Measles Death in Texas
The sadly predicted has come to pass.
Note: This is what expertise looks like in the Trump administration.* Certainly the photo captures the current vibe from the White House: A bunch of unqualified clowns in positions of power and influence happy at their good fortunes while real world problems pile up across the country.
Via the AP: A Texas child who was not vaccinated has died of measles, a first for the US in a decade.
The school-aged child had been hospitalized and died Tuesday night amid the widespread outbreak, Texas’ largest in nearly 30 years. Since it began last month, a rash of 124 cases has erupted across nine counties.
This is a tragedy because it was avoidable.
But our new Secretary of HHS is on top of it.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official and a vaccine critic, said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of the Health and Human Services is watching cases and dismissed the Texas outbreak as “not unusual.”
He appeared to misstate a number of facts, including a claim that most who had been hospitalized were there only for “quarantine.” Dr. Lara Johnson at Covenant contested that characterization.
“We don’t hospitalize patients for quarantine purposes,” said Johnson, the chief medical officer.
Kennedy also seemed to misspeak in saying two people had died of measles. A spokesman — Andrew Nixon, for the Department of Health and Human Services — later clarified that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified only one death.
Kennedy’s uninformed dismissiveness does not bode well for public health over the next four years.
Some information on the community being hit can be found via the Texas Tribune: Who are the Mennonites in a Texas community where measles is spreading? The following is noteworthy.
“Historically and theologically, there has not been any religious teaching against immunization in Mennonite circles,” Nolt said via email. “There’s no religious prohibition, no body of religious writing on it at all. That said, more culturally conservative Mennonite (and Amish) groups have tended to be under-immunized or partially-immunized.”
Partly, he said, that’s because they don’t engage as regularly with health care systems as more assimilated groups do. Many traditional Anabaptist groups did accept vaccinations that were promoted in the mid-20th century, such as for tetanus and smallpox, but they have been more skeptical in recent years of newly introduced vaccines, Nolt said.
Also,
All states allow exemptions for medical reasons, while most allow exemptions for religious or personal reasons, or both. Only five states — California, Connecticut, Maine, New York and West Virginia — have allowed no non-medical exemptions, according to the conference, but West Virginia is taking steps this year to allow religious or philosophical exemptions.
Texas law allows exemptions for “reasons of conscience, including a religious belief.”
U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates dipped in 2023, and the proportion of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high, according to federal data posted in 2024.
There are always going to be unvaccinated persons, but this outbreak demonstrates the real risk of the curent trend, fueled by people like Kennedy. We need people at HHS who press for higher rates, not people like RFK, Jr. who will not do so.
*I will note that Dr. Phil has no official role in the Trump administration, although he has, for some reason, gone on ICE raids. See, for example, via NBC News: ‘Dr. Phil’ embedded with immigration authorities during ICE action in Chicago. He is from West Texas, so maybe he can get RFK, Jr. to pay attentiotn to the problem.
Sad, frustrating, and unnecessary.
I hope the deaths are limited to this one, and that the outbreak is soon over. Maybe others will decide that having this “freedom rash” is undesirable and will get their kids vaccinated.
I’m just relieved smallpox was eradicated, and only samples of variola remain in labs.
And worried that polio hasn’t been, and summer is coming up.
@Jen: Followed by “Freedom Death”
Musk’s gutting of health agencies should help contain disease outbreaks. Not.
Because Trump and those around him are unqualified and incompetent. Brain-wormed, frog-voiced heroin addict RFK Jr. is a nepo baby with no healthcare credentials; he doesn’t have a clue.
Republican voters put mediocre buffoons in charge just because they’re white men. So chaos is sure to follow — just like Trump’s COVID mismanagement.
But hypocritical rightwing bigots want us to believe its blacks, women, and queer folks who do not get hired based on merit. Every MAGA accusation is a confession.
Adam Ray is a better Dr.Phil than Dr. Phil.. at least Adam Ray is funny
Just to clarify, individual cases of measles are not uncommon, but actual outbreaks are uncommon. Individual travelers leave the country and go to countries with low vaccination rates and return with measles. Of not, the very large majority of these travelers are unvaccinated. Also of note, the outbreaks that we have had are almost all among unvaccinated groups.
Steve
@steve:
Yep, and the reason for this is largely religious–both the vaccine refusal, and the travel abroad to proselytize/mission work, etc.
@Jen: Sadly, as far as vaccines are concerned, the FAFO phase can be deadly.
Oops, forgot to add that our current flu outbreak is the worst in 15 years and the CDC has suspended its outreach program to increase flu vaccinations. It has also been rough on kids as last year we set a record with 200 deaths and we are on pace to break that record this year. Also, remember that while we concentrate on death statistics for every kid who dies there are hundreds who are hospitalized and many of those have long term sequelae.
Steve
A couple days ago I read a FOX story on the measles outbreak. It seemed like half the commenters were sure it was immigrants. It seems to have taken some time for our supposedly liberal MSM, who are allergic to any critical mention of religion, to have started mentioning it’s a Mennonite sect.
RFK Jr
With him in charge it’s going to be the new norm.
@gVOR10: They’ll claim it was started by an ‘illegal immigrant’, although what we often see is someone unvaccinated, contracting measles while abroad, and bringing it back to their communities.
The under-vaccinated Mennonite community was just the tinder, ready to light with a spark. Note that no significant religious sect has proscriptions against vaccination, including Mennonites and Amish.
Over 60 people, in Samoa, died after listening to RFK’s bullshit. I fear the number of Americans will be much higher.
No one seems to mention the risk of Measles’s cousin Rubella. Pregnant women who contract the disease run a high risk of miscarriages, stillborn births and severe birth defects if the fetus survives.
They look so happy that a child died of measles. They really do.
@Daryl: Not unreasonable for the toll to be higher in the US. How many times larger/more populous than Samoa is the US?
What is so infuriating is that vaccines are as near to a silver bullet as one can get in medicine.
We’ve been learning some vaccines are neither as durable nor as effective as we thought. Still, there’s no denying that things like measles, whooping cough, polio, mumps, rubella, and a lot more serious childhood diseases are largely gone from such countries or areas that have implemented widespread vaccination. Nor that smallpox has vanished off the face of the Earth.
It may be we need boosters for childhood vaccines later in life. It may also be the best we can hope for most respiratory viruses, like flu, is reducing the severity of disease. Both are far better than the alternative.