That’s the concern, anyway.
With its measles outbreak spreading to two additional states, Texas is on track to becoming the cause of a national epidemic if it doesn’t start vaccinating more people, according to public health experts.
Measles, a highly contagious disease that was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, has made a resurgence in West Texas communities, jumping hundreds of miles to the northern border of the Panhandle and East Texas, and invading bordering states of New Mexico and Oklahoma.
Based on the rapid spread of cases statewide — more than 200 over 50 days — public health officials predict that it could take Texas a year to contain the spread. With cases continuously rising and the rest of the country’s unvaccinated population at the outbreak’s mercy, Texas must create stricter quarantine requirements, increase the vaccine rate, and improve contact tracing to address this measles epidemic before it becomes a nationwide problem, warn infectious disease experts and officials in other states.
“This demonstrates that this (vaccine exemption) policy puts the community, the county, and surrounding states at risk because of how contagious this disease is,” said Glenn Fennelly, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Texas Tech University. “We are running the risk of threatening global stability.”
[…]
“This is a very multi-jurisdictional outbreak with three states involved and about seven or eight different local health departments, in addition to some areas where the state serves as the local health department. There are a lot of moving parts,” said Katherine Wells, director of public health for the City of Lubbock, during a Tuesday meeting of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a national organization for large metropolitan health departments.
Most of Texas’ measles cases are in unvaccinated school-aged children and are concentrated in the Mennonite community in Gaines County, which traditionally has low vaccination rates.
Wells said efforts to increase the vaccination rates in Gaines County, which is about 70 miles from Lubbock, and the surrounding region have been slow as trust in the government has seemingly reached an all-time low.
“We are seeing, just like the rest of Americans, this community has seen a lot of stories about vaccines causing autism, and that is leading to a lot of this vaccine hesitancy, not religion,” she said.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to the politicization of vaccines and overall weariness to health mandates like quarantines and masks. Public health officials are now battling misinformation and public resistance to measles.
Wells said because the state can’t stop people from traveling, she fully expects this outbreak to last a year, and the surrounding states and the nation should prepare themselves for a potential spread.
“Measles is going to find those pockets of unvaccinated individuals, and with the number of cases and ability for people to travel, there is that risk of it entering other unvaccinated pockets anywhere in the United States right now,” Wells said.
[…]
New Mexico’s public health officials started spreading awareness of vaccinations immediately after they learned Texas had its first measles case and before New Mexico got its first case.
“We started setting up clinics and getting the ball rolling,” Jimmy Masters, the southeast region director for the New Mexico Department of Health, said. “Let’s see what we can do to get people in the doors and vaccinated beforehand.”
Nearly 9,000 New Mexicans have received measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine shots between Feb. 1 and March 10. During that same time period last year, officials vaccinated 5,342 people.
Texas has held multiple vaccination clinics in the outbreak area, but according to the Texas Department of State Health Services, only 350 doses have been administered.
New Mexico has also emphasized its Vaxview website that keeps track of residents’ immunizations, allowing concerned people to check within seconds if they need a shot. Texas has a vaccine tracking program known as ImmTrac2, but it’s an opt-in program that doesn’t have most adult records. If someone doesn’t opt in by age 26, their records will not be retained.
“We told people to contact us to ensure their vaccine status is up to date,” Masters said. “If they aren’t sure, just call the health office so we can find out for them. And if they don’t have their records updated for the vaccine, then we can ask them to come in and take advantage of the clinics or come in as walk-ins.”
Because of this, most of Lea County is considered immunized, Masters said, so public health officials in New Mexico don’t view the outbreak as rapidly evolving.
Back in Texas, the opposite is playing out. Advice from public health officials is seemingly ignored, and vaccine efforts are struggling.
Can’t imagine why. Kudos to New Mexico for its response to the outbreak. There’s a reason the numbers are climbing at a much faster rate in Texas than over there.
As far as vaccine messaging goes for Texas, I regret that I have to share this story with you. It’s one of the roughest things I’ve read in a long time.
The Texas parents of an unvaccinated 6-year-old girl who died from measles Feb. 26 told the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense this week that the experience did not convince them that vaccination against measles was necessary.
“She says they would still say ‘Don’t do the shots,’ ” an unidentified translator for the parents said. “They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be.”
The couple, members of a Mennonite community in Gaines County, spoke on camera in both English and Low German to CHD Executive Director Polly Tommey and CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker.
“It was her time on Earth,” the translator said the parents told her. “They believe she’s better off where she is now.”
“We would absolutely not take the MMR,” the mother said in English, referring to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccination children typically receive before attending school. She said her stance on vaccination has not changed after her daughter’s death.
“The measles wasn’t that bad. They got over it pretty quickly,” the mother said of her other four surviving children who were treated with castor oil and inhaled steroids and recovered.
The couple told CHD that their daughter had measles for days when she became tired and the girl’s labored breathing prompted the couple to take her to Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock. There, the girl was intubated and died a few days later. The other children came down with measles after their sister died.
Mother Jones had this story earlier. Like many people, I’m a fan of crime fiction. I picked up an Agatha Christie novel in high school and have devoured murder mysteries and similar stories ever since. That includes a large number of stories with truly repugnant depictions of all kinds of violence. After Olivia was born, I found I just couldn’t handle stories that included violence committed against children. It was too much, and the escapist pleasure I had gotten wasn’t there. It was too close to home. I still feel that way, so maybe I’m just too sensitive for this discussion.
