Parents refuse to give kids flu shots even though they're not anti-vaccine

Mary Kay Linge
New York Post
Sun, 15 Nov 2015 16:08 UTC

© Steve White

Defiant parents, furious at the city's new mandate forcing flu vaccines on preschoolers, are plotting to buck the system.

Delay tactics, temporary home schools and a Change.org petition are following the lawsuit filed last week to halt Health Department rules requiring a flu shot or a live-virus nasal spray for children under 5 who attend city schools and day-care centers.

"I'm not anti-vaccination," said Marialaina Mezzasalma, of Staten Island. "But I don't feel anybody should tell me what to do with my children."

The regulation takes effect Dec. 31, so Mezzasalma's daughter Lexa, now 4, won't go back to her pre-K classroom after the holiday break.

Instead, she'll return to school after her August birthday.

"My back is against a wall," Mezzasalma said. "But her health is more important than her preschool education."

Reluctant parents believe the flu vaccine isn't reliable — last year's version was only 23 percent effective, according to the CDC — and isn't thoroughly tested in young children.

Nationally, eight children in the 0-17 age group died of vaccine complications during last year's flu season, and side effects include fevers, seizures and neurological problems. However, there were 146 deaths from influenza in the same age group, according to the CDC.

'My kids, my choice...all the moms are upset' - Veronica Andrade, parent

The regulation, approved in the waning days of the Bloomberg administration, has been eased in as a recommendation over the last two years.

But starting in January, schools that don't enforce the flu-shot rule will face hefty fines, from $200 to $2,000.

A program that lets unimmunized kids attend could lose its child-care permit, a Health Department spokeswoman said.

So schools are pushing hard. Parents of unvaccinated kids have gotten multiple phone and written reminders in recent weeks.

"My kids, my choice," said Veronica Andrade of Brooklyn. At her son Lucas' school, "all the moms are upset," she said. "We're just saying our kids are on a waiting list at the doctor's office."

Comment: Smart parents! Standing up for their children and exercising what little medical rights they have left. Schools are going to continue to push hard for enforcement, especially considering that schools with students that are not immunized face heavy fines and loss of child care permits. Sounds like profits, not science, are motivating vaccine mandates:

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a group of individuals hand-picked by members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), recommends which vaccines are administered to American children. Working mainly in secret, ACIP members frequently have financial links to vaccine manufacturers. Dependent on federal CDC funding, administrators of state vaccination programs follow CDC directives by influencing state legislators to mandate new vaccines. Federal vaccine funds can be denied to states that do not "vigorously enforce" mandatory vaccination laws.

Conversely, the CDC offers financial bounties to state departments of health for each "fully vaccinated" child. In a recent year, the Ohio Department of Health received $1 million in such CDC bonus payments.

• School vaccination rates: What the CDC is not telling parents

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) recently reported that the federal government has directed all public and private schools to publish vaccination and personal belief vaccine exemption rates, even though less than 1.7 percent of kindergarten children have any vaccine exemptions and less than 1 percent of children under 36 months old are unvaccinated.^1,2,3 ...

Perhaps the CDC is pursuing higher and higher vaccination rates and gutting vaccine exemptions to try to take attention away from the chronic disease and disability epidemic sweeping through classrooms that makes it harder and harder for children to learn and be healthy.