What say you?
Worth "it"?
Or is this an overreaching?
Part of the enslavmenslavement plan is indoctrination, drugging and taking ownership of the children. Welcome to Amerika.
New York City Requiring Flu Shots for Preschoolers
By SHARON OTTERMAN
JANUARY 2, 2015
New York City preschoolers will be heading back to class next week with memories of new holiday toys, vacation adventures, and, health officials hope, a flu shot.
In fact, because of a new city requirement, young children can, for the first time in the city’s history, be excluded from class if they have not received a flu vaccination.
The new rule, which applies to some 150,000 children in city-licensed day care centers and preschools, was quietly adopted by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in the waning days of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration. This is the first flu season during which it applies. New York City joins New Jersey and Connecticut in implementing a mandatory flu vaccine for children between 6 months and 5 years of age.
The city had been lagging behind the national average in preschool flu immunization rates, and officials are expecting that the new mandate will help. They have pointed to the success of Connecticut’s program, which raised vaccination rates among young children to 84 percent from 68 percent, and reduced hospitalizations from the flu by 12 percent, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The early signs in New York are positive, said Dr. Jane R. Zucker, the city’s assistant commissioner for immunization administration. By early December, vaccination rates among young children in the city had increased to nearly 67 percent from 62.5 percent the prior season. Vaccination rates also went up among other age groups, in part because of other education efforts, she said.
“It’s about protecting these young children from what can be a very serious illness and a potentially fatal illness,” Dr. Zucker said.
The rule calls for at least one flu vaccination — in shot or mist form — between July 1 and Dec. 31 of each year. It applies to a wide range of city-licensed child care programs, including mommy and me-style classes, part-time day care or preschool. It also applies to full-time preschool, which includes the 53,000 children in universal prekindergarten. Families may apply for religious or medical exemptions, as they can with other vaccines.
Beginning in 2016, the city will charge fines ranging from $200 to $2,000 to schools whose students do not follow the rule. (This year is a grace period during which the city will check vaccination records but not penalize schools.) The city, however, cannot force principals or school directors to exclude children who do not comply, because the flu vaccine is not mandated by the state. Instead, it will be up to each school to determine whether to exclude unvaccinated children, or alternatively, incur the fines.
In letters to parents, the city’s Department of Education warned that children attending public prekindergarten who are not vaccinated may be excluded from class, a department spokesman said. Among the Catholic schools of the Archdiocese of New York, however, a decision has been made to not exclude prekindergarteners for failure to comply this school year, said Fran Davies, a spokeswoman for the Catholic schools.
Yet while the city says it has done considerable outreach about the new rule, there has been some confusion among parents and schools.
At a meeting in early December between health officials and religious-school administrators, for example, some school leaders reported significant resistance from parents against the new regulation, in part because the parents said their children’s doctors were telling them the vaccine was unnecessary.
“There is going to have to be a learning curve,” said Deborah Zachai, director of education affairs at Agudath Israel of America, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization that was represented at the meeting. “I suspect that next year the doctors will be more aware of it, and the issue will be less prominent.”
In December, the city’s health board voted unanimously in favor of the flu vaccination rule, which does not apply to older children. There was minimal public discussion about the rule, which was overshadowed by other Bloomberg public health initiatives like the large soda ban. The public hearing before its passage was lightly attended, and many of the opponents who spoke were from organizations generally opposed to mandatory vaccination programs.
Among them was Kim Mack Rosenberg, the president of the New York metro chapter of the National Autism Association. She believes that vaccinations may contribute to autism, though no link has been proven.
“It is a requirement that is putting a burden on children and no one else,” she said this week. “Adults aren’t generally required to get the flu vaccine, and we are asking our most vulnerable children to get it.”
On rare occasions, flu vaccination can cause serious problems, such as severe allergic reactions. A report from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program states that there have been 1,633 claims of injury and 81 claims of death attributed to flu vaccines in all age groups since 2005, of which 924 have been compensated. But federal officials stress that such settlements are not an admission that the vaccine caused the injury.
There are also concerns about the vaccine’s efficacy. In an average year, the vaccine is about 60 percent effective. Because of evolving strains of the virus, it is expected to be less so this year, the C.D.C. said.
Addressing those concerns, Dr. Zucker said the health protections from the vaccination still far outweighed the risks, in part because vaccination can reduce the seriousness of illness, even if it does not offer perfect protection.
The decision to focus mandatory vaccination on young children was intentional, Dr. Zucker said, as that age group has the highest incidence of infection and high hospitalization rates. This flu season, 15 children have died so far in the United States from complications from the flu; 109 children died last season, a C.D.C. report said.
“Given the positive effects of immunization on influenza morbidity in children,” Dr. Zucker said, “this is the right thing to do.”
