Posted on 11/19/2018 12:36:26 PM PST by NRx
Chickenpox has taken hold of a school in North Carolina where many families claim religious exemption from vaccines.
Cases of chickenpox have been multiplying at the Asheville Waldorf School, which serves children from nursery school to sixth grade in Asheville, N.C. About a dozen infections grew to 28 at the beginning of the month. By Friday, there were 36, the Asheville Citizen-Times reported.
The outbreak ranks as the state’s worst since the chickenpox vaccine became available more than 20 years ago. Since then, the two-dose course has succeeded in limiting the highly contagious disease that once affected 90 percent of Americans — a public health breakthrough.
The school is a symbol of the small but strong movement against the most effective means of preventing the spread of infectious diseases. The percentage of children under 2 years old who haven’t received any vaccinations has quadrupled since 2001, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Like the Disneyland measles outbreak in 2015, the flare-up demonstrates the real-life consequences of a shadowy debate fueled by junk science and fomented by the same sort of Twitter bots and trolls that spread misinformation during the 2016 presidential election. And it shows how a seemingly fringe view can gain currency in a place like Asheville, a funky, year-round resort town nestled between the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains.
“The school follows immunization requirements put in place by the state board of education, but also recognizes that a parent’s decision to immunize their children happens before they enter school,” the school explained in a statement to Blue Ridge Public Radio.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Those recommendations (to vaccinate) have by and large have gone unheeded by the parents of Asheville Waldorf's 152 students — 110 of whom have not received the chickenpox vaccine, which was made available in the United States in 1995.
North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services tracks the rate of kindergartners whose parents have claimed a religious exemption, allowing them to forego vaccination.
During the 2017-2018 school year, the last for which data were available, Asheville Waldorf had a higher rate of religious exemptions for vaccination than all but two other schools in the state.
Of the 28 kindergartners who enrolled that year, 19 had an exemption to at least one vaccination required by the state for school entry.
Is anyone else alarmed that the Federal Govt has this kind of detail at their fingertips?
Forget it, sez me. I'll be getting the Shingles Shot when the time comes.
Asheville = Berkeley East
The BBC is running a variation of the same article, so it’s a full court press. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has paid out more than $4 billion in damages to kids injured by vaccines. It would be many, many billions more if congress didn’t carve out special protection to vaccine makers. So, vaccines aren’t safe for all kids. I know this first hand as my g’son still has MMR titers many hundreds of times higher than normal 5 years after his one and only vaccination. It’s related to a defect in his MTHFR gene, a problem that can be detected at birth with a simple test that costs about $100. I pray to god that new parents listen to people learning on the fly rather than buying the government line.
I’m on a 6 month wait for the new shingles vaccine.it is a 2 part shot and they are having supply problems. These parents risk everyone’s health. My daughter is a teacher in a school where many of the students have not had vaccines.
“Asheville = Berkeley East”
Hottest chick I’ve seen in a long time was in Asheville a couple of weeks ago. She walked up to speak to the cashier and it was a man’s voice. Didn’t notice the Adam’s apple until after I had impure thoughts.
Gag me forever.
It appears to be a hippie school
Pass out the lolly-pops. Everyone share!
You have to remember,
Above an “8” on the Hot Axis and below a “4” on the Crazy axis is a DUDE! He’s a tranny!
I agree with you, but they're still their kids, not yours and not the Washington Post's.
How many of these kids died? Zero- I thought so. Now they are naturally immunized for life. Big deal.
My daughter went there because she read it was so cool. When she got there, she left so fast she wasn't even finished gagging. She said it was a dump.
“It appears to be a hippie school”
Forget it, Jake it’s Asheville.
1st - It’s freaking Chicken Pox, not the plague, so trying to make people freak over it.
2nd - Hit a real Pay Wall at WaPo - couldn’t read the story. That’s a first.
Asheville? Religious exemption? Church of Satan? Town used to have a practicing witch as a mayor!
I'm not an anti-vaccine guy but I do have a kid with food allergies and I'm aware that food allergies in kids have exploded over the past 25 years. As in going from almost none to every class having several kids with food allergies. Autism is also way, way higher. In both cases doctors shrug and say "wish I knew why". No wonder parents are trying to figure it out on their own.
In the 50s 5 of 6 kids in my family had chicken pox. Probably 100 of 500 in the Ken WA school. Made the local paper, but not the big city paper. Not TV or radio. We all lived.
2015 I’m in Atlanta hospital for pneumonia. String of CMS $ chasing doctors pops their head in the doorway and diagnoses me for a variety of diseases. One Doc pops his head in the doorway and says “you have shingles. Everybody had chicken pox back in the 50s.”
Of course, I did not and do not have shingles. But the Doc knew the survival rate from chicken pox was very high.
This whole NC thing is overblown. So some people relive pre-vaccination. Big deal.
I’m also not an anti-vaccine guy. Some kids do fine with them while others with pre-existing conditions can be left in bad shape. Again, $4 billion in damage awards support my contention. Also, haven’t teachers working in conjunction with the government done enough damage to our kids?
Chickenpox is not bad for healthy people, but it is deadly to people with low immunity like those on steroids or that are having chemo for cancer.
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