On Thursday, New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation that rids religious exemptions from the school vaccination policy. This means that only medical exemptions will be accepted as a valid reason for a child not receiving their vaccinations. In a statement released upon signing the legislation, Gov. Cuomo explained his decision:
"The science is crystal clear: Vaccines are safe, effective and the best way to keep our children safe. This administration has taken aggressive action to contain the measles outbreak, but given its scale, additional steps are needed to end this public health crisis. While I understand and respect freedom of religion, our first job is to protect the public health and by signing this measure into law, we will help prevent further transmissions and stop this outbreak right in its tracks."
The health crisis Gov. Cuomo is referring to is the United States’ largest measles outbreak in over 25 years, fueled in large part by anti-vaxxer misinformation about the medical safety of the drug. The signing of the ban comes on the same day that the New York health department closed down two Yeshivas in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for allowing unvaccinated students and staff into the facilities, according to CBS NY local news. In New York, more closed-off communities like ultra-orthodox Hasidim have been fed a steady dose of bogus science and fear from anti-vaxxer activists, and that, coupled with more travel abroad, has become a cocktail for the spread of an extremely infectious childhood disease.
This is a blow to the anti-vaxxer movement that has continued to target vulnerable communities, even as the country has seen over 1,000 confirmed cases, almost entirely unvaccinated kids younger than 18-years-of-age. All one needs to know about how infectious a disease like measles can be is to look at Madagascar—with around 50 percent vaccination rates—which is facing well over 100,000 confirmed measles cases with thousands of deaths.
ArsTechnica points out that although this is an important piece of legislation, it will not necessarily stop dubious medical practitioners from taking advantage of more affluent anti-vaxxers parents, willing to pay higher prices to get the medical-exemptions they want for their children. As ArsTenchica reported, this is what happened in California after the state passed a similar law, banning “personal belief exemptions,” in the wake of the large measles outbreak in 2015. Some California legislators are working on a bill that would create a single standardized set of medical exemptions allowed—something that less scrupulous practitioners might not find as easy to wiggle around.