Unvaccinated Americans Barred From Public Spaces?

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked

measles outbreak rockland county

Story at-a-glance

  • March 27, 2019, Rockland County, New York barred any infant, child or teen under the age of 18 who is not vaccinated against measles from entering “public places” until the state of emergency is lifted in 30 days or until they get an MMR shot
  • April 5, 2019, a Rockland County judge lifted the state of emergency, saying the number of measles cases did not meet the legal requirement for an emergency order
  • There’s a growing push for health care providers in the U.S. and Canada to vaccinate minor children without their parents’ consent if they feel a child is “mature” enough to make his or her own health risk decisions
  • California state Sen. Dr. Richard Pan has introduced a bill to make it even more difficult for children attending day care or school to get a medical vaccine exemption. The bill, SB276, would make the California Department of Public Health the final judge of the validity of all medical exemptions, not the child’s physician who has written the exemption
  • Since California eliminated the personal belief vaccine exemption in 2015, medical exemptions have risen from 0.2 percent in 2015-16 to 0.7 percent in 2017-18. According to Pan, this tiny rise in medical exemptions among children attending day care and school is putting communities at serious risk for disease outbreaks

WARNING!

This is an older article that may not reflect Dr. Mercola’s current view on this topic. Use our search engine to find Dr. Mercola’s latest position on any health topic.

If you had any doubts about growing tyranny in the U.S., several recent news stories should open your eyes to the harsh truth. The U.S. Constitution protects the civil liberties of all Americans, including freedom of thought, speech, conscience, religious belief and the right to dissent and petition the government, as well as the right to assembly.1,2,3

Yet these constitutional rights are being infringed upon in remarkably blatant ways these days: Unvaccinated infants, children and teens under the age of 18 are being banned from entering public places in Rockland County, New York; a SWAT team was sent to break down the door of a home in another state where parents were caring for an unvaccinated child with a high fever after a doctor reported the child should have been taken to a hospital;

Legislators in several states have introduced bills to suspend the legal right of parents to make medical risk decisions for their minor children and allow doctors instead to get "informed consent" from the young children themselves; a pediatrician politician in California is lobbying for a law that will give state health department officials the power to deny a medical exemption written by a child's physician.

The times we live in are as surreal as they are terrifying, and clearly demonstrate that unless we stand together to protect the rights of ALL, and not just select groups who agree with the status quo, we are all in jeopardy. Even if you are not affected right now by the forced vaccination dragnet sweeping across the nation, rest assured, in time you will be caught in its net as well if in the future you decline even one of the dozens of government recommended vaccinations for yourselves or your children.

Unvaccinated Children in New York Suburb Barred From Public Places

Perhaps the most egregious example of the “boiled frog” game currently being played to see how apathetic and compliant Americans are when their constitutional rights are stripped away, was the Rockland County, New York, ban on unvaccinated children. As of March 27, 2019, anyone under the age of 18 who is not vaccinated against measles was barred from entering “public places,”4,5 defined as:6

"[A] place where more than 10 persons are intended to congregate for purposes such as civic, governmental, social, or religious functions, or for recreation or shopping, or for food or drink consumption, or awaiting transportation, or for daycare or educational purposes, or for medical treatment.

A place of public assembly shall also include public transportation vehicles, including but not limited to, publicly or privately owned buses or trains, but does not include taxi or livery vehicles."

Considering "public places" includes just about any space outside the domain of your private home, unvaccinated infants, children and teens were essentially being placed under what closely resembles house arrest. Parents whose unvaccinated child was caught in a public place faced six months in jail or a $500 fine.7

Children with state-approved medical exemptions were exempted from the ban, but not those with religious exemptions. Schools were also barred from allowing unvaccinated students from attending, unless they have an approved medical exemption. Within the first four days of the ban, nearly 500 MMR vaccinations were administered.8

Fortunately, on April 5, a Rockland County judge lifted the state of emergency, saying the number of measles cases did not meet the legal definition of an epidemic required for an emergency order declaration.9 Judge Rolf Thorsen also stated that unvaccinated children are “hereby permitted to return to their respective schools forthwith and otherwise to assemble in public places.”10

Rockland County has a large orthodox and Hasidic Jewish community, a portion of which declines a number of vaccines for religious reasons. (One commonly cited religious objection is that some vaccines use DNA proteins from aborted fetal cells and rubella vaccine in the MMR shot was created using aborted fetal cells.)

County commissioner of health Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert said they've had "excellent cooperation from the [orthodox Jewish] community,"11 with many rabbis urging their congregations to vaccinate their children.

To learn why the forced vaccination campaign is more about Big Pharma profit-making than protecting public health, see "Why Herd Immunity Is a Hoax." You can also find more information about measles and why the hype about the infection's risks is being overblown in "Measles Propaganda Can Have Dire Public Health Ramifications."