I am at an absolute loss to comprehend this reaction by those parents. I can’t quite bring myself to be mad at them, as they have suffered the worst loss imaginable, however bizarre I find their reaction to it. I am incandescent with rage at these fucking ghouls from that RFK villains’ lair who exploited them like this, plus the local anti-vaxx doctor playing some perverted Pied Piper role, Ben Edwards. I don’t recognize myself as being from the same species as them. I do not know what to say. NBC News has more, if you can stomach it.
deep breath Okay, let’s move on to the updated case count.
The number of measles cases associated with an outbreak in western Texas has grown to 309, with 30 cases reported over the last three days, according to new data released Friday.
This means the total number of Texas cases linked to the outbreak in roughly two months has surpassed the number confirmed for the entirety of last year in the U.S., which saw 285 cases nationwide, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Almost all of the cases are in unvaccinated individuals or in individuals whose vaccination status is unknown. At least 40 people have been hospitalized so far, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS).
Just two cases have occurred in people fully vaccinated with the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
Children and teenagers between ages 5 and 17 make up the majority of cases, at 130, followed by children ages 4 and under accounting for 102 cases.
[…]
The CDC has confirmed 378 measles cases this year in at least 17 states: Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont and Washington. This is likely an undercount due to delays in states reporting cases to the federal health agency.
The Star-Telegram has a listing of the counties that reported cases, of which three are new – Garza, Hale, and Hockley. They also have a nice embedded map of the counties that have reported cases, which shows how close together they mostly are, and why Lamar County is such an outlier. The Chron confirmed that Oklahoma’s count is still at four – hoping for the best for y’all – and also had this forehead-smacking anecdote:
The New Mexico Department of Health reports 38 measles cases. The outbreak in this state remains confined to Lea and Eddy counties. Both share a border with Texas.
On Tuesday, the agency reported concern after a Texas traveler with an active measles infection visited Guadalupe and Valencia counties in the first part of the month, staying in a hotel, eating at a local restaurant and visiting a local Catholic church.
Jesus Christ. Stay the fuck at home when you’re sick, people! What are we doing here?
To bring it back to where we started, here’s another view of the trajectory of this outbreak.
As measles cases in West Texas are still on the rise two months after the outbreak began, local public health officials say they expect the virus to keep spreading for at least several more months and that the official case number is likely an undercount.
But there’s a silver lining, officials say: More people have received a measles, mumps and rubella vaccination this year in Texas and New Mexico, which also has an outbreak, compared to last year — even if it’s not as high as they would like. And pharmacies across the U.S., especially in Texas, are seeing more demand for MMR shots.
[…]
Texas’ outbreak, which has largely spread in undervaccinated Mennonite communities, could last a year based on studies of how measles previously spread in Amish communities in the U.S. Those studies showed outbreaks lasted six to seven months, said Katherine Wells, director of the public health department in Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock’s hospitals have treated most of the outbreak’s patients and the public health department is closely assisting with the response.
“It being so rural, now multistate, it’s just going to take a lot more boots on the ground, a lot more work, to get things under control,” Wells said during a media briefing this week. “It’s not an isolated population.”
[…]
If the outbreak goes on until next January, it would end the United States’ status of having eliminated measles, which is defined as 12 months without local virus transmission, said Dr. William Moss, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University and executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center.
“We’re only three months in. I think if we had a strong response where the messaging was clear that measles vaccination is the way to stop this outbreak, I would be surprised if it went for 12 months or more,” said Moss, who has worked on measles for 25 years, mostly in Africa. “But we’re not seeing that type of response, at least from the federal government.”
[…]
Still, there are signs the outbreak has had an effect on vaccinations, especially locally.
Between Feb. 1 and March 18 last year, New Mexico Department of Health registered 6,500 measles vaccines. During that timeframe this year, more than 11,600 measles vaccines were administered in New Mexico — about half given to adults and half to children.
Southeast New Mexico, where the outbreak is located, represents a large portion of the count, with 2,369 doses administered.
In Texas, at least 173,000 measles doses were given from Jan. 1 to March 16, compared to at least 158,000 over the same timeframe last year, according to the state health department. That includes more than 340 doses in given by public health in the West Texas outbreak area as of March 11.
Texans must opt-in to the state’s immunization registry, so most people’s vaccinations are not captured in the Texas Department of State Health Services numbers, department spokeswoman Lara Anton said.
“We don’t know if more people are opting in or if this is a true reflection of an increase in vaccinations,” Anton wrote in an email. “It may be both.”
Pharmacy chains Walgreens and CVS told The Associated Press that they’re seeing higher demand for MMR vaccines across the U.S., especially in the outbreak areas.
A little bit of hope, I suppose. You do have to wonder where we’d be if we had a competent and non-evil Presidential administration, but that’s too deep a rabbit hole for me to climb into right now.
It’s Saturday, so let’s end with some music.
I am acquainted with Boiled In Lead thanks to my former roommate and bridge partner Stephen, who played the “From The Ladle To The Grave” CD on which this song appears many times during our time together. The refrain to this song has run through my head many times over the last few years. Thumbs up to that CD, by the way, if you liked what you just heard.
“I can’t quite bring myself to be mad at them, as they have suffered the worst loss imaginable”
I can, because they are willfully ignorant. Also the 4 children who survived measles may suffer complications later in their lives. Then there’s who the sick children may have spread the disease to. All preventable. All unnecessary.