Dangerous Measles obviously follows RFKjr around like an interplanetary dust cloud

In West Texas, those red measles blotches on fevered skin are warning signs for the nation | Editorial Board opinion published in the Houston Chronicle, Texas❗

Measles is a preventable contagious virus

Senator Brian Schatz: RFK Jr., Whose Dangerous Lies Fueled Measles Outbreak in Samoa & Caused Preventable Deaths, is Unqualified To Lead HHS: Kennedy, in his words, but more importantly in his actions, has proven over and over that he is a unique danger to society.*

Houston Chronicle editorial writes: Coincidence❓ On the day when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was confirmed as this nation’s secretary of Health and Human Services, an outbreak of measles was continuing to spread beyond a small West Texas town like a parched-pasture grassfire. Coincidence it may have been this time, but the outbreak is also a disturbing reminder that an administration foolhardy enough to entrust this nation’s health to a vaccine skeptic and conspiracy-minded opportunist just might be ensuring that the outbreak also is a portent.

A measles epidemic in West Texas is unlikely to be the only health crisis this nation will face during the next four years. Even more serious ones will certainly follow. (Think tuberclosis in Kansas😨Kansas is currently experiencing an ongoing outbreak of tuberculosis i.e.,TB. The outbreak began in early 2024, and is primarily concentrated in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Although 67 cases are reported, more are not yet recorded.)

A the majority of the measles cases reported in Texas are in Gaines County southwest of Lubbock, although the disease is now spreading to neighboring counties. Most of those infected are children or teens; 16 have been hospitalized. The Texas Department of State Health Services is reporting 124 confirmed cases of measles in the ongoing outbreak in the South Plains and Panhandle regions. 

DSHS (Texas Department of State and Health Services) is working with local health departments in that area to investigate cases, provide immunizations where needed, and keep the public informed.

Additionally, DSHS issued a health alert Monday after a person with measles traveled from the outbreak area to San Marcos and San Antonio before they knew they were infected. Measles exposures may have occurred at several public locations during that trip.

Although measles is rarely fatal in this country, it’s one of the major causes of childhood death worldwide. Children under 5 are among those most at risk, as well as persons with compromised immune systems and those who are pregnant. Along with tell-tale red blotches all over the body, an infected person may experience high fever, diarrhea, pneumonia, deafness and brain swelling. It’s highly contagious.

According to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), only five of the infected individuals in West Texas had been immunized with the highly effective measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Since not everyone infected shows up for treatment, the number of cases is likely in the hundreds.

The outbreak, the state’s worst in over 30 years, originated in Gaines County. Most of those infected are Mennonites, a Protestant religious group that’s been an integral part of the small community since arriving in the 1970s. 

Although the Mennonites do not set themselves apart like the Amish or other separatist groups that originated during the Protestant Reformation in 16th-century Europe, they are close-knit. 

Gaines County, population a little over 20,000, is home to a number of Mennonite congregations, as well as a Mennonite school and elementary school. 

Mennonites avoid medical care, including vaccinations, even though the church takes no official position on vaccines. Since Mennonite residents of the county, like their non-Mennonite neighbors, regularly travel to Lubbock to shop at Walmart or Costco, cheer on the Texas Tech Red Raiders or visit their doctors and dentists, the outbreak will continue to spread beyond the small towns, pancake-flat cotton fields and ranchland of this rural corner of Texas. Cases also are cropping up across the nearby state line, in New Mexico.

Texas public schools require children to have received certain vaccines before enrolling, including MMR, but parents can apply for an exemption for “reasons of conscience,” including religious belief. Last year, more than 13 percent of K-12 students in Gaines County received a vaccine exemption, among the highest rates in Texas, according to state data.

Meanwhile, the nationwide spread of avian influenza from chickens and other birds to cows and now to dairy and poultry workers is yet another sobering reminder that a relatively localized measles epidemic won’t be the last health crisis this country will face during the next four years. What a dangerous time for a vaccine skeptic, a man who’s neither a doctor nor a health care administrator, to be allowed to tinker like a shade-tree mechanic with the nation’s vast and intricate health care system. In tandem with an even more dangerous zillionaire authorized by a vaccine-skeptical president to make cuts in vital human services, Kennedy at the helm means that we’re asking for trouble.

What a time, as well, for a craven Congress to cede its constitutional prerogatives – including advice and consent regarding appointments – to a president who maintains that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” (“He” being himself, of course.) Ironically, those same elected representatives, servile to our aspiring Napoleon, are having to go hat – and pride – in hand to beg newly installed agency heads for money to save projects and programs vital to their state. Money they themselves appropriated!

It’s hard to imagine any other prosperous nation with a functioning health care system – our future 51st state to the north, for example – surrendering its programs, research and vital health services to Kennedy, who proclaimed a few years ago that “COVID shots are a crime against humanity.” He has said that vaccines have caused a “holocaust.” He has made a lucrative career off disseminating dangerous and false information about vaccines.

Although Kennedy during his confirmation hearing promised U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who’s also a physician, that he would not change the nation’s current vaccine regimen – including MMR – he’s already backtracking. He said last week that he intended to investigate vaccines for measles, polio and other infectious diseases. “Nothing is going to be off limits,” he said.

His comments came in the wake of thousands losing their jobs within HHS and other vital agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.

Journalist and author Daniel Smith, writing in the New York Review of Books during Trump’s first term – around the time our new HHS secretary was busy dropping off a road-kill bear carcass in New York’s Central Park and sawing off the head of a dead beached whale – warned his fellow Americans that the president’s support for the anti-vaxxers meant that “Children will get sick and die, needlessly and avoidably.”

Smith could not have imagined, we suspect, that a few years later that same president – “heedless and stubborn in his ignorance” – would jeopardize the nation by elevating a notorious anti-vaccine activist to a position that affects the health and well-being of millions of Americans.

So what do we do? What choices do we have, however limited, to protect not only vital federal agencies but also our nation’s health? For one thing, we can act locally (as long as funds hold out). South Plains Public Health District, for example, has four clinics in the Gaines County area. A bus that belongs to the Lubbock-based University Medical Center functions as a mobile clinic offering free testing for measles immunity. For now, local hospitals are prepared to handle the most serious cases.

We can continue to combat dangerous misinformation. "[Measles is] the most contagious infectious disease known to humans,” Dr. Amesh Adulja, an infectious disease physician at Johns Hopkins University, told CBS News. “And when we start to see measles outbreak, that's a sign that there is a chink in the armor of vaccination and the fact that it's preventable … This doesn't have to happen if we can get vaccination rates back to high levels again.”

We also can vote as if our health and well-being depend on the choices we make. The current makeup of the Texas Legislature suggests that we don’t take our choices that seriously. So far this legislative session, lawmakers have filed more than 20 bills that would weaken vaccination mandates. A House joint resolution authored by state Rep. Andy Hopper, R-Decatur, would amend the Texas Constitution to add a right to refuse vaccination. That kind of performative foolishness is an insult to Hopper’s constituents, indeed to every Texan.

The fact is – whether our lawmaker skeptics care to admit it – vaccines are safe, effective and necessary. Thanks to vaccines, measles, for example, was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. Now, thanks to declining vaccination rates, the disease is back. (Will polio be next?) If Trump, Kennedy and Texas legislators discourage vaccine use while wrecking our health care infrastructure, children will suffer. Lives will be lost.

The Gaines County outbreak is, indeed, a portent. It’s a sober reminder that we live together. In health, and in sickness.

*First measles death reported in Texas as Kennedy downplays the outbreak. 😠 At least 124 people have been infected in the fast-spreading outbreak. Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, “we have measles outbreaks every year.”