Kids suffer as measles cases increase in Gaines County TX – Daily Kos
Why do kids wear helmets to bat in baseball?Anyone reading this probably thinks I have lost my mind. The possibility of a kid getting hit in the head with a baseball is something a responsible parent would address with more than a shrug. Yet these are the arguments some parents and political opportunists make against vaccines.This irrational reasoning brings us to Gaines County, TX. Gaines is a rural stretch of western Texas on the state’s border with New Mexico. It is about as MAGA as a county gets. In 2024, 91% of its residents voted for Trump. Sadly, its citizens have listened to the anti-vax propaganda. Unsurprisingly, it is now experiencing a measles outbreak.At the beginning of the year, authorities registered two cases of the highly infectious disease. Now, there are ten. Eight of the victims are school-aged children. Seven are hospitalized. None of the victims were vaccinated. And this will not be the end of it. Parents are enabling it.The spread of the infection is so potentially dire the Texas Dept. of Health and Human Services — not the socialists pantywaists who work in DC — sent out an alert. In an (unexpected for a red state government) display of sensible thinking, the state advises:“The best way to prevent getting sick is to be immunized with two doses of a vaccine against measles, which is primarily administered as the combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. Two doses of the MMR vaccine are highly effective at preventing measles.”Will this be enough to reverse the downward trend in childhood vaccinations? I have no idea. I do not understand how the conservative brain works. However, I would not bet on it. As CNN reports:MMR coverage is particularly low in Gaines County, where nearly 1 in 5 incoming kindergartners in the 2023-24 school year did not get the vaccine. The 18% vaccine exemption rate for the county is one of the highest in the state, according to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services.Jesus wept.Before the measles vaccine, created in 1963, the disease was a rite of passage for kids everywhere. Fortunately for most, it was bloody irritating. But nothing more. However, some victims paid a higher cost. According to the CDC, each year:The measles vaccine is part of the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) protocol. The MMR vaccine, which does occasionally have some irritating side effects, is very safe. Vaccinated people have far better outcomes than the unvaccinated. A positive outcome replicated by the COVID vaccine — which led to better outcomes than the ‘what the hell, YOLO’ approach to medicine embraced by people addicted to conspiracy and allergic to facts.No reputable medical organization has ever announced that vaccines are a poor choice. It was a British quack with ethics issues who fired up the anti-vax nonsense. It started with a paper published in the British medical journal Lancet. Andrew Wakefield, in a work of fiction, claimed the MMR vaccine caused autism in kids. For his fraud, Wakefield was struck off the British medical register (i.e. he had his license stripped) But, it was too late. Insanity ensued.And vaccines, one of the most notable achievements of the human intellect, God-given if that is how you view these things, was pooh-poohed by a collective of dumbass cranks, opportunists, and mental lightweights. Many regular folks subscribed to the hysteria. They congratulated themselves for not being sheep as they went like lambs to the slaughter. For those interested, this is the Wikipedia paragraph, complete with links, which describes Wakefield’s fatal depravity.Wakefield published his 1998 paper on autism in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, claiming to have identified a novel form of enterocolitis linked to autism. However, other researchers were unable to reproduce his findings,[7][8] and a 2004 investigation by Sunday Times reporter Brian Deer identified undisclosed financial conflicts of interest on Wakefield’s part.[9] Wakefield reportedly stood to earn up to $43 million per year selling test kits.[10] Most of Wakefield’s co-authors then withdrew their support for the study’s interpretations,[11] and the General Medical Council (GMC) conducted an inquiry into allegations of misconduct against Wakefield and two former colleagues,[12] focusing on Deer’s findings.[13] As a result:In 2010, the GMC found that Wakefield had been dishonest in his research, had acted against his patients’ best interests, mistreated developmentally delayed children,[14] and had “failed in his duties as a responsible consultant”.[15][16][17] The Lancet fully retracted Wakefield’s 1998 publication on the basis of the GMC’s findings, noting that elements of the manuscript had been falsified and that the journal had been “deceived” by Wakefield.[18][19] Regardless, for MAGA influencers chasing clicks, there was and is gold in maintaining that Wakefield was on to something. And a generation of Republican politicians, who placed winning elections above keeping the constituents healthy and alive, peddled anti-vax nonsense. Now the US is on the verge of installing RFK Jr., a grindingly ignorant medical skeptic — a man with a toxic ego, and a passion for molesting animals — as the country’s top medical authority. The next time you hear a Republican say they are pro-life, demand to see the evidence.
