A Melbourne primary school who encourage enrolment of anti-vaccination families has had a mass chickenpox outbreak.
Brunswick North West Primary has 320 students altogether, and it is thought that around 80 of those students currently have chickenpox.
The school is known to not just ‘be tolerant’ of, but actually actively welcome children who have not been immunised. The Victorian state average for immunisations is 90.4%, but BNWP stated in May that approximately only 73.2% of their students were immunised.
The school also asked parents in one of their newsletters, to be tolerant of families who did not want to vaccinate their kids, printing this:
“Staff respect the rights of every family to make choices about immunisation and we will definitely not exclude children who are not fully immunised from our service. We expect all community members to act respectfully and with tolerance when interacting with other parents and carers who may have a differing opinion to their own.This includes an opposing understanding about child immunisation. In many aspects of our school life, we accommodate a range of opinions and beliefs from the parent community.”
Which seems to be a policy that has worked out well for them, ya know? Really, really well. Our most sincere thoughts go out to the little sloggers and their parents who did the right thing and had all their vaccinations, and now have chickenpox anyway because some people think very basic science is subjective.
And VIC Health Minister Jill Hennessy sounds a lil’ pissed, and rightly so:
“We’re significantly concerned about the myth makers who go out encouraging people not to immunise their children. Get your advice from a doctor, not from some quack who’s opposed to vaccination based on dodgy science.”
In other news, water = wet, fire = hot.
Source: Brisbane Times.
