Holy Bear Turd - Get in Line, Epis...

Mountain Laurel Waldorf School stands good chances of doubling the US' measles cases:

The school has just over 130 students enrolled. .../... According to NYS Health Commissioner Shah, nearly half of the students have not been immunized for measles.

Wow.

Students and staff who have not been immunized have been excluded from the school until the danger of infection passes. While measles immunization is a requirement in New York State, private schools have the authority to make exceptions. The concern in New Paltz is for anyone who may have attended or visited the school after September 10.

Indeed.

Update: This morning the actual numbers appeared:

Eighty of the private grade school's 145 students were sent home, said Ulster County Health Commissioner Carol Smith. Since the weekend, 27 children have been vaccinated and allowed to return to school, Smith said Monday.

I found this statement of one of the parents of the vaccinated children interesting:

One Mountain Laurel parent, John Ascione, has two children attending the school; both have been vaccinated. He characterized opposition to vaccination as a result of skepticism by some parents of children attending an alternative-minded school to what he called the "corporate influence" in such institutions as the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC.

I wonder whether he and the other parents are fully aware of the Steiner philosophy and that it is not just a squishy, nacheral, crunchy alternative to teh ebil FDA/CDC run world.

In Yet Other News, Bears Still Crap in the Woods

and measles prefer the crunchy (unvaccinated) Waldorf/Steiner pupils, especially those who travel. The Dutchess County Department of Health wrote Friday:

The Dutchess County Department of Health announced today a confirmed case of measles in a student at the Mountain Laurel Waldorf School in New Paltz, NY.  Anyone who has visited this school since September 10th or has had any contact with anyone from this school should immediately make sure that they are up to date with their measles vaccinations.  All medical practices and laboratories in the area should be on high alert that there may be a number of other children and families who have been exposed and could be communicable.

We have learned that a number of students at this school were not vaccinated and may become ill and put other children and families at risk for contracting measles.

Mountain Laurel Waldorf School has no alert on their website, but if the student attended the school for several days before being diagnosed, it may be too late anyway. A potential feast for epidemiologists (and bloggers), coming at high risk for the children involved.

On the other hand, Waldorf-minded parents might be delighted. In the Steiner philosophy, measles (and other rashy diseases) help the kids mature:

At the higher emotional and mental levels, negative forces such as greed and selfishness have also been expelled. So a child who has measles is afterwards less self-centered and more openhearted, and often more able to express his or her individuality. The personality becomes rounder and fuller, and more joyful and contented, as a step towards maturity and adulthood.

And don't worry about complications or death, since

Serious complications in childhood illness which produce permanent damage or even death are probably deeply founded in the destiny of the person concerned.

Yes, totally out there, but so is the entire cult (see Melanie Byng's excellent three part series on DC's Improbable Science blog). Steiner Kindies and schools and anthroposophically minded doctors have therefore been doing a great job in keeping measles circulating and racking up impressive case numbers, like the 174 within 3 weeks at a 300 pupil Steiner school in Salzburg in 2008 or the 400+ cases in the practice of one doctor in the 1999/2000 measles outbreak in Coburg Bavaria.

Hopefully, this new outbreak will end with as few cases as the recent outbreak at Ozark Adventist Academy.

Pertussis Closes Waldorf-Based Private School in Virginia

A whooping cough outbreak hitting more than half (23 of 45) their pupils has led to the closure of that small private school for a week. The local Health Care Director unambiguously stated that lack of vaccinations caused this outbreak and that the children who were affected were unvaccinated (7 adult contacts also got the disease).

This outbreak is demonstrating two things - disease outbreaks happen in "pockets" of unvaccinated children, and, those "pockets" are often found in Waldorf/Steiner oriented institutions (for a comprehensive critical introduction into Anthroposophy, read the three part series on DC's Improbable Science blog). Indeed, the last whooping cough outbreak I personally saw was in the Steiner Kindi in two streets down from where we lived in Germany. The daycare director interpreted the outbreak as "the children seeking disease, because they needed a break" and proposed to close the Kindi for three weeks (a plan curbed by the working moms whose children attending the facility had been vaccinated and were just fine). What a break that was, with several children needing a 3 week residential rehab to learn how to breathe normally again... I'd rather pay money for a break than health, but that may be just me.

Similarly, quite impressive measles outbreaks in (mostly German speaking) countries have started in Steiner schools and Kindergartens and were sometimes specifically centered around Anthroposophical doctors with an anti-vaccine vaccine-critical outlook. Steiner himself deemed rashy diseases, like measles and Scarlet fever, which in his life time each killed a large percentage of the annual birth cohort, important for the development of proper karma and the shedding of bad miasms (don't ask - read link above, it is weirder than you think and weirder than you would expect any contemporary parent to believe and doctor to peddle).

The good news is that school and parents are complying with the suggested quarantine and/or treatment measures to limit transmission. Hopefully, some of them will research the "crunchy, holistic" philosophy behind their school and their vaccine refusal a bit more carefully, too.