New York City moms are seeing spots.
The measles are back — forcing parents into the uncomfortable position of grilling other moms and dads to determine if their kids have been vaccinated.
Once, a playdate would be cancelled if a kid got the sniffles — now, parents will put the kibosh on the fun if any non-vaxxed children are there.
“There are vaccination wars all over,” says Lyss Stern, CEO of Diva Moms, who has three children, including an 11-month-old daughter. “In the playgrounds, music classes, doctors’ offices.”
At Tribeca Pediatrics in Fort Greene, a group of parents is demanding separate waiting rooms for vaccinated children and non-vaccinated children. In just two days, the group collected 118 petition signatures.
“I don’t want to be in a waiting room with kids who haven’t been vaccinated,” says small business owner Janna Meyrowitz Turner, 31, who has an 8-month old son named Harley. “It’s really scary.”
Dr. Michel Cohen of Tribeca Pediatrics understands the concern among the petitioners. But he’d have a much bigger problem if he simply turned away patients who did not want to immunize.
Instead, Cohen brings those parents in and encourages them to inoculate their children.
“Their fear is not usually scientifically based,” says Cohen. “We get a lot of people to change their minds. We have a very good success rate.”
But most moms won’t take a chance that little Bobby is actually Typhoid Mary.
“If I knew that someone didn’t vaccinate their kid, then I would absolutely not let my kid play with them,” says Park Slope mom Dana Blitstein, 38. “It’s totally ridiculous not to have your children vaccinated. You’re hurting the herd, and it’s all misinformation not based in science. You would think these people who are educated and have money would be vaccinating their kids, but they’re superstitious even about the flu vaccine.”
Erika Katz is one of those moms. On Monday, she and her 12-year-old daughter were both home in Midtown with the flu.
“It’s just one more vaccine,” says Katz, the author of “Bonding Over Beauty” and the mother of two kids. “Why is it necessary? You don’t want to be putting something into your child thinking you’re helping them, and worry something bad could come.”
Katz had her two children vaccinated as babies, but she is wary of the various shots kids typically get throughout childhood. And she cites the most common reason among anti-vaccination moms for refusing the needles: an infamous 1998 study that suggested a link between vaccinations and autism — and was debunked years ago.
That “study” turned out to be an analysis of just 12 kids. It was quickly discredited, its “findings” ridiculed, and its author, Andrew Wakefield, barred from practicing medicine.
But that didn’t stop TV show star Jenny McCarthy from writing a book about its merits, the 2007 New York Times bestseller, “Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism.”
As a result, McCarthy has been the most prominent anti-vaxxer in the country, and still influences New York moms today.
“She referenced this idea that there was mercury in all these shots,” says Katz. “A lot of parents were concerned (and some) saw speech delays (in their kids). It seems like almost every kid is in occupational therapy these days.”
Experts argue that the only reason we are seeing measles again is because some people, inclined to suspicion of the pharmaceutical industry, still latch onto that lone and long discredited study.
“It has done real harm,” says Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation in Midtown. “It put the scary idea in people’s minds. Even in the face of mountains of science, people still hold onto that fear.”
Singer, who has a 17-year-old daughter with autism, is very clear on the facts about vaccinations.
“Jenny McCarthy is not a scientist,” says Singer. “She proudly reports that she got her degree from the University of Google. She did a lot of harm, and measles is nothing to laugh at. It kills children.”
New York City law requires all students to get regular vaccinations and booster shots — and as a result, the rate of non-immunized children at public schools is less than 1%. Private schools do occasionally allow students to submit a doctor’s note or a religious explanation as to why they cannot abide by the rules. The result, ironically, is that diseases that once infected only the poor, who lacked health care, are now making inroads among the well-to-do, who are opting to not take advantage of it.
And that offends the pro-vaxx crowd.
“Moms who don’t vaccinate feel like they’re making a private choice, but it has to become a public choice,” says physician Dara Kass, a Park Slope mother of three children, including a 2-year-old son who will be entering the school system soon.
“I sent out an email to his nursery school saying, ‘If you’re not going to vaccinate, I need to pull my kid from school,'” says Kass.
