Jerome Kunkel, Vaccines
CBS New York: WLNY

Basketball Player Refuses Vaccines, Then Sues During a Chickenpox Outbreak Because He Can't Play

It's simple: vaccines prevent diseases. There are a growing number of people siding with research claiming trace ingredients in those vaccines can cause conditions like asthma, autism, and diabetes. Then again, anyone with one good brain and two good eyes can read that vaccines actually prevent diphtheria, hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, tetanus and yellow fever, among many others. Vaccines also reduced the number of polio cases in the world from 350,000 in 1988 to just 22 worldwide in 2017. But go ahead, keep pretending they don't work.

Jerome Kunkel is a high school senior at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart/Assumption Academy in Walton, Kentucky. Kunkel was barred from playing basketball because he refuses to get the chickenpox vaccine, alleging having to get one violates his Christian faith and religious beliefs. He's now suing his local health department over that "discrimination" while the district battles a school-wide chickenpox outbreak.

According to the Northern Kentucky Health Department, there have been 32 cases of chickenpox found at the school as of March 14. The organization instructed any unvaccinated student that do not have proof of vaccinations to stay home for at least 21 days after the last appearance of the illness. In addition, all school events and extracurricular activities are canceled during the same time frame.

Kunkel says that the public health department is infringing on his First Amendment rights as a Catholic, adding the school is being negligent for allowing him to go to school but not play basketball. It's almost like he didn't read the memo at all?

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"Since 1973, Roe v. Wade to now, they've killed 60 million, butchered 60 million babies and they're going to rub it in a Christian's face by taking that vaccine and putting aborted baby cells in it and putting it in your body," Bill Kunkel, Jerome's father, said.

While absolutely ridiculous, Kunkel's claim that vaccines are made of "aborted baby cells" from 60 million babies is wildly untrue.

In 1960, tissues from two legal, elective abortions were taken to grow the vaccines we still use today. Those fetal cells were replicated ever since and aren't being pulled out of aborted fetuses. Those cells were used in the creation of the chickenpox, rubella, or hepatitis A vaccines.

Let's be serious, you're going to miss a few basketball games while there's a CHICKENPOX OUTBREAK happening if you don't want to vaccinate yourself. If Jerome Kunkel were infected, then rubs his sweaty, pubescent body against players from other schools, there's a huge risk of him infecting other schools with the disease and making this way worse.

If an 18-year-old kid wants to risk being a walking public health threat, then he the right to protect his body however he sees fit. But for his family to then sue and claim they're being discriminated against? I'm not claiming to know everything about vaccines, but don't be ridiculous. Get the shot or sit at home and play video games for three weeks and stop complaining about it.

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