The Push to Eliminate Parental Right to Protect the Welfare of Minor Children

In related news, there's a growing push for health care providers in the U.S. and Canada to vaccinate minors without their parents' consent if they feel a child is "mature" enough to make his or her own health risk decisions. Timothy Caulfield, a professor of health law and policy at the University of Alberta, told the Calgary Herald:12

"From an ethical and legal perspective, if they are a competent teenager, then they are the ones you should be having the conversations with … I would say there is an obligation to revisit this topic [of vaccination] with a patient who has become competent."

Calgary Herald continues:13

"The mature minor doctrine plays out on a case-by-case basis. So, a minor may be competent to make decisions about vaccines, but maybe not open-heart surgery. Still, given vaccines are considered safe, and given that discussions around vaccinations would be relatively straightforward, 'I think it's entirely possible a 13-, 14- or 15-year old would be competent on their own to consent' to the shots, Caulfield said."

A Washington, D.C., lawmaker introduced a bill last month to allow minor children of any age to get vaccines in the city without a parent's knowledge or consent after a doctor says a child is "mature" enough to make the decision.14

The problem with this reasoning is that vaccines come with risks that can be greater for some individuals than others and, unlike a mother or father, minor children are not always aware of their own health or vaccine reaction history. Will a doctor truly inform a child and will the child be able to understand?

Just how long of a list of possible side effects are children going to be given when the topic of vaccination comes up?

Is a 13-year-old really capable of deciding whether the risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, encephalopathy, chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy, rheumatoid arthritis or other serious brain and immune system disorders are risks that he or she is willing to take to obtain temporary artificial immunity to a particular infection, if even temporary vaccine-acquired immunity is obtained?

These are among a long list of vaccine injuries for which patients have received compensation from the federal vaccine injury compensation program. For a more extensive list of potential side effects, see "How Much Do You Really Know About Vaccine Safety?"

One could easily argue the decision to vaccinate requires far greater critical thinking skills, maturity and careful consideration than weighing the benefits and risks of open-heart surgery.

New York Bill Aims to Strip Parental Consent for Vaccination of Minors

The same "mature minor" doctrine is being more frequently called for in the U.S. as well. As reported by The Vaccine Reaction:15

“[S]everal states already use the ‘mature minor’ doctrine to give minors the right to make vaccines decisions and other decisions about medical interventions without parental knowledge or consent. So far, the rights of minors to seek and receive vaccination varies from state to state. For example … Washington has been using the recent outbreak of measles to invoke the mature minor policy.

Similar laws are in place in Alaska, Arkansas, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. Expanding that slippery slope, a new bill has been introduced in New York that would permit minors 14 years of age and older to be vaccinated without parental permission ...

State Senator Liz Krueger and Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy have introduced bill S. 4244/A. 6564 proposing to allow children older than age 13 to ask for and receive any of the vaccines in the Public Health Law, which would include poliomyelitis, mumps, measles, diphtheria, rubella, varicella, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), pertussis, tetanus, pneumococcal disease, meningococcal disease and hepatitis B.”

Vaccine Package Inserts Debunk 'Safety Across the Board' Claims

Will the doctor giving a vaccine to a child without the parent's knowledge or consent actually read the vaccine package insert to the child, and explain what it all means? As just one example, the 2005 package insert for Sanofi Pasteur's Tripedia vaccine (diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis or DTaP) states:16,17

"A review by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) found evidence for a causal relationship between tetanus toxoid and both brachial neuritis and Guillain-Barré syndrome.

A few cases of demyelinating diseases of the CNS [central nervous system] have been reported following some tetanus toxoid-containing vaccines or tetanus and diphtheria toxoid-containing vaccines, although the IOM concluded that the evidence was inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship.

Adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine include idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS, anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence and apnea. Events were included in this list because of the seriousness or frequency of reporting.

Because these events are reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size, it is not always possible to reliably estimate their frequencies or to establish a causal relationship to components of Tripedia vaccine."

According to this insert, Sanofi Pasteur admits SIDS, autism and brain inflammation are all side effects reported after Tripedia DTaP vaccinations and were reported frequently enough to warrant inclusion, even if a causal relationship cannot be established due to the limitations of prelicensure studies and a lack of vaccine adverse event reporting by vaccine providers that was mandated under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 but is not enforced.

In 2017, DTaP was one of five vaccines ruled by the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) to have caused the death of a 5-month-old baby boy, who died of SIDS within 24 hours of vaccination.18

The Tripedia DTaP vaccine also contains a number of bioactive and potentially hazardous ingredients, including casein, to which some children are allergic; the excitotoxin MSG; thimerosal (mercury) and aluminum, both of which are neurotoxic; formaldehyde and polysorbate 80.

