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submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

Summary

A measles outbreak in rural West Texas has surged to 49 confirmed cases, mostly among unvaccinated school-age children, with officials suspecting hundreds more unreported infections.

The outbreak is centered in Gaines County, home to a large Mennonite population with low vaccination rates. Despite CDC support, Texas has not requested federal intervention.

The outbreak has now spread to Lubbock, raising wider public health concerns.

Experts warn it could persist for months without increased vaccination efforts, but skepticism toward vaccines remains a significant barrier.

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[-] GraniteM@lemmy.world 60 points 1 year ago

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.

“I feel all sleepy,” she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.

Roald Dahl, pleading with people to vaccinate their children against measles.

[-] Raiderkev@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

And much like a novel of his works, a bunch of kids are going to have to die for us to figure this out.

[-] Dnb@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 year ago

Maybe we can call them late term abortions to get Republicans to actually give a fuck about all the kids harmed by anti vaccination

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

According to the doctors from the DoYourOwnResearch University - like donvict, Joe Rogan, and Brainworms - it's probably because she didn't eat properly, get enough sunshine, and work out. Maybe a dose of HCQ or horse dewormer to top it off and she's be in top-top shape. And getting those chakras aligned...

Obviously, /s

Anti-vaxxers and the bullshit artists calling themselves "skeptics" (they are NOT FUCKING SKEPTICS, by the way - the abuse of that term is maddening) drive me crazy. They can all go fuck themselves. They are fine with killing people, even children, rather than admit they have no fucking clue what they are talking about. It's all about them and their goddamn ego.

[-] Red_October@lemmy.world 49 points 1 year ago

I hope some day we can invent some sort of treatment that could prevent kids from ever getting this disease.

[-] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 year ago

My greatest fear is that we will never find the cure for being an idiot. I know for some people that the disease is fatal.

[-] utopiah@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Luckily for you we'll soon be able to test your fear "Trump’s education secretary may be asked to dismantle the Education Department. Here’s what it does" https://apnews.com/article/education-department-trump-linda-mcmahon-9fc4fcef00e11b842063235798119cfc AP February 2025

[-] Joeffect@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Like why don't they just make something that makes the disease not hurt us and then put it in our bodies... Why do they have to have all this lab processed shit that they don't actually know what it does and try to put it in our bodies...

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

You know what's interesting is that the first real anti-vaxxers started because old vaccines would use pus from an infected cow. Something about it being unholy worship of cow or some nonsense.

Now the anti-vaxx crowd is all crying about synthetics... Can't make anyone happy.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

The truly OG anti-vaxxers had some among them that thought it was against their god's will to combat disease, if you can fucking believe it (people are stupid and horrible, it turns out):

https://newrepublic.com/article/121000/puritanical-roots-anti-vaxxer-movement-go-back-300-years

To treat small pox was seen as a form of blasphemy—a moral evil that refused to recognize that epidemics were acts of God.

I just don't understand how such a "god" could be worthy of worship, then. Imagine losing 9 children before they reached adulthood. I'd flip this "god" of theirs the bird, and try the cure, thankyouveryfuckingmuch.

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[-] HowAbt2morrow@futurology.today 46 points 1 year ago

How bad are the measles, really? Asking because I was born in the 1st fucking world and never met anyone under a 100 that met someone with it.

[-] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 44 points 1 year ago

We think of measles as a minor viral infection of kids that causes fever, rash, and a runny nose, and goes away without major complications. Unfortunately, that is not always so. Nervous system disease is a particular problem. SSPE occurs as a late, fatal measles complication in one out of 1,367 cases of measles in children younger than 5. One out of 1,000 children with measles gets an infection of the brain (encephalitis) early in the course of measles. About 15% of children with measles encephalitis die. Measles encephalitis led to the death of the writer Roald Dahl's daughter Olivia.

Children's brains can also develop an allergic reaction to the measles virus several weeks after infection. This is called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM). Children seem to recover, then get fever, confusion, headaches, and neck stiffness. Like SSPE and measles encephalitis, ADEM occurs in about one out of 1,000 cases of measles. It is fatal in 10% to 20% of patients. Survivors of measles encephalitis and ADEM often have epilepsy, brain damage, or developmental delay.

Measles has other serious complications. During pregnancy, it causes miscarriages. Measles can infect the cornea, and was once a common cause of blindness. Ear infections and hearing loss are frequent. Measles virus also infects the lungs, causing pneumonia in 3% to 4% of cases. Measles weakens the immune system for at least two months. Sometimes patients die of other infections immediately after they recover from measles. In a measles epidemic that killed more than 3,000 soldiers in the US Army in 1917–18, bacterial pneumonia was the major cause of death.

