Second child dies from measles as Brainworm Bobby tries to poison others

We now have a second confirmed measles death in Texas, on top of the one in New Mexico; known Texas measles cases likely will be over 500 by the time you read this.

Related? The Trib profiles Lubbock's public health director, Dr. Katherine Wells, including her noting this has a feeling similar to COVID, including the nutters rebelling against public health measures.

Per the profile story, coming just ahead of Brainworm Bobby's visit on Sunday, he caused this:

A Lubbock’s children hospital is now treating children with severe measles who also suffer from vitamin A toxicity. This comes after Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to update the measles guidance to promote the vitamin’s use, which most health experts object to. The Trump administration is eliminating pandemic-era grants that were used to boost the department’s response to the measles outbreak, including paying for employees. And Wells is navigating what could arguably be an even more delicate line than COVID — managing the outbreak of an eradicated, preventable disease, with a worn-out staff and a growing distrust from the public.

Geez o fucking Pete. Vitamin A overdoses can kill you. 

Meanwhile, Wells had her hands full during the latter stages of COVID dealing with nutters not just in the general public but the mayor and one other member of the Lubbock City Council. 

On Brainworm Bobby's visit, he said he has "developed bonds" with area Mennonites. Of course he has; antivaxxers of a feather flock together. It's also "interesting" that, while out in Gaines County, he did NOT attend a news conference being held by the CDC.

That said, he did shat on Shitter Sunday to support vaccination via his official account. To which I said:

If you really believe "the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine" then why are you pushing Vitamin A, which has sent multiple kids to the hospital with Vitamin A poisoning? You look like you're trying to straddle the "sides" of science & stupidity

He has since doubled down on his mix of pseudoscience and arrogance, claiming that his measles protocol should be a model for the world.

What else IS there to say?

Well, Brainworm Bobby, unless he resists, has been asked to say more by Louisiana U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, both on pushing vaccines and on talking to his Senate committee.

Religious beliefs and vaccination exemptions

 Yes, I know that Anabaptist types like Mennonites aren't Calvinist per se, but many of them hold to the same rigid determinism, as do the parents of the child who was the first measles death in West Texas a few weeks ago.

The child's parents make that clear.

The Texas parents of an unvaccinated 6-year-old girl who died from measles Feb. 26 told the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense in a video released Monday that the experience did not convince them that vaccination against measles was necessary.

“She says they would still say ‘Don’t do the shots,’” an unidentified translator for the parents said. “They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be.”

The West Texas measles outbreak, the biggest in the state in 30 years, has infected more than 270 people and hospitalizing dozens of them. Public health officials have repeatedly told Texans that studies have time and time again shown that the safest and most effective way to avoid contracting the very infectious, life-threatening disease is to vaccinate with the measles-mumps-rubella shot.

The couple, members of a Mennonite community in Gaines County with traditionally low vaccination rates, spoke on camera in both English and Low German to CHD Executive Director Polly Tommey and CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker.

“It was her time on Earth,” the translator said the parents told her. “They believe she’s better off where she is now.”

What do you say in response to that?

It's hard, but not THAT hard theologically, as I will address on my other blog site.

For here?

For the parents not keeping children home when unvaccinated, this is an infliction of their religious belief on others. Parents who don't believe their children are predestined to get measles, and have their kids vaccinated, shouldn't have to deal with a "breakthrough" case. Nor should they have to deal with more generalized school disruptions.

Nor, to be blunt, should they have to deal with, for the public eye, pretending sympathy for another family they may not feel in reality.

And, they shouldn't have to.

Especially when, reading between the lines of Covenant Hospital's statement, these parents are willing to lie for their religion.

And, with that sort of lying, they surely don't care about endangering others.

Which they are.

Health experts say it could take a full year to fully contain the West Texas measles outbreak:

“This demonstrates that this (vaccine exemption) policy puts the community, the county, and surrounding states at risk because of how contagious this disease is,” said Glenn Fennelly, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases and assistant vice president of global health at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso. “We are running the risk of threatening global stability.”

