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NYC Public Schools’ Brewing Fight on Vaccines: My Kid, My Choice

The flu shot might be the one to drive home the fallacy of trying to force thinking parents to take part in something that goes against their common sense. “Don’t tell us how to raise our children,” is what more parents are saying to doctors and public health officials trying to take their parental rights away when it comes to making health care choices for their children. From a report in the New York Post1 it appears that a sneaky new flu shot mandate in New York City’s public school system is shedding a bright light on that issue.

Scheduled to be enforced beginning in January of 2016, the New York City Health Department will require that every child under age five who attends a city school or daycare center must receive either an injectable, inactivated flu vaccine or the live-virus nasal spray version every year. Schools and child care programs that do not comply will be hit with hefty fines of up to $2,000, and could lose their licenses. Understandably, schools are press parents hard to get children vaccinated.

Parents like Staten Island resident Marialaina Mezzasalma are crying foul. “I’m not anti-vaccination, but I don’t feel anybody should tell me what to do with my children,” she said.1 

Her sentiment is echoed by other parents in the New York area, who have taken actions such as telling schools their children are on a ‘waiting list for the shot’ to temporarily pulling their small children out of the public school system. Some New York parents have started a “Change.org” petition to try to stop the mandate, which has been more of a “recommendation” than a mandate in New York City for the last two years.1 

At issue for most of these parents is that the flu shot has been shown to be not only largely ineffective, but also dangerous for some children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) itself admitted that last year’s flu vaccine was effective in only 23% of cases,2  and the truth is that it has not been well studied in small children.

Several healthy children reportedly died after receiving flu shots during the 2014-2015 flu seasons3  and, while the CDC states that many more children are at risk from complications of influenza itself,4 the New York mandate makes it starkly obvious that the fight is not so much over which parents identify themselves as “anti-vaxxers” but over the right of parents to make medical decisions for their children without interference from public health officials and doctors carrying out government vaccine policy. Yet, these parents defending parental rights risk being labeled as anti-vaccine by those very authorities, as is anyone who refuses to strictly follow the federal vaccine schedule.

If public health officials wish to continue to force vaccination on children even when their parents are uncomfortable with being blocked from having any say in that decision, the day may not be far off when the so-called anti-vaxxers could hold a majority opinion on this issue. Speaking for parents all over the country, Veronica Andrade of Brooklyn simply said, “My kids, my choice.”1 


References:

1 Linge MK. Parents Refuse to Give Kids Flu Shots, Swear They’re Not Anti-Vaccine. New York Post. Nov. 15, 2015.
2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Early Estimates of Seasonal Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness—United States, January 2015 WeeklyMorbidity and Mortality Weekly Report Jan. 16, 2015.
3 Piper-Terry M. Healthy Children & Adults Vaccinated with Flu Shot are Dying. VaxTruth Jan. 4, 2015.
4 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Children, the Flu, and the Flu Vaccine. CDC.gov.

28 Responses

  1. ask the schools to publish or supply raw deidentified data on attendance, sick days, PISA results, graduation marks for the school comparing vacc with no-vax,… win win,.. and for Gardasil, ask for pre and post vacc attendance rates, compare with non vax as placebo…wake them up!

  2. the current vaccine schedule is a crime against humanity. where there is risk, there must be choice. so now i am being forced to give my child a vaccine for a disease which when acquired naturally is easily treated and offers lifelong immunity, but the vaccine itself is ineffective and has horrific known side effects listed right on the packaging including death. how is this happening???? why isn’t there more outrage about this. is everyone sound asleep????

    1. Lesly > I could not agree more with you about vaccines being dangerous, I would even say it is child abuse and infanticide. You do have a choice. Don’t send your children to public school. Private school or homeschool. I know for some parents it’s difficult but you have to decide at what price are you willing to endanger your children? If all parents who are awake and love their children took them out of the public schools, there would be quick change. Although the change may well be a door to door vaccination campaign to force everyone.

      1. We should not have to take our children out of public schools. It’s a basic right to be able to refuse medical treatment. If we can’t refuse, then, as our founding fathers knew well, forfeiting power to the state may result in the abuse of that power by the state. Even if we assume that the current government is beyond abusing state power, there is nothing to prevent a future government from using its power to act for interests that are contrary to the health and well-being of its citizens.

    2. “Where there is risk, there must be choice.”

      EXACTLY! I hope you don’t mind, but I’m borrowing that catchphrase. I’m also going to start using “My kids, my choice!”

      In fact, we all should make these the catchphrases of the movement. Use them anywhere and everywhere!

  3. Newsflash, you have the freedom to educate your own children.

    If you are truly enraged, pull your children out of the government controlled education programs.

