Good to know we still have one of those.
A measles outbreak in Texas has grown to 159 cases, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it is now on the ground in that state to respond. The agency posted on X that it’s partnering with the Texas Department of State Health Services.
“This partnership – known as an Epi-Aid – is a rapid response by CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) to tackle urgent public health issues like disease outbreaks. EIS officers provide local officials onsite support for 1-3 weeks, aiding in quick decision-making to control health threats. The local authority leads the investigation while collaborating with CDC experts,” the post said.
Previously, the CDC had provided lab support and measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccines to Texas to help the outbreak response.
In an update Tuesday, Texas reported 159 measles cases, including 22 people who are hospitalized. The majority of the cases are in Gaines County, which is home to a large unvaccinated Mennonite population.
See here for the previous update. I’m glad that the increases continue to be incremental, but there’s no sign of slowing down, so we’re still very much on the upswing. As welcome as this response is, given that the outbreak is now a month old, I think we can fairly quibble with the “rapid” designation. As long as what we’re getting is real experts who are allowed to do their thing, I’ll let that slide.
On the other hand, there’s the RFK Jr of it all.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s hesitant response to the Texas measles outbreak — hinting that vaccination is important, but never fully embracing it — has left many experts wondering: Does the nation’s top health official support vaccines or not?
Kennedy, the Health and Human Services Secretary, wrote in an editorial published by Fox News on Sunday, that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine “is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease.”
Behind the scenes, however, Kennedy, a vocal, longtime vaccine skeptic, appears to be taking steps to minimizing the importance of vaccination. Under his leadership, two meetings to discuss next steps for vaccines were canceled. And he’s “collecting names of potential new members to put on a committee that recommends which vaccines Americans should get and when, according to people familiar with the matter,” The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
As of Tuesday, 159 measles cases had been confirmed in Texas. Most of the sick people, including a young child who died, hadn’t been vaccinated against the virus.
Kennedy acknowledged in the editorial that measles — one of the most contagious viruses in the world — is especially risky to unvaccinated people. He stopped short of urging the public to get the MMR vaccine.
“The decision to vaccinate is a personal one,” Kennedy wrote.
Some pediatricians and public health experts have balked at the editorial, saying it was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to comfort his anti-vaccine supporters amid backlash after he appeared to downplay the outbreak during a Cabinet meeting at the White House last week.
“While he kind of gives some lip service to the vaccines,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, “the fact that he used phrases like ‘personal’ choice is a wink and a nod to the anti-vaccine movement. They know he’s their man.”
Dr. Molly O’Shea, a Michigan pediatrician and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the fact that Kennedy didn’t fully back vaccines is “concerning.”
“He certainly did not disparage vaccination in the way he worded it, but he did not come out with a strong statement of support for vaccination,” O’Shea said. “Vaccination is by far the most effective strategy at reducing morbidity and mortality from measles. That was not his go-to message.”
It’s a stark contrast in messaging from the previous Trump administration.
In 2019, when two measles outbreaks in New York threatened to reverse the United States’ status of having eliminated measles, then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar didn’t mince words.
“Measles vaccines are among the most extensively studied medical products we have, their safety has been firmly established over many years,” Azar said in an April 2019 HHS statement.
He went on to say that “measles is not a harmless childhood illness, but a highly contagious, potentially life-threatening disease.”
At the time, Kennedy told members of the Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine nonprofit that he founded, that the MMR vaccine is worse “than the illness it’s pretending to prevent.” He didn’t provide scientific evidence to back up the statement, flummoxing vaccine experts.
Let’s never forget that RFK Jr has blood on his hands when it comes to the measles. It’s hard to imagine a worse person to be in a position of power for a time like this. And to be in a position of having to point out how much more competent the previous Trump administration was in handling a measles outbreak, I mean, just let that asteroid hit us already.
There’s another threat to look out for now:
There’s no antiviral or specific treatment used for measles in the U.S.
In the editorial and in an interview with Fox News Tuesday, Kennedy doubled down on a treatment often reserved for other countries: vitamin A.
“We’re delivering vitamin A,” Kennedy said in reference to how the federal government is helping in the outbreak. “Also cod liver oil, which has high, high concentrations of vitamin A,” he said.
It’s true that vitamin A is sometimes given to help treat measles in low-income countries where malnutrition is a factor, according to the World Health Organization. Most people in the U.S., however, have normal levels of the vitamin and don’t need any kind of vitamin A supplementation. Too much, experts say, is toxic.
Vitamin A is fat-soluble, meaning it accumulates in the body rather than exiting through urination. That is, the more vitamin A you take, the more it accumulates in organs like the liver.
“You can easily overdose on vitamin A,” Dr. Ronald Cook, chief health officer at both the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock and the city’s Health Authority, said in an interview Friday. “It’s not to be used over the counter for anybody who says, ‘my kid has the sniffles. Maybe it’s measles.’ Don’t do that.”
Anti-vaccine influencers and organizations have rallied around vitamin A as protection against and treatment for measles for years. During outbreaks, anti-vaccine groups have organized drives to fundraise and send vitamin A to affected communities.
