Texas leaders fiddle while measles burns

The West Texas measles outbreak is officially exploding, more than doubling last week, with 20 hospitalized by the end of the week. Meanwhile, top state officials? Radio silence — and action silence. The Trib notes other states have excluded unvaccinated kids from schools during active outbreaks, or done quarantines. One out-of-state health official, Dr. Alan Melnick, is on the record as basically being appalled that unvaccinated kids in Gaines County have been allowed to remain in school. That's despite state law requiring a 21-day exclusion — in certain circumstances.

“I’m just blown away,” he said. “This is not politics. I’m just talking science and medicine here.”

School districts in Texas are required to exclude unvaccinated students for at least 21 days after they are exposed to measles. Because measles is so contagious and can remain in the air for up to two hours after an infected person has left the area, large numbers of students could be excluded from school at once, Texas Department of State Health Services spokesperson Lara Anton said.

But to proactively exclude unvaccinated students before they are known to be exposed requires the Texas health commissioner to declare a public health emergency, which can be activated when there is a health threat that potentially poses a risk of death or severe illness or harm to the public. Anton said there are no plans to declare an emergency at this time, noting that more than 90% of Texans are vaccinated for measles.

There's the basics.

Per the first link, here's why it's so bad:

In Texas, the virus has concentrated on the Mennonite community in Gaines County. One of the county’s local public school district with only 143 students, according to 2023-24 school year data, has the highest school vaccine exemption rate in the state — 48% of Loop school district students have conscientious exemptions from required vaccinations. In 2023-24, less than half of all Loop kindergartners — 46% — were given the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, according to state data.

Declare the emergency, boot the kids proactively, and quarantine them otherwise. Or, as their Mennonite parents would understand? Make it a community shunning.

And, yes, "shunning" is more Amish within the Anabaptist world, but Old Colony Mennonites have similar. Here's more about the group in Gaines County. Having lived in both Hobbs and Odessa long ago, I can confirm their isolatedness.

I mean, even Brainworm Bobby is urging a measles vaccination. (OTOH, he's also urging use of Vitamin A; you can't remove the pseudomedical quackery from him.)

Monkeypox: It's out the door, Gottlieb says

I still don't think our worry level needs to be as high as Jessica Wildfire had it a month ago, but ...

Former FDA head Scott Gottlieb (who pleasantly surprised me there and is one of many non-Orac professionals who thinks the lab-leak hypothesis on COVID needs a further look) thinks there are thousands of cases we don't know about, and used the word "endemic":

“I think they’re going to be reluctant to use the word pandemic, because it implies that they’ve failed to contain this, and I think at this point we’ve failed to contain this,” Gottlieb told CBS “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan.

“We’re now at the cusp of this becoming an endemic virus, with this now become something that’s persistent that we need to continue to deal with,” he added.

That's just the first in a set of comments that needs extracting. Next is the possible undercounting:

Although cases have primarily been detected among men who has sex with men, Gottlieb says the virus has “spread more broadly in the community,” and the current reported trends are in part because testing has focused on sexual health clinics. 

“We’re probably detecting just a fraction of the actual cases,” he said.

And, the biggie? The "horses are already out the board door":

“I think the window for getting control of this and containing it probably has closed, and if it hasn’t closed, it’s certainly starting to close,” he added.

Oops.

Get pregnant and get the flu – then cause schizophrenia?

It sounds far-fetched, especially when the mainstream media too often talks oversimplistically of “chemical imbalances” with depression and leaves hanging the idea that genes cause something similar to create schizophrenia.

Nonetheless, more and more evidence is coming out that a pregnant mother-to-be catching the flu can indeed increase that child’s chances of schizophrenia.

And, revising an idea that went out the door after the discovery of DNA and its double helix, scientists are investigating whether other mental conditions don’t have infectious roots as well:

• Mental illnesses once thought to be the result of neurological or psychological defects may be caused by viral or microbial infections.

• The strongest evidence links schizophrenia to prenatal influenza infection; pregnant women who become ill with the flu are more likely to give birth to children who will develop schizophrenia.

• The body’s immune reaction, rather than the infections themselves, may be to blame for the resulting brain damage and psychiatric symptoms.

• Understanding the relation between infections and psychiatric disorders may someday allow us to prevent mental illness using drugs or vaccines.

The story notes the connection is most compelling with schizophrenia, noting a 5-8 percent greater rate among children born in winter or spring. First trimester exposure to influenza caused the greatest increase in risk.

Studies of lab animals shows that infected mothers tend to have children with higher fear and anxiety levels, among other problems.

In some cases, it may not be the infection itself, but the response of the mother’s immune system that does something to the placental barrier.