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.

  • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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    6 days 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.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      5 days 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.

    • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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      6 days 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
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        6 days 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

  • Red_October@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

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

    • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
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      6 days 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.

    • Joeffect@lemmy.world
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      6 days 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
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        6 days 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.

      • Red_October@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        I had this idea, like what if we used our own cells to make some of the identifying surface proteins of viruses and stuff, and use that to train our immune system on what to look for. We wouldn’t even need to cultivate the pathogen itself at all.

        • Joeffect@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Your using big words… You must be one of them folks we have to stab with our pitchforks… Get the hell out of here

  • Freefall@lemmy.world
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    5 days 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
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      6 days 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?

      • Prehensile_cloaca @lemm.ee
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        5 days ago

        So they’re saying God is either impotent, or callously cruel? Yeah, definitely dedicate your life to worshipping that. Brilliant logic.

  • blueamigafan@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Lost my uncle at the height of covid because he wouldn’t get vaccinated, apparently because he thought it was population control not sure how many more kids he was going to have at 70 but there we go. He basically spent too long on nonsense Facebook pages and the inevitable happened, all because some random people online convinced him and they will never be held to account.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

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

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      Vaccines aren’t anywhere near 100% effective, they rely on herd immunity which means enough people have to have the vaccine so the disease can’t get a foothold and goes extinct.

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        While they might not be 100% effective, but 99% or even 90% are good enough to stop a disease from getting a problem.

      • serenissi@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Some vaccines need to be 100% reliable like the tetanus one. The bacteria live in soil everywhere. Herd immunity isn’t going to do a thing there.

        • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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          5 days ago

          Correct, but sometimes you have to distill information into one sentence for it to sink into people’s heads. It’s baffling to me that everyone didn’t learn the basic science of vaccines during the pandemic, but here we still are.

          The true and actionable message is that “fuck you, I got mine” is generally a useless and dangerous attitude towards almost every vaccine.