this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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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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[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 123 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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 63 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 33 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] TaiCrunch@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] HowAbt2morrow@futurology.today 94 points 1 year ago (14 children)

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 97 points 1 year ago (10 children)

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 64 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] Kitathalla@lemy.lol 17 points 1 year ago

current evidence suggests that your body has to re-learn what’s good and what’s bad almost from scratch

While that's horrifying, I wonder if it could offer a glimpse into ways to get rid of allergies.

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[–] tunetardis@lemmy.ca 43 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] otp@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 year ago

Vaccinations too.

Y'know...maybe that's why the anti-vaxxers want measles. And want it to make a comeback.

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

“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 22 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

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 year ago

REALLY fucking bad

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[–] negativenull@lemmy.world 92 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Etterra@discuss.online 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Roadkill RFK will be harvesting their dead for food. Allegedly.

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[–] Red_October@lemmy.world 66 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] Joeffect@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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...

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[–] GraniteM@lemmy.world 57 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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 (1 children)

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

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[–] tunetardis@lemmy.ca 32 points 1 year ago (11 children)

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 22 points 1 year ago

In West Texas? It'll be a supervillain.

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[–] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Careful.

Sec. 2.  Establishing a Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias.  (a)  There is hereby established within the Department of Justice the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias (Task Force).\
     (b)  The Attorney General shall serve as Chair of the Task Force.\
     (c)  In addition to the Chair, the Task Force shall consist of the following other members:\
          (i)     the Secretary of State;\
          (ii)    the Secretary of the Treasury;\
          (iii)   the Secretary of Defense;\
          (iv)    the Secretary of Labor;\
          (v)     the Secretary of Health and Human Services;\
          (vi)    the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development;\
          (vii)   the Secretary of Education;\
          (viii)  the Secretary of Veterans Affairs;\
          (ix)    the Secretary of Homeland Security;\
          (x)     the Director of the Office of Management and Budget;\
          (xi)    Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations;\
          (xii)   the Administrator of the Small Business Administration;\
          (xiii)  the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation;\
          (xiv)   the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy;\
          (xv)    the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency;\
          (xvi)   the Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; and\
          (xvii)  the heads of such other executive departments, agencies, and offices that the Chair may, from time to time, invite to participate.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/eradicating-anti-christian-bias/

Kinda worried posting myself and I’m not american owned yet. Which is my way of saying that I don’t insinuate you’re American, just it’s that absurd.

Everybody expects this inquisition.

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[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago

lol Texas.

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

[–] blueamigafan@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year 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.

[–] mysticpickle@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 year ago
[–] Majorllama@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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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[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago
[–] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Keep refusing vaccines, dummies

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[–] riskable@programming.dev 16 points 1 year ago

“It’s not that they’re not educated. It’s just ~~what their belief is~~ they're complete idiots.”

FTFY

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 16 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Good thing everyone I know is vaccinated.

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[–] pyre@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

remember who did this. it's not over.

[–] Professorozone@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (5 children)

MOSTLY unvaccinated? How many vaccinated people got the measles?

[–] jonne 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Vaccines aren't 100% effective, the way they work is mostly through herd immunity, where an epidemic effectively peters out due to lack of viable hosts. Depending on the infectiousness of the pathogen, a +90% vaccination rate is usually enough to keep an infection from breaking through.

[–] normalexit@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Two doses of the measles vaccine are approximately 97% effective at preventing measles. Certainly not 100%, but not too shabby.

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[–] 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.

[–] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 13 points 1 year ago

Measles to the left me, bird flu to the right me, stuck in the middle of both of them.

[–] Freefall@lemmy.world 12 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.

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