In rural West Texas, a measles outbreak grows with no end in sight

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

My greatest fear is that we will never find the cure for being an idiot. I know for some people that the disease is fatal.

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...

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

Damn, lucky kids. If only the rest of us could get a guiltless exit. (No Im not suicidal)

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

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

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.

“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/

Compared to a lot of terrible shit, less bad? But still bad. You’d have to be young or old to die from it with modern medicine.

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?

It's adorable that you think a hero would come out of Texas...

In reality they just end up with a debilitating form of cancer, and die penniless under a bridge.

we've got the makings of a superhero origin story zombie apocalypse.

FTFY

Vaccines aren’t anywhere near 100% effective, they rely on herd immunity which means enough people have to have the vaccine so the disease can’t get a foothold and goes extinct.

not even that, they use it as an excuse for their rotten brain

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/10/1071785531/on-covid-vaccinations-pope-says-health-care-is-a-moral-obligation

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.

Immunity wanes over time. There's probably adults getting it.

bUt MaH bElEaFs!?!!