HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT

Showdown in New York. Declaring an emergency this month, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered compulsory vaccinations in the affected neighborhoods — where four Brooklyn zip codes account for 83 percent of the city’s 390 cases — and threatened $1,000 fines against anyone who didn’t comply. That led a group of parents to sue the city’s health department, claiming their “religious beliefs are being disregarded.” But Rockland County, New York, which has reported about three dozen new cases in the past four weeks alone, went even further than New York City and banned unvaccinated minors from all public places. That ban was blocked by a judge and later revised to include only those diagnosed with measles. If New York state lawmakers succeed in enforcing stricter rules, it wouldn’t be the first legal crackdown on religious exemptions: That’s exactly how authorities in California responded to a December 2014 measles outbreak that began at Disneyland.

But is it really about religion? Despite the belief among some of New York’s Orthodox Jews that vaccines — which contain traces of animal cells — violate Rabbinic law, no prominent religious authority has spoken out against them. Instead, experts say the highly insular nature of Hasidic communities lends itself to easy manipulation by opportunistic anti-vaxxers. They spread misinformation, such as claims that immunization causes autism, among people who are already deeply skeptical of modernity. “Being a religious Jew, you also get used to having a minority viewpoint,” a Hasidic community leader told Vox. Other tightknit religious communities have been hit with outbreaks in the past: In 2014, the Amish of Ohio accounted for more than half of the 383 U.S. measles cases that year. But many people, according to one state senator in New Jersey, which saw a 38 percent spike in religious exemptions over the past four years, tend to use that loophole for personal, nonreligious purposes.

Shots heard around the world. Faith-based refusals to vaccinate are not confined to the United States. After the Indonesian Ulama Council issued a fatwa against vaccines last summer, only 8 percent of children were found to have been immunized in the country’s only Sharia-enforcing state. In Japan, authorities attributed part of that country’s recent measles outbreak — the largest in a decade — to religious group Kyusei Shinkyo, whose members don’t believe in medicine. Interestingly, even these diverse communities eventually fell into line: The Indonesian Ulama Council walked back its fatwa, and Kyusei Shinkyo later apologized for its role in Japan’s outbreak. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported a 300 percent increase in measles cases in the first quarter of 2019; religious dissent aside, WHO suggests anti-vaxxers and social media are at least partly to blame for spikes in high- and middle-income countries.

WHAT TO READ

My Fellow Hassidic Jews Are Making a Terrible Mistake About Vaccinations by Moshe Friedman in The New York Times
“As infections linked to this outbreak spread as far as Michigan, I can’t help wondering what has made some of us dismiss basic science, embrace quackery and treat objective truths as if they are no more than suggestions.”

The Struggle to Fight Measles in Close-Knit Communities by Sumathi Reddy in The Wall Street Journal
“With the Amish, there appeared to be a lack of understanding of the risk of measles, she says. With the Somalis in Minnesota, it was a fear of the MMR vaccine causing autism, despite multiple studies proving it doesn’t, experts say. With Eastern Europeans in Washington state there is a distrust of government and its motives to get people vaccinated, say community members there.”

WHAT TO WATCH