NY Take Action: Let Cuomo know new Medical Exemption regulations are awful
Autism Action Network
Last Friday the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) issued new emergency regulations concerning medical exemptions from vaccine mandates to attend school, and other changes to vaccine policy, and released them at the time guaranteed to avoid as much media and public attention as possible. The regulations were released under false pretenses and needlessly restricts physicians' authority to recommend the best medical outcome for their patients, eliminates longstanding titer tests as a viable option to unneeded vaccines, and interferes with the right of patients and physicians to make medical decisions without interference from disengaged state bureaucrats.
Read the regulations here:
Regulations are purely the work of the Governor and his appointees. Please call Governor Cuomo and Howard Zucker, MD, the New York State Health Commissioner and politely express your opposition to the new regulations.
Governor Andrew Cuomo, (518) 474-8390
Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, (518) 474-2011
And please click on the Take Action Link to send messages of opposition to the Governor, Zucker, and your State Senator and Assemblymember.
Even though the regulations were passed specifically in response to the passage of S2994a and A2371a, which repealed the "religious" exemption from vaccine mandates to attend school, the Cuomo administration, in a nod to Orwell, refers to the "religious" exemption as a "non-medical" exemption.
Every aspect of the state's effort to take away this basic human right of the people of New York has been marked by dishonesty and efforts to keep their actions hidden, and these regulations are no different. No evidence has ever been offered that children with religious exemptions had any role to play in the measles outbreak.
Cuomo justifies the "emergency" regulations by saying that New York is "currently experiencing" an outbreak of measles, even though no cases of measles have been reported in New York City, so far in August, and on Monday the NYSDOH measles hotline was reporting that so far in August there have been three only new cases of measles, all of them in Rockland County. See: https://www.health.ny.gov/press/releases/2019/2019-08-16_vaccinations_emergency_regulations.htm
NYSDOH is clearly trying to undermine Public Health Law Section 2164, Paragraph 8, which gives New York physicians broad authority to issue medical exemptions to vaccine mandates to attend school, which reads:
"If any physician licensed to practice medicine in this state certifies that such immunization may be detrimental to a child’s health, the requirements of this section shall be inapplicable until such immunization is found no longer to be detrimental to the child’s health."
Obtaining a medical exemption in New York has always been very difficult. This difficulty is reflected in the number of medical exemptions issued and rejected by. Only .1% of students in New York have medical exemptions, and less than .1 % in New York City. New Jersey has twice as many as New York, and Connecticut has three times as many, even though both of those states have automatically obtainable religious exemptions. See https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6539a3.htm
Between 2013 and 2018, 54% of all medical exemptions were rejected by New York City according to data obtained by the Autism Action Network via a Freedom of Information Law request.
The regulation seeks to limit contraindications for a medical exemption to those identified by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), an appointed federal board of representatives of the main institutions in the vaccine industry, including federal agencies and private trade groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics. The only contraindication allowed by the ACIP for the vast majority of vaccines is a documented case of anaphylaxis resulting from a prior injection of a vaccine.
Regulations concerning titers tests as a substitute for vaccines are made more restrictive. Some appear nonsensical. Serological testing is required for all three types of polio, even though tier testing is no longer available in the US for type 2 polio according to an NYSDOH letter of June 6, 2017 See: https://www.schoolhealthny.com/cms/lib/NY01832015/Centricity/Domain/99/Polio%20Serology%20School%20Letter%20Final.pdf.
And type 2 polio has not been included in polio vaccines globally since 2016 following the declaration by the Global Commission for the Certification of Poliomyelitis Eradication.
See: http://polioeradication.org/news-post/global-eradication-of-wild-poliovirus-type-2-declared/
Please share this message with friends and family, and please post to social media while we still can.
Autism Action Network <jgilmore@autismactionnetwork.org>