NEW CITY, N.Y. — A state judge has issued a preliminary injunction against a suburban New York county’s emergency order banning children from public places unless they’ve been vaccinated against measles.
Supreme Court Justice Rolf Thorsen ruled Friday in favor of several dozen parents challenging Rockland County Executive Ed Day’s order, part of efforts to stop a measles outbreak that has infected 166 people since October.
The 30-day order enacted on March 26 bans unvaccinated people under 18 from gathering places including schools, stores, and churches. Civil rights lawyer Michael Sussman called Day’s action “arbitrary and capricious.” Many in the Jewish Orthodox community in the county told STAT last month they worried that the move would only exacerbate a fractured relationship with the local government.
The judge said such emergency orders cannot exceed five days. He also noted that 166 measles cases in a population of 330,000 people over six months doesn’t constitute an “epidemic” meriting an emergency declaration.
Health departments in two other states reported cases of measles they are monitoring. On Friday, Maryland’s health office warned that anyone who visited 4000 Old Court Road in Pikesville in Baltimore County last Tuesday between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. may have been exposed to measles. Officials also say individuals who may have been exposed at additional locations are being directly notified.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said on Friday five additional cases of measles bring to 39 the number confirmed in the state this year. Each of the newly confirmed cases was in Oakland County, which now has 38 confirmed cases. The other case was in Wayne County. Infected individuals range in age from 8 months to 63 years.
Michigan-39 cases of measles in a population of 9.996 million is not an outbreak or alarming. Measles wasn’t a dangerous disease until the measles vaccine was developed. Measles was considered a childhood illness. Statically measles deaths had declined 98% before a vaccine was developed.
Dr. Alexander Langmuir, the father of modern day epidemiology was a strong supporter for development of the vaccine even though he knew that measles was a
“self-limiting infection of short duration, moderate severity, and low fatality, which has maintained a remarkable stable biological balance over the centuries.”([14] A. Langmuir, “The Importance of Measles as a Health Problem,” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 52, no. 2, 1962, pp. 1–4.)
He also stated,
“To those who ask me, ‘Why do you wish to eradicate measles?’ I reply with the same answer that [Sir Edmund] Hilary used when asked why he wished to climb Mt. Everest. He said ‘because it is there.’ To this may be added “And it can be done.”[15] (ibid)
He never said, “Because it’s maiming thousands with blindness and encephalitis and killing hundreds, and is a blight worse than Black Plague”.
What’s missing from this article is when the ban was put in place there were 5 active cases of measles. When the ban was tossed out the number of cases had dropped to 3. The judge in this case made rational decision based on real science.
Measles Epidemic
ANNOTATIONS
Measles epidemic [page 354]
Br Med J 1959;1:351.2 (Published 07 February 1959)
In the first three weeks of this year about 41,000 cases of measles were recorded in England and Wales. This is well above the corresponding figures of the last two years – namely, about 9,000 in 1958 and 28,000 in 1957 – though it is below the highest levels reached in the last nine years. To give some idea of the main features of the disease as it appears today and of how it is best treated, we invited some general practitioners to write short reports on the cases they have seen in their practices recently.
Pull up the journal and read Doctors reports. What you will notice in the reporting is the lack of hysteria among the doctors. Why-because they know what Dr. Alexander Langmuir knew when the vaccine was created.