An emergency teleconference was convened last week by Rabbi Hershy Z. Ten, (President of Bikur Cholim in Los Angeles) in response to a recent measles outbreak that originated in the Los Angeles, Jewish community. As of today, there are 17 confirmed cases of measles in Los Angeles County.
More than 70 Jewish day school faculty and synagogue rabbis throughout Greater Los Angeles called in to the live forum to learn about the threat measles poses, as well as address the legality of Jewish day-schools and synagogues to create polices that go beyond the current vaccination legislation which requires all students to be vaccinated regardless of their personal beliefs.
“We are urging our schools and synagogues to immediately implement new policies for 2017 that will prevent any children who aren’t immunized due to personal beliefs from attending a school or playgroup,” Rabbi Ten stated. He further added, “On this issue we must remain resolute in our unwavering dedication to protect the most vulnerable among us from falling prey to an avoidable tragedy.”
The teleconference featured an acclaimed panel of nationally recognized leaders in pediatrics, public health, and constitutional law featuring Erwin Chemerinsky (Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Irvine School of Law), Franklin Pratt, MD (Medical Director for the Los Angeles Department of Public Health Immunization Program), Dr. Richard Pan (California State Senator, District 6), and Robert Adler, MD (Chief Medical Officer, CHLA Health System at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles).
Dr. Adler, who also served as moderator, explained how non-immunized and infected children can present devastating consequences to fellow students suffering from immunosuppression due to various diagnoses such as cancer, as well as addressed how aggressively measles attacks the most vulnerable population.
Dr. Pratt pointed out that in addition to being extremely contagious, the measles virus behaves as if it is actively searching out the susceptible individuals to infect and that we need 97% – 99% of the population to be vaccinated or have natural immunity; this is referred to as “herd immunity”, which helps to protect the 3% of those who cannot be immunized due to medical reasons.
Dr. Richard Pan spoke about SB 277, the California law he coauthored requiring all children entering kindergarten to be vaccinated with a follow-up confirmation at 7th grade.
Most enlightening, were Dean Chemerinsky’s comments unequivocally stating, “There’s absolutely nothing in the law that prevents a school from setting a strict policy with regard to requiring vaccinations and excluding those who have not been vaccinated. I don’t think it’s any problem to do that in the middle of the year, either; especially in light of a measles outbreak.”
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
5 Responses
In my limited experience (and I am not a physician or other health care professional), there are three classes of people in the US who fail to get their children vaccinated:
1. Crazy people, like Robert Kennedy Jr., and the yentas (including gentile yentas) on the Upper West Side and other nominally well-educated places who groundlessly think vaccines cause disease (e.g., autism) rather than prevent them.
2. Really poor, ignorant people, many of whom come from Third-World places. And:
3. Frum Jews. I can understand why the crazies and the uneducated, really poor people don’t get their children vaccinated, but frum Jews should know better. I suspect that the minority of frum Jews who don’t vaccinate are also members of groups 1 and/or 2.
Huju, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Mega Dittos to you!
Very well put.
According th CDC most un-vaxxed kids have 2 college graduate parents, with above average income
NYC edpt of health,records show some private expensive schools have majority of kids un-vaxxed
Unless you suffering from alzheimers you should know that chicken pox is kids play, & acoording national cancer inst, it protects against brian Cancer.
Rabbi Ten and these tyrants from the California Legislature and health departments will be in for a big surprise once President Trump gets to work on this issue. Besides appointing Robert Kennedy Jr. to a vaccine safety commission it is likely that we will be seeing a big shake up in the CDC which is ultimately the agency behind all the false fear mongering about measles. Hopefully we will see the liars in the CDC prosecuted and put in jail for their scientific fraud which has caused hundreds of thousands of children to get autism from the vaccines they promote for children and pregnant women.