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foxnews.com/us/states-seek-to-cut-off-religious-exemptions-for-vaccination
Connecticut's Attorney General gave state lawmakers the legal go-ahead Monday to pursue legislation that would prevent parents from exempting their children from vaccinations for religious reasons, a move that several states are considering amid a significant measles outbreak.
The non-binding ruling from William Tong, a Democrat, was released the same day public health officials in neighboring New York called on state legislators there to pass similar legislation . Most of the cases in the current outbreak have been in New York state.
[...] Connecticut is just one of several states considering whether to end longstanding laws that allow people to opt out of vaccinations for religious purposes. In the face of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, some have alleged religious exemptions have been abused by "anti-vaxxers" who believe vaccines are harmful despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
But the proposals to eliminate the opt-outs have also sparked emotional debates about religious freedom and the rights of parents.
Most religions have no prohibitions against vaccinations, according to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee. Yet the number of people seeking the religious exemption in Connecticut has been consistently climbing. There were 316 issued during the 2003-04 school year, compared to 1,255 in the 2017-18 school year.
[...] All 50 states have laws requiring students to have certain vaccinations. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, all but Mississippi, West Virginia and California grant religious exemptions. As of Jan. 30, the conference said 17 states allowed people to exempt their children for personal, moral or other philosophical beliefs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @10:14PM (2 children)
Here is US population data and some data from Rhode Island for measles cases by age from 1858-1923. I combined this with US population data from 1963 (original link is broke: http://www.census.gov/popest/data/national/asrh/pre-1980/PE-11.html) [census.gov]
Derived from table 3:
Measles In Providence, R. I., 1858–1923 Charles V. Chapin, M.D. American Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 5, Issue 5, 1 September 1925, Pages 635–655, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a119686 [doi.org]
If nearly everyone got measles (which everyone assumes) then the cumulative sum of the percentage of cases would be very close to the proportion of people who already had measles (and were immune) by age. Then the number of susceptible people nSus is just 1 minus that value multiplied by the population at each age.
By taking the sum, we see in total there would be ~ 20 million susceptible in the US at any one time, or about 10% the total population. Right now, I estimated [soylentnews.org] due to waning immunity, etc there are ~30 million adults who are now susceptible again, in addition to however many children there are (I would guess ~10 million from a couple million infants with waning maternal antibodies and then 90-95% vaccinated amongst the older ones) . That is about 12% of the US population.
As the percent of susceptibles continues to grow the epidemic becomes more and more likely, and a bigger proportion of susceptibles are going to be going to work, etc commingling with each other.
This is a totally new scenario, nothing like it was before.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @02:08AM (1 child)
It's a bit like wildfires. If you have regular scrub fires they don't get too big. If you start suppressing fires, the leaf litter and dead wood builds up, and then when you finally get a fire, it is huge.
Vaccination is a like trying to clear the deadwood by having very small fires. It doesn't clear as well as an actual fire, and there is a hidden buildup of fuel. (Waning immunity)
I can see the argument against vaccination making some sense, but a better idea is to vaccinate again. Put it on a 20 year cycle and be done with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @03:04AM
20 years is probably not frequent enough if the waning rate is increasing to 4% of vaccinated people losing immunity every 5 years. But anyway clearly they do not want this solution for some reason.