We know a pediatrician who says he can’t legally not take or drop patients who don’t want to vaccinate, but they have started more strongly counselling them that if they don’t want to vaccinate, they won’t like this pediatric group because all the doctors will be pressuring them to get vaccinations. (This pediatric group is one of the few in-network options in our area.) This school year is the first where CA parents who want a personal-belief exemption have to get a signature from a health care provider that says they have been given information about the risks of non-immunization.
School districts in CA can send all non-vaccinated kids home for the duration of an epidemic. The personal-belief exemption form says, “I understand that an unimmunized student may be excluded from attending school or child care during an outbreak of, or after exposure to, any of these diseases for the protection of the student and others.”
^^ As is their current right as a private business owner. I’d bet there will be outrage when the same pediatrician excludes other patients due to endangering the waiting public. I’d personally ban the the kid with the runny nose whose adult attendant couldn’t be bothered with keeping the little tyke from smearing snot all over everything.
Ynotgo- that’s interesting. I wonder if that’s a state law. I know of Pediatricians who drop kids here in MI. I say good for them- they have a responsibility to patients like Livia who are helpless.
Oh yes…where does it end. The silly train has not yet even hit causing speed.
CA schools are funded on a ‘butts in seats’ model. If a student is not in the seat that day the school loses a portion of it’s funding for that day. Now, if a school has a large number of unvaccinated kids who are forced to stay home it can have a very large and fast negative effect on it’s funding.
But wait…there is more…what about HIPAA privacy. If Johnny or Joannie gets suspended or refused access to school it can not be made public knowledge as to why. If J or J commits a suspendible or expellable offense, the rest of the student population is not entitled to know what happened. So, if now the non-vaccinated kids will be outed! Not only the school making their personal private health issues public, they are humiliating the little darlings. Oh…wait until the lawyers get ahold of this one.
No one’s humiliating the kids. They’re being removed from school for their own protection. Besides, when the parents submitted their vaccination exemption form they signed a statement acknowledging that their child could be excluded from school in the event of exposure to or during an outbreak of any of the diseases for which they have not been immunized.
Is the form the parents signed subject to HIPAA protections? I don’t know one way or the other. But, by sending these special snowflakes home at this time, the school is making a part of their health records public. Pretty easy to see where that can be a problem. We all value our HIPAA protected privacy. Hey…I’d like to know the health status of ALL the kids … so if any kid stays home sick with any communicable disease the prudent thing to do would be to post that information on a daily basis.
And remember, the un vaccinated are being singled out for a special type of treatment based on something they have not done, but only MAY POTENTIALLY do. Again, very very shaky legal territory.
A parent signing the form does not necessarily carry any legal weight. Can a parent sign away a child’s right to medical privacy? Could a school ask a parent of a child with any other potential infectious ability to sign a form saying the school gets to send them home when certain environmental forces align.
Can you hear it …just listen…the sound of the legal briefs being hurriedly assembled.
No one needs to disclose why the kids are being sent home. They just don’t show up. The same thing happens in places where kids are excluded from school when they have lice. Everyone can guess that’s why the kids are out but no one from the school makes an announcement beyond “someone in the class has lice, so check your kid’s head”.
I have a high school friend who I am not close to but am facebook friends with. She has two young children and occasionally posts these anti-vaxxer blogs and articles that make me want to really go off the rails. I scroll past because that would serve no purpose. I do notice, though, that she doesn’t get much discussion or likes, so I think there may be a lot of people biting their tongues.
I don’t see why. There are plenty of civil and criminal statutes that punish people for behaving in a reckless and dangerous manner even if no one is hurt. For example, if I an caught with an unlicensed firearm then I will be arrested for violating a law that admits that I have not hurt someone but that I MAY POTENTIALLY do so.
We require young men to register for the draft. Failure to register with Selective Service carries a penalty of up to 5 years in prison and/or a fine of up to $250,000.
^^^ What happens to conscientious objectors? Do you know if they still need to register even though they have a personal belief which would preclude them from ever actually being involved in a military activity? That would be an interesting case too.
@cosmicfish… your illegal fire loaded firearm is just that - illegal. Not vaccinating is not illegal.
Exactly… the same could be said for chicken pox when my kids were still in elementary school. If anyone in their class had been diagnosed, a note would go home to all parents from the school nurse’s office, stating chicken pox had been diagnosed in one of their classmates, but with no information as to who it was. Of course, within a couple of days, it was easy to figure out who it was.
I doubt this happens much anymore since the chicken pox vaccine has been available for years. So no violation of HIPAA.
I agree. Please. Let’s stop worrying about damaging the self-esteem of kids whose parents choose not to vaccinate them. Those kids have bigger worries. In my school kids are sent home for having lice, for having illness, for wetting their pants, etc…
Nobody is intentionally humiliated and hippo is not violated. Kids are resilient. They will survive that. But they do need to go home for their own protection and for that of others. Unvaccinated kids are no different.
Let’s be very clear here. It would not be the school causing the humiliation (not that I believe the child would be humiliated- it’s like a vacation for them). It would be the parents’ choices.
A kid’s right to trumps any right to not be humiliated.
Really, it amazes me that I even had to type out that sentence. Oy vey.
That isn’t the point. The point is that we DO penalize people for taking actions that endanger others even if the damage does not occur. I gave one example, the charges of reckless driving and child endangerment are others.
@dietz199 - yes, a conscientious objector must sign up with Selective Service. If a draft was to be reinstated, once found qualified for military service, they can then apply for classification as a conscientious objector.