To say that all vaccines are so safe that parents don't even need to be involved in the vaccine decision-making process is irresponsible in the extreme. It is mothers and fathers, who are legally responsible for their minor children, and they are the ones who will bear the emotional and financial burden if something goes wrong, not the doctor and certainly not the vaccine manufacturer.

Vaccine administrators and manufacturers were effectively shielded from any financial liability for vaccine injuries and deaths by amendments to the 1986 Act and by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011.

California Legislator Aims to Make It Even More Difficult to Obtain Medical Exemption

As noted by Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) in "Don't Let Them Frighten You Into Giving Up This Medical Choice," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and medical trade organizations have so narrowed the definition of a medical exemption that almost no previous vaccine reaction or health condition is considered a contraindication to vaccination.

More than 99 percent of Americans do not qualify for a medical exemption under federal vaccine guidelines today.

California state Sen. Dr. Richard Pan, Sacramento, who spearheaded the 2015 campaign to eliminate the personal belief vaccination for children attending day care and school, has now introduced a bill to make it even more difficult to get a medical vaccine exemption in the state. According to Pan, since the removal of the personal belief exemption in California, medical exemptions to vaccination for children have tripled in the state.19

"It is clear that a small number of physicians are monetizing their exemption-granting authority and profiting from the sale of medical exemptions," he told ABC News.20 The new bill, SB276, would make health officials employed by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) the final judge of the validity of all medical exemptions written by private physicians. As reported by the news station:21

"Additionally, under SB 276, CDPH will create and maintain a database of medical exemptions, and CDPH and County Health Officers will have the authority to revoke medical exemptions granted by licensed physicians if they are found to be fraudulent or inconsistent with contraindications to vaccination per CDC guidelines.

The lawmaker argues the implementation of Senate Bill 277, which abolished the personal belief exemption in California, generated an overall vaccination rate increase to more than 95 percent statewide.

Pan says California has also experienced a dramatic increase in the number of medical exemptions. Since the passage of SB 277, the rate of medical exemptions has more than tripled (from 0.2 percent in 2015-16 to 0.7 percent in 2017-18). Low vaccination rates in certain pockets of the state put children and communities at risk."

Let me repeat that: 0.7 percent of Californian children have received a medical exemption from vaccination, and they now want you to believe this miniscule ratio of unvaccinated children put communities at serious risk for disease outbreaks? At risk of what, exactly? If all of these vaccines are so effective at protecting against disease, what's the concern?

1 in 168 Children Require Emergency Care After First Round of Vaccinations

In 2015, immunologist Tetyana Obukhanych, Ph.D., wrote an open letter22 to legislators explaining why children who have not received certain vaccines (specifically IPV, DTaP, HepB, and Hib) pose no risk to others. She also addressed the frequency of serious adverse events, stressing the importance of personal choice in the face of such risks:

"It is often stated that vaccination rarely leads to serious adverse events. Unfortunately, this statement is not supported by science. A recent study done in Ontario, Canada, established that vaccination actually leads to an emergency room visit for 1 in 168 children following their 12-month vaccination appointment and for 1 in 730 children following their 18-month vaccination appointment (see appendix for a scientific study, Item #5).

When the risk of an adverse event requiring an ER visit after well-baby vaccinations is demonstrably so high, vaccination must remain a choice for parents, who may understandably be unwilling to assume this immediate risk in order to protect their children from diseases that are generally considered mild or that their children may never be exposed to."

In the lecture above, Obukhanych, who wrote the book "Vaccine Illusion: How Vaccination Compromises Our Natural Immunity and What We Can Do to Regain Our Health," explains how vaccines damage your immune function, which can result in any number of adverse health effects.

Health and Human Services Has Neglected Critical Vaccine Safety Obligations for Decades

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 granted partial financial immunity to vaccine makers for injuries and deaths caused by their vaccines and, in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court declared FDA licensed and CDC recommended vaccines to be "unavoidably unsafe" and effectively removed all remaining liability from the multibillion-dollar vaccine industry.

With that liability risk eliminated, so was any incentive to make sure their products are safe. The responsibility to ensure vaccine safety instead falls on the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS). As reported by AIM Integrative Medicine:23

"Hence, since 1986, HHS has had the primary and virtually sole responsibility to make and assure improvements in the licensing, manufacturing, adverse reaction reporting, research, safety and efficacy testing of vaccines in order to reduce the risk of adverse vaccine reactions.

In order to assure HHS meets its vaccine safety obligations, Congress required as part of the 1986 Act that the Secretary of HHS submit biennial reports to Congress detailing the improvements in vaccine safety made by HHS in the preceding two years."

August 2017, Del Bigtree, founder of Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder of Children's Health Defense, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the HHS, requesting access to its safety reports.24 After being stonewalled for eight months, ICAN and Kennedy sued the HHS, demanding copies of the congressional reports to be released.