Measles: The forgotten killer - John Ross, MD, FIDSA, Contributor; Editorial Advisory Board Member, Harvard Health Publishing

[-] minkymunkey_7_7@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Essentially, when you're infected with measles, your immune system abruptly forgets every pathogen it's ever encountered before – every cold, every bout of flu, every exposure to bacteria or viruses in the environment, every vaccination. The loss is near-total and permanent. Once the measles infection is over, current evidence suggests that your body has to re-learn what's good and what's bad almost from scratch. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211112-the-people-with-immune-amnesia

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[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah, but this doesn't happen if you eat right, work out, get your chakras aligned and get enough vitamin D from sunshine, right?

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[-] tunetardis@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 year ago

I have no first-hand experience with it either, but understand that in addition to its direct shitty flu-like symptoms and the telltale rash, it has this strange ability to factory reset your immune system so you get to go through all those other diseases your body fought off in the past again.

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[-] reddig33@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

“In the US, 20 percent of people with measles are typically hospitalized. Five percent develop pneumonia, and up to 3 in 1,000 die of the infection. In rare cases, measles can cause a fatal disease of the central nervous system called Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, which develops years after infection. Measles also wipes out immune responses to other infections (a phenomenon known as immune amnesia), making people vulnerable to other infectious diseases.”

https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/02/texas-measles-outbreak-climbs-to-48-cases-almost-all-kids-13-hospitalized/

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[-] thallamabond@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Kills around 3/1000 in the US, BUT

Measles is a leading cause of vaccine-preventable childhood mortality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles

[-] jeffw@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Compared to a lot of terrible shit, less bad? But still bad. You’d have to be young or old to die from it with modern medicine.

[-] ThePantser@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

modern medicine.

So with RFK we're doomed.

[-] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

modern medicine.

Like vaccines!

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[-] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago

REALLY fucking bad

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[-] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 37 points 1 year ago

The part that sucks in all of this: the children who died didn't choose to not get the vaccine. Their parents did.

[-] Serinus@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

They might not die. They might just go blind or dead or have brain damage.

[-] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 19 points 1 year ago

But no autism! Cause that's wOrSt PoSsIbLe thing!

[-] TaiCrunch@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 year ago

As the parent of an autistic child, I'd much rather him be alive and autistic than killed by a completely preventative means.

Of course, that doesn't even matter because vaccines don't fucking cause autism.

[-] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 year ago

As an autist who is also vaxxed against many many things, I got autism ^2

[-] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

Man... That's a good point. These people are so fucked up.

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[-] mysticpickle@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 year ago
[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

lol Texas.

Hey, trump says drinking rat feces smoothies will help with that.

[-] tunetardis@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 year ago

So from what lemmy is reporting, we know West Texas has a measles outbreak and some giant fracking earthquake to contend with. Maybe toss in some radioactive exposure from a now-unmonitored nuclear facility and we've got the makings of a superhero origin story.

[-] harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year ago

In West Texas? It'll be a supervillain.

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[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago
[-] Norgoroth@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

It stops when all the unvaxxed kids die

[-] HighFructoseLowStand@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago

They will continue to die and let their children die to spite the rest of us.

[-] Freefall@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hahaha, that is really funny. People in red states dieing because of a disease we wiped out almost entirely. I really gotta open a "child coffin" plant in Texas.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Might have to start building walls around the areas where idiots are giving each other preventable diseases.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 11 points 1 year ago
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[-] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

Measles? Isn't there a vaccine for tha...oh...whoops...

[-] LMurch@thelemmy.club 5 points 1 year ago
[-] negativenull@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago
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[-] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Keep refusing vaccines, dummies

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[-] Majorllama@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

My God. If only there was some sort of preventative measure they could have taken!

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Well, their god is maybe the problem:

https://newrepublic.com/article/121000/puritanical-roots-anti-vaxxer-movement-go-back-300-years

The anti-vaccine movement today is not solely religious in character, but much of its rhetoric is identical to theological arguments made against inoculation more than three hundred years ago. As the Florida-based organization KNOW (“Kids Need Options Without Vaccines”), puts it, “All vaccines are made in violation of God’s Word.” Such thinking is partly responsible for the worst measles epidemic in twenty years.

If you think your god wants you and/or your kids to die from preventable diseases, maybe it's time for a new one?

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[-] pyre@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

remember who did this. it's not over.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I guess they are going to need to get a consultation from Brainworms about how to eat right, work out, make sure they have proper septic systems, and get their chakras aligned...

The anti-intellectuals strike again. Working very hard to turn America into a shithole country.

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this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
299 points (99.3% liked)

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