later… the dreaded disease returned with a vengeance. Now a maturing and sensitive teenager, Sarala understood full well that without a donor for a bone marrow transplant she will not make it this time. The doctors will not risk taking her own marrow again.
The doctors say that Sarala has just a short time left to live. The feverish search for a donor yielded no results… until… wait… finally a match is found. Yossi, Sarala’s three year old brother, is a match! Sarala’s parents are full of hope. Before proceeding, however, they met with R’ Sholomo Zalman Auerbach, Foremost posek in Eretz Yisroel at the time. R’ Sholomo Zalman was the address to pasken many medical sha’alos that came up the world over.
Sarala’s parents described the dire circumstances. Without this transplant, Sarala had almost no hope to live. Yossi was only three, however. His parents would have to consent on his behalf for him to have this procedure.
While doctors do not know the full ramifications of removing bone marrow from a child, they had assured the parents that it is a relatively minor procedure with no harm to Yossi. The alternative was unspeakable. Would it be halachically permissible for the parents to agree to the precedure on behalf of their three year old child?
The air is thick. Sarala’s parents await R’ Sholomo Zalaman’s psak with bated breath. It seems as if Sarala’s life hangs on this very moment. They daven that they be zoche to see a yeshuah. R’ Shlomo Zalman sits deep in thought for a long while. Finally, he breaks the silence. He defers the case. He cannot give a heter for the parents to sign for the child. Even in the case where Sarala’s life depends on it, R’ Shlomo Zalman could not halachically allow the parents to acquiesce for their child to undergo a medical procedure with only a minimal risk if it is not for his own benefit (Nishmas Avraham Vol. 4, 243:1).
Painful, but Torah true.
According to the US government vaccines are classified as “unavoidably unsafe”. Medical journals and package inserts are replete with adverse events from vaccines. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database reads like a catalog of horrors. That vaccines can and do cause harm is a matter of scientific fact and undebatable. I have spoken to scores of parents in our communities that unfortunately experienced that truth. Whether one decides to vaccinate or not, based on his research and risk-benefit analysis, is called informed consent. Informed consent is a concept which both sensible and is an internationally adopted code due to the German atrocities (Nuremberg Code 1947). However, the notion that one must vaccinate to protect “others” as Rabbi Ten, the OU, and the Yated posit, are pitted squarely against Halacha. It is clearly brought down in the Poskim (M”B 329:19) that one is not obligated to save his friend’s life even if he would only be putting himself in a safek danger. Vaccines clearly have risks and one is not obligated to take these risks for others.
By definition, “Public Health” is a system that includes wastage. Wastage in this context means lives. Justification is that without a minimal amount of death, there would be far greater casualties. But according to the Torah, no life is ever given up for the greater good (Rambam Yesodai Hatorah 5:5). The rationale is simple. If the ethical decision of whose life would be chosen to be given up or to put at risk for the sake of the society would be placed in mortal hands, the ability to abuse the law would be monumental. This has proven to be true even in the United States of America. In 1926, a US Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision (Buck v. Bell) ruled, “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes.” This was in reference to forced sterilization, which the Supreme Court ruled as legal, based on the precedence of the legality of forced vaccinations. This law has never been overturned. As a matter of fact, the very concept of “Public Health” has its roots in the German Polizewissenschaft or “police science”, and all German eugenic programs were carried out in the name of “the greater good”.
Are we willingly embracing a medical dictatorship that runs diametrically opposed to our values, or are we going to try to uphold our religious rights? Was the metzitza bepeh fiasco not enough to have us understand that their “science” is hardly what they make it out to be? We have precedence. We have the Torah. We don’t need atheist ethicists from the New York Times to promote halachically untenable positions in our own newspapers and magazines. And I end with a plea, hashiva shoftainu kv’rishona, the time should return when we pasken with Torah values as opposed to non-Jewish moral principles.
#2 Step Aside: You’ve posted almost the exact same thing in the last few threads about immunization and yet you stubbornly fail to address all the perfectly logical and sound arguments against what you’re saying, choosing instead to repeat like a broken record.
Why are we filling our kids with filth and poison?: Very well. Then serve your kids nothing but the vegetables you grow in your own back yard and sit and do nothing when they get sick
If you believe vaccines work, what are you so nervous about? What can the unvaccinated healthy kids do already? Arent the vaccinated protected?: Not infants. I am very worried as measles or mumps has a very strong chance of causing permanent damage to infants who cannot yet be vaccinated. Also, the elderly, cancer patients and a whole bunch of other people who make up a good 3-5% of the population. Keep your unimmunized kids in your house and never let them leave, if that’s what you want
They are being threatened to loose funding if they dont show a 100% vacination rate amongst the students.: Only schools like in Kiryas Yoel where 95% of the funding comes from the government. Most Yeshivas are privately funded and don’t stand to lose funding. Yet many Yeshivas and Bais Yaakovs have recently been forced to clamp down on negligent parents who refuse to immunize and not allow their children into school for fear of spreading dangerous diseases
Even if you vaccinate, it is only 90-95% effective in preventing the disease. So if you do not vaccinate you can infect someone who did vaccinate.
And even if you didn’t infect someone else, you should vaccinate to insure YOU don’t get infected.
“However, the notion that one must vaccinate to protect “others” as Rabbi Ten, the OU, and the Yated posit, are pitted squarely against Halacha.”
This statement is completely against our mesorah. Rav Sherira Gaon ruled that we follow contemporary doctors against Chazal. Kal v’chomer against contemporary gedolim because of yeridot hadorot!
“It is clearly brought down in the Poskim (M”B 329:19) that one is not obligated to save his friend’s life even if he would only be putting himself in a safek danger”
However, you are absolutely forbidden to put YOURSELF in danger or to actively endanger others. Not vaccinating yourself against these dangerous diseases does just that.
I would not allow my children to get anywhere near yours. And were I a rav I would expel you from my shul and call the police on Shabat should you show up. You are a menace to the community, possibly even a rodef.
To aside & goilem, I posted this 3 years ago: “I used to get into the arguments here about vaccines, but now I’ve decided to sit this one out. I wonder if it’s the same people just using different screen names or are there quite a few health-nuts out there? I’ve found that the tatics they use are similar to missionaries. They are always looking to con another one. Trying to influence them with the truth is a waste of time, they are too self-absorbed with their own views! Like I once saw a Lubav getting into it with Jews for J in the subway station. They are so brainwashed for this -he was the one who ended up being flustered!”