Adalja of Johns Hopkins said Kennedy’s references to vitamin A only serve to discourage the MMR vaccine among his followers.
“When RFK Jr. is talking about vitamin A, people are going to say, oh, that’s his code word that we should be doing that, not the MMR vaccine,” Adalja said.
OK, so vitamin A and cod liver oil are the hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin of measles. Good to know. These were the first references I had seen for them, so I learned something new. And on the plus side, even RFK Jr’s tepid words in favor of vaccines have the hardcore anti-vaxxers super mad. So there’s that.
What we have not learned yet is the source of the outbreak.
Texas’ health commissioner told lawmakers Monday they are still trying to determine the origin of a South Plains-Panhandle measles outbreak more than a month after the first patients reported symptoms.
“I cannot link this particular outbreak,” Dr. Jennifer Shuford, who oversees the Texas Department of State Health Services, told the House Committee on Public Health. “We don’t know what the link is.”
During Monday’s hourlong discussion — the first time the Legislature has meaningfully addressed the outbreak in a hearing since the first case was reported in January — Shuford fielded questions about the state’s response, as well as those posed by Republican lawmakers about vaccine risks and whether the cause of the outbreak was due to illegal immigration.
While Gaines County is the center of this outbreak, infections have spread to eight other surrounding counties. Shuford told lawmakers Monday that the number of cases from the outbreak has increased to 158 and that four other measles cases — two in Harris County, one in Rockwall County and one in Travis County — have also been reported but linked to international travel and unrelated to the ongoing outbreak.
There were some deeply stupid things said by a couple of Republican legislators during that hearing, so I’m going to cut the excerpt there and move on. At least those outlier cases appear to be just that and not evidence of a more out of control spread. That’s something to hold onto.
Measles had struck this West Texas town, sickening dozens of children, but at the Community Church of Seminole, more than 350 worshippers gathered for a Sunday service. Sitting elbow-to-elbow, they filled the pews, siblings in matching button-down shirts and dresses, little girls’ hair tied neatly into pink bows.
Fathers shushed babbling toddlers as their wives snuck out to change infants’ diapers.
A little girl in this mostly Mennonite congregation was among those who’d fallen ill with the highly contagious respiratory disease, senior pastor Dave Klassen said — but she’s doing fine, and she happily played through her quarantine. He heard that at least two Mennonite schools shut down for a bit to disinfect.
What he hasn’t heard: Any direct outreach from public health officials on what to do as the number of those sickened with measles has grown to 146 and a school-age child has died. And though Klassen is a trusted church and community leader, his congregants haven’t asked about whether they should vaccinate their kids – and he wouldn’t want to weigh in.
“With this measles situation, I can honestly just tell you we haven’t taken any steps as a church,” he said. “We did leave it up to the mothers.”
[…]
At hospitals in Lubbock, 80 miles to the north and on the front lines of the outbreak, babies with measles are struggling to breathe.
Dr. Summer Davies, a Texas Tech Physicians pediatrician, said she has treated about 10 of the outbreak’s patients, most very young or teens. She said children have had to be intubated, including one younger than 6 months old. Others come in with such high fevers or severe sore throats that they refuse to eat or drink to the point of dehydration.
“It’s hard as a pediatrician, knowing that we have a way to prevent this and prevent kids from suffering and even death,” she said. “But I do agree that the herd immunity that we have established in the past isn’t the same now. And I think kids are suffering because of that.”
[…]
Brownfield Mayor Eric Horton is pro-Trump, he said, but also pro-MMR vaccine.
His county was hard-hit by COVID-19, Horton said, with nearly 90 deaths. So when measles cases came to his town of 8,600, Horton feared for his community. He said the local hospital has been busy administering vaccines since the outbreak started.
“Out here on the south plains of Texas, we are conservative people, but we also are not anti-vaxxers,” he said.
Across the region, people echoed this sentiment about routine childhood vaccinations in interviews with the AP and The Texas Tribune. Often, though, they are less supportive of COVID-19 and flu shots.
“It’s frustrating that (Mennonites) don’t vaccinate, and they put other people’s families and children at exposure for it,” said Stephen Spruill, a 36-year-old trucker from Seminole.
But “this is America. People have the right to choose.”
And the rest of us have the right to judge them for it. Which I do. And while Greg Abbott continues to shilly-shally, Judge Hidalgo and Mayor Whitmire are showing leadership. Good on them.
Mexico has issued a travel warning for Texas, warning citizens traveling here to take precautions against measles amid an outbreak that — as of Friday — has infected nearly 150 Texans and killed one.
The travel advisory, issued Wednesday by Mexico’s Ministry of Health, reports that the risk of contracting measles is moderate for citizens who travel to Texas. Travelers should ensure their vaccinations are up to date before heading to Texas, the advisory says.
The Ministry of Health also alerted Mexican citizens to measles cases reported in Alaska, California, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Rhode Island.
It’s safer in Houston than in some other parts of the state, that’s all I know.
I can sum up this 2,070+ word post in less than 40 words: “Vaccines aren’t legally required or mandated by the Federal Government, some unvaccinated people die from the illness, the presence of undocumented citizens could affect the entire population, and stop worrying about what RFK Jr., says or doesn’t say.”