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- cross-posted to:
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State health officials said Friday in a news release that those who are infected are either unvaccinated or their vaccination status is unknown. Thirteen people have been hospitalized.
The cases have been concentrated in a “close-knit, undervaccinated” Mennonite community, Texas Department of State Health Services spokesperson Lara Anton said. Gaines County is highly rural, so many of the families send their children to small private schools or are homeschooled, Anton said.
“The church isn’t the reason that they’re not vaccinated,” Anton said. “It’s all personal choice and you can do whatever you want. It’s just that the community doesn’t go and get regular health care.”
Remember the episode when 13 of these 48 people ended up in the hospital? That must’ve been the remake — the current measles strains aren’t anything to fuck around with.
“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/