      1. LJRuede > You are probably right. However, I am a single parent with 6 kids. I homeschooled my youngest three once I started to educate myself about the government schools. Was it hard??? Yes, it was. Thankfully I had a church support system and family close by. It still can be done.

    1. These laws are the reason I will homeschool my youngest all the way through high school, and I am thankful that I have the opportunity. Sadly, many do not have the ability to work from home or not work at all and so home education is out of their reach…

    2. More important is to remember WE are the government. We need to not only remove our children from danger but CHANGE the laws. They will only get worse if we just remove ourselves and don’t push back. We need to continue to write our legislator and demand they do their job of representing us. The more vocal we become the less they can say that we are just a minority.

    3. It’s not that simple. Depending on the program and state laws, even home-schooled children are required to attend partial classroom instruction at local schools, as well as extracurricular activities (some required) run by the school or community.

      There’s also the very real possibility of this mandatory legislation eventually targeting home-schooled children, as more parents opt to do that. For instance, it could be tied into the programs as a prerequisite for admission.

  4. As a homeshool mom of two myself, I agree with dan that you do have the freedom to educate your own children (although I am not certain about the particular requirements in New York State.) This is a wonderful option if you are a two parent family with enough income from one person to make it financially viable for the other to forgo income generating work. Not impossible in single-parent families or two income generating parent families, but extremely challenging. (Homeschool parents work a great deal – it is just without income.) But to say that people should concede the right to have access to free public education if they are not willing to have their child subjected to vaccinations – products pedaled by an extremely wealthy and powerful industry that is regulated by a system that is systemically corrupt – is coercive at best. Come on dan, let’s not be tools. We also have the freedom to think for ourselves and do our own research about the risks of vaccines and the structural problems of a public health program creating captive markets for a highly profitable and influential industry.

  5. Please check the you tube and book below for more on Nagalase
    Doctor Ted Broer – healthmasters.com
    You Tube: Hagman & Hagman with Ted Broer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g0NMH4RXZ4
    and Tim Smith MD:
    The GcMAF Book – Free here: http://gcmaf.timsmithmd.com/
    The Culprit is Nagalase – prevents vitamin D – you can’t live without Vitamin D; that is why all the hype about taking Vitamin D, too many people getting not enough due to the nagalase reaction in vaccines

  6. Vaccine ideology is not based on accurate science. It is based on assumptions. It assumes the reason most of my generation did not get polio after being vaccinated in the 1950’s is because of the polio vaccine. It does not take into account that most of my generation were raised in the cleanest households ever. We had hot and cold running water and electricity. We had mothers determined to raise clean children. We had electric refrigeration. We had access to clean water. We had warm homes, even in the winter. We were the first generation to enjoy these advantages. This allowed us to be healthier, not the vaccine program we so blindly cooperated with.

    1. AND the number of polio and measles cases, at least, were in precipitous decline before the vaccines were introduced.

  7. I have read this article linked to the NVIC website and I have a suggestion. I have contacted NVIC and asked them to include petitions with some of their emailings. It’s not enough to read about the latest outrage, we need to make our voices heard. I get messages from an organization that uses Voter Voice, which automatically sends petitions to members of Congress, and includes space for signers’ comments. Please contact NVIC and any other vaccine civil liberties activist group and ask them to use something like Voter Voice. https://info.votervoice.net/
    Case in point: NVIC recently called for the repeal of the 1986 vaccine law indemnifying the vaccine manufacturers. This would be an excellent issue for a petition. State affiliates of NVIC could use it for pending state legislation.

  8. I am concerned that we are mis-labelling the problem and thereby losing the battle. In the article above the author says, “that the fight is not so much over which parents identify themselves as “anti-vaxxers” but over the right of parents to make medical decisions for their children without interference from public health officials and doctors carrying out government vaccine policy.’
    The right to make medical decisions for our children is certainly a key issue but, as I learned in medicine administration training as a caregiver, if I give a wrong med I am guilty of assault and battery and if the “patient” dies I can be accused of murder. Only a doctor can decide what the right medicine is because they are presumed to have learned the complete range of benefits, risks and alternatives of any medicine.
    While federal law may protect doctors from being sued in a vaccine injury case, it cannot protect them from being guilty in principle.
    Has this line of reasoning been followed anywhere?

  9. I am NOT a parent, but I am 100% in agreement that the parents bear the responsibility for their children they should also have the right to decide how to raise them. YOUR CHILD, YOUR CHOICE….I am with you!

  10. Why some parents who are agree with vaccines at the same time are so scare about children without vaccines. It is assumed that unvaccinated children are who are at risk that vaccinated children are protected . Vaccinated but do not trust their shots ?

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