As noted by ICAN,25 "provisions of the (1986 Act) … legally require the HHS to conduct science that reduces the risk of vaccine injury. Failure to do so could result in legal action against HHS … HHS has not acted in its duties regarding vaccine safety, forcing 78 million American children into a vaccine program with no safety provisions."

ICAN also recently sued the FDA after the agency failed to respond to FOIA requests for copies of the clinical trials it relied upon when licensing influenza vaccines for pregnant women.

A February 11, 2019 ICAN update26 reveals "the FDA has not licensed any influenza vaccine as an indicated use for pregnant women, let alone conducted or required any pharmaceutical company to conduct any clinical trial which supports the safety of injecting pregnant women with the influenza vaccine."

Refusal of Medical Treatment Treated as a Violent Crime

The last piece of news I'm going to cover here is the Arizona case where a SWAT team with guns drawn used a battering-ram to break down the door to the home of a family whose 2-year-old son had a fever and a doctor reported them to state authorities for failing to take the child to a hospital. As reported by NBC News:27

"Sarah Beck brought her 2-year-old son to Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine on Feb. 25 and was told he had a temperature of more than 105 [degrees Fahrenheit], according to reports by the Chandler Police Department.

The doctor believed the child could be suffering from a 'life-threatening' illness that could not be tested for at the clinic, so she told Beck to take the toddler to the hospital … The mother was reluctant because the boy wasn't vaccinated, and she feared 'possible repercussions,' the report said.

When the doctor found out later that day the child had never made it to the hospital, she called the DCS [Department of Child Services], which contacted the Chandler Police Department because 'there was a present danger to (the child's) health/wellbeing and that he required immediate medical attention,' police said."

The parents insisted the child did not need medical attention as he was recovering and his fever was rapidly coming down. The doctor suspected the child might have meningitis, but it turned out to be respiratory syncytial virus, and the parents appear to have been correct in their assessment that he was not in severe danger.

One could also argue that tyrannical repercussions against those who choose not to vaccinate their children is at fault here, as the parents would probably not have hesitated to take the boy to the hospital had they not been fearful of repercussions — a fear that is well warranted, I might add. This case is a frightening illustration of medical tyranny, where excessive violence is used against parents who disagree with the medical establishment.

In this case, the couple's three children were all removed from the home, and Arizona state Rep. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa (who has worked on legislation that requires DCS to obtain a search warrant before removing a child) expressed concern that the baby pregnant Sarah is carrying might be taken from them as well "over a misdiagnosis by the doctor."28

"I call on DCS to immediately return the children who are also being traumatized due to this misdiagnosis," Townsend said in a statement. "The parents were correct; the doctor was wrong."

Don't Let Them Shut Down the Vaccine Safety Conversation

Again and again, we find that there are big gaps in vaccine science and the most basic of safety investigations has been neglected or never was performed in the first place. Yet, we are told over and over again that "There is no debate. The science is settled: Vaccines are safe. End of discussion."

If you missed Loe Fisher's commentary on the effort to shut down the public conversation about health and vaccination, while calls for "no exceptions" mandatory vaccinations grow stronger, I urge you to read it or watch her video today. Now, more than ever, it is crucial to push this conversation into the broad light of day, because having the right to make our own decisions about medical risk taking such as vaccination is at the very heart of our freedom as individuals.

When government officials can break down your door because you disagree with your doctor, when doctors can sweet-talk your child into getting vaccinated without your child fully understanding the risks, when politicians can ban your children from entering public spaces simply because they're unvaccinated, then you know the end of freedom is very, very near.

The time to take a stand for the rights of everyone, not just the select few, is running out. And remember, once one small group loses its right to autonomy, everyone's right to autonomy will disappear shortly thereafter. Guaranteed. Because that's how tyranny works.

Don't think for a second that just because you believe in vaccination, and you and all of your children have received all your shots, that you're somehow immune from government overreach and tyranny. Before you know it, you may not have a choice in whether you want to take a certain drug or not.

Or the kind of surgical procedure that government health officials tell you that you must get. Or, you might suddenly find yourself part of a group deemed unfit to reproduce and be required to get sterilized "for the greater good" of society.

Who knows where it might end? In time, you may not have the right to choose your education — the government will decide what kind of worker bee they need, and what profession you're best suited for. Or, you may lose your right to marry someone the government does not approve of — if you're granted marital rights at all, that is.

Who's to say such civil and human rights cannot be taken away by certain individuals in control of an authoritarian government? Eliminating the legal right to exercise informed consent to vaccine risk-taking and to decline a vaccination for health reasons or for personal beliefs is a very slippery slope. One thing is for sure: It will not end there.

Top

By continuing to browse our site you agree to our use of cookies, revised Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.