Wow, the author really went out of their way to avoid saying why this is happening repeatedly in Rockland County.
> The Orthodox Jewish community, the largest in the country, have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the state; Monsey's is the lowest in the state, at 17.8%, as of June 15, 2021
I lived in a Brooklyn neighborhood densely populated by Hasidim for years and this is unfortunately not the first time something like this has happened.[0] The highly insular community means misinformation is hard to combat. This quote is pertinent:
> ”Being a religious Jew, you also get used to having a minority viewpoint,” said Alexander Rapaport, the CEO of the Masbia Soup Kitchen Network in Brooklyn, and a public face of the Hasidic community. “So if something is not mainstream, it doesn’t take you away from believing it.”
Because the orthodox Jewish community is a constant source of outbreaks in the area. In 2019, there was a measles outbreak, in 2020, a number of COVID outbreaks, and now polio. No one is claiming that this community is the only to have a disease outbreak, but if there is an outbreak of a preventable disease in Rockland County, then it's most likely coming from Monsey.
> From June 28, 2009, through June 27, 2010, a total of 3502 outbreak-related cases of mumps were reported in New York City, two upstate New York counties, and one New Jersey county. Of the 1648 cases for which clinical specimens were available, 50% were laboratory-confirmed. Orthodox Jewish persons accounted for 97% of case patients.
Man, he was just doing an interesting remark about where those outbreak often happen (aka in unvaccinated communities). It was a small dig at antivax (and a really tame one), not an attack on all Jews.
Oh, certain people, like those of us who are sick of the repeated behavior of our co-religionists from this exact same community? The minute I read this polio outbreak was in Rockland county, my heart sank. Everyone knew what that likely meant.
A frum friend of mine told me today that the rumor is an Israeli kid, vaccinated with the live polio vaccine, had just moved into the community and was the likely carrier, and will likely be blamed, completely unfairly — instead of the fact that Hasids in Monsey have a ghastly problem with under-vaccination and non-vaccination.
Yeah, there’s a very good reason that people bring up this same community every time there’s a preventable disease outbreak.
It seems plenty pointless to finger point a community when a case pops up after 20 years and ignore all the other cases in the country popping up from foreign travelers and other communities.
It seems even more pointless if you don't want to say what you want to do to prevent that specific case. Just complaining to complain? Or singling out a community because you don't like them?
Simply put, what would you like to do?. Let's not side step around your intentions because you can't back them up morally.
Left leaning communities like this one are the most vicious towards Orthodox Jews, Israel, and religion in general.
It's really sad and predictable at this point.
-- edit --
Explain your diagnosis of my "persecution complex".
Define what it is and how you think I have it, doc.
Dude, your persecution complex is amazing. Best I’ve seen in years.
Literally no one here is talking about geopolitics or religion outside of the context that a specific subset of Hasidic Jews in Monsey (and Boro Park, and Williamsburg) keep getting infected with completely preventable diseases again and again and again. It’s not happening in Lakewood, Shaker Heights, Scarsdale, Boca Raton, Pico Robertson, Encino, the Five Towns, or a hundred other Jewish communities INCLUDING ORTHODOX JEWISH communities! You know why? Because they (we) know enough to vaccinate their (our) kids against fucking measles and polio! We’re not talking about Jews, Judaism, Orthodoxy! We’re mad about a completely predictable result of compulsive non-vaccination!
And what I personally would like to do is force people to vaccinate their children against deadly diseases, unless there is a very clear medical reason to abstain. Not doing so is flat out child abuse. It’s damning little kids to lifelong paralysis to own the libs.
Guess what? Sometimes they are! The issue here isn’t kashrut, niddah, or the eternal shidduch crisis. The issue isn’t really about Orthodoxy at all.
The issue is that this exact group of people don’t vaccinate or else under-vaccinate, in ways that are unlike every other community around them, in ways that continually cause outbreaks of diseases that are completely preventable, in ways that absolutely show up in the national data.
Sorry-not-sorry if that hurts your feelings, bubbeleh.
Because they're not comparable. 75% of the measles cases in 2019 (which was the worst measles year since 1992) were associated with the Orthodox communities in NY[1]. Oregon and Washington do have higher prevalence due somewhat lower vaccination rates in specific counties but they lack the same clustering and congregating that is found in the Orthodox communities.
I focused on the bad year for that specific reason, because it was BAD. WA and OR have some cases throughout the years, but they don't produce large outbreaks because the overall populations are still vaccinated enough for herd immunity to act as a barrier. Orthodox communities on the other hand don't have that advantage, and when there's an outbreak there, it creates outliers and outliers are what we're trying to avoid when it comes to pathogens.
It is a relatively common stance in the ultra-orthodox community and it was not unusual for me to see families bringing their kids to playgrounds in Brooklyn with active measles infections.
This neighborhood was notorious for its measles outbreaks before covid also. It's not disgusting, it's just very obviously a concentrated group of people that generally refuse vaccinations.
The cited article on WP ( https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/ultra-orthodox-zip-codes-have... ) notes that measles vaccination rates were around 70%, vs 99% for the rest of the state. Given the vaccine schedule, it's pretty likely that if you're a kid not vaccinated for measles, you're not vaccinated for polio either.
OPV isn't just used in Muslim countries. Nigeria is the biggest source of cVDPV2 infections. Ghana, Chad, Niger, etc. have cases. Ukraine has cases. Even Israel has cases.
That's probably less of a smoking gun than it seems like. This case was only discovered because someone actually suffered from paralysis, which is somewhat uncommon even in the unvaccinated and extremely uncommon amongst the vaccinated. The thing is, although it gives very strong protection against paralysis and death the inactivated vaccine used in countries like the US probably isn't all that effective at preventing people catching and spreading polio - all of the polio elimination efforts globally have used the oral polio vaccine which contains live virus for this reason. It's not used in the developed world because the serious side effect rate is hard to justify in a country where polio no longer exists.
Okay, I should probably have been a bit clearer about that. Polio eradication efforts everywhere in the world, including the US, were based around the oral polio vaccine due to its apparent benefits in stopping vaccinated people from spreading polio. This was discontinued in the developed world, including the USA, a couple of decades ago (edit: and replaced with the inactivated polio vaccine - I though this was clear enough from the context...) after polio was eliminated there and the risk of spread from other countries was considered low enough. Entire age groups have never been vaccinated using the OPV. And of course it doesn't matter how well protected the population as a whole is if there's a subcommunity of people who regularly interact with each other who aren;t...
> This was discontinued in the developed world, including the USA, a couple of decades ago after polio was eliminated there and the risk of spread from other countries was considered low enough.
Whats the vaccination rate for polio outside of this area? I suspect it's quite low, it's not in the standard vaccine series for most in the US to my knowledge due to low risk now. Outside of some older people and immigrants, I think many aren't vaccinated for polio.
When I saw the article I thought exactly the same thing. I had to check the Kaiser app, but apparently I have had 4 polio shots as a child.
I don't have the smallpox vaccine though. I know my mom has a big scar on the inside of her arm from that one, so I am pretty sure they've phased that one out.
I just confirmed both my kids have the polio vaccines from the standard set given to kids. The polio vaccine is called IPV (inactivated poliovirus) and usually comes in a bundle branded as PENTACEL which is “a 5-in-1 combination vaccine that protects against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, and Haemophilus influenzae type B”.
> The Orthodox Jewish community, the largest in the country, have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the state; Monsey's is the lowest in the state, at 17.8%, as of June 15, 2021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockland_County,_New_York#Heal...