Just yesterday while on PBS News Hour I said that I will have confidence that federal vaccine policy is uncompromised as long as the external advisory committees continue to meet. Now meetings for both VRBPAC and ACIP have been cancelled. I don't like this.Meanwhile, in Texas:
People are more and more nervous” as they watch the highly contagious virus spread in their communities, mostly among children, said Katherine Wells, director of public health for Lubbock's health department. “We’ve vaccinated multiple kids that have never been vaccinated before, some from families that didn’t believe in vaccines.”
About half of the approximately 100 doses of measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) given at the health department last week were to kids who were unvaccinated, Wells said.
On Tuesday, the Texas Department of State Health Services reported that 124 cases of measles have been confirmed since late January, mostly in counties in West Texas, near the New Mexico border. So far, 18 patients have been hospitalized, often because they were having trouble breathing.
Of the 124 cases identified, 101 are babies, school-age kids or teenagers.
Nearly all were either unvaccinated or hadn’t received their second MMR shot, which is usually given around age 5. That dose, plus one given around a child’s first birthday, are 97% effective at preventing measles, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A measles outbreak centered in West Texas continues to grow. That outbreak was the subject of a DSHS health alert on Feb. 5, and the latest information on it is available in a DSHS News Update. A person from the outbreak area who was later diagnosed with measles visited locations in the San Marcos and San Antonio areas the weekend of Feb. 14-16 while they were contagious.
One can be contagious for two weeks before symptoms appear. And clearly we can’t expect it to be isolated to 9 counties in west Texas. People from all over Texas will be coming to Houston, from February 27 to March 23. It’s an annual event that was canceled once, during the beginning of the Covid shutdown. Nobody’s talking about that, now.
It may be the definition of a super spreader event.
But that’s okay, right, Secretary Kennedy?
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has sown doubt in science and perpetuated vaccine conspiracies. Mere weeks after he was confirmed as HHS Secretary, we have our first measles death in the U.S. in over a decade. https://t.co/tzsrCP8q3B
— Jennifer McClellan (@JennMcClellanVA) February 26, 2025
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