There you go.

That said, per that same piece, is this all about religion or not? One person says no:

Katherine Wells, director of public health for the City of Lubbock, during a Tuesday meeting of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a national organization for large metropolitan health departments ... said efforts to increase the vaccination rates in Gaines County, which is about 70 miles from Lubbock, and the surrounding region have been slow as trust in the government has seemingly reached an all-time low.

“We are seeing, just like the rest of Americans, this community has seen a lot of stories about vaccines causing autism, and that is leading to a lot of this vaccine hesitancy, not religion,” she said.

But, putting the cloak of religion on non-religious beliefs is an all-American pastime. 

Beyond religious issues, here in Tex-ass, as the piece notes, is state Republicans continuing to gut local control of local issues. Seminole ISD doesn't have the power to close local schools, for example.

On this and related issues, Texas gets unfavorably compared with New Mexico.

Texas Progressives talk vaxxes, raids and more

Expect more of this the next four years. A West Texas county with a kindergarten vaccine rate of just 84 percent is the center of a measles outbreak. 

TCEQ is way behind the curve on distributing money for a program designed to address leaking abandoned oil wells. Shock me. But? It's also laughable the lege only put $10 million in the program. Also shock me.

Yeah, the thought of the Railroad Commission actually regulating carbon dioxide injection capture wells is laughable. 

We've seen these massive immigrant raids in Tex-ass before. Back in Shrub Bush's presidency. The Monthly revisits Cactus, Texas, site of a massive 2006 raid.

Many Panhandle ranchers are struggling with recovery from last year's wildfires and some are selling. Here's a longform overview.

SocraticGadfly offers his thoughts on that crazy Luka-AD trade.

Off the Kuff is not impressed by Greg Abbott's loosely professed support for sports betting in Texas. 

Franklin Strong bemoans the end of the Department of Education's civil rights investigations into school book bans.  

CultureMap Austin considers the possibility of Lockhart becoming the state's live music capital.  

The Barbed Wire published a long expose on sexual harassment at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music.  

Deceleration shared photos from the San Antonio student walkouts that protested ICE raids and other anti-immigrant actions.  

Texas Monthly profiles Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the nonprofit Democracy Forward, which just scored a win in court against the Trump administration’s proposed buyouts of federal employees.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said John Whitmire’s narrow conception of public safety excludes traffic safety & fighting for democracy. 

Buffy Sainte-Marie has officially been stripped of her Order of Canada award over her pretendian claims.

White South Africans tell Trump "no thanks" on his offer of economic and persecuted refugee immigration.

Coronavirus week 121: Vaccine losers — and new Platonic noble lies?

I remember that, more than a year ago, people more knowledgeable than me in fields like immunlogy and even more importantly, warned there would be vaccine losers as well as winners as the race narrowed and government funding and other support picked winners and losers.

Well, as the not-quite-omni but more widely targeted anti-Omicron boosters that Pfizer and Moderna roll out ...

Where's Johnson and Johnson? Ever since the US government paused the administration of the J and J adenovirus based vaccine in April 2021 over what were likely overstated concerns about blood clotting, it's scrambled to stay in the game. And, the FDA since then largely shunted J and J aside. As a result, it had no incentive to work on a COVID booster and instead turned its primary factory in Europe into working on a new experimental non-COVID vaccine.

As a result, we're left only with mRNA vaxxes for boosters. (For the first of a set of updates to this piece, now almost as long as the original, that talk about why this is an issue, go here, though the whole thing isn’t that long.)

Yes, Novavax exists, and it, like older antiviral vaccines against other viruses, directly targets a COVID spike protein. That said, right now, there's not official approval for a one-dose booster, nor do we have information yet on how Novavax performs against Omicron.

I'm not a nutter who believes mRNA vaxxes alter my RNA, or DNA.

I am someone who notes the relatively rapid falloff in mRNA protection. And, while J and J allegedly had less degree of protection, there's been no reports about the same degree of falloff.

I got it, the first chance I had in my rural area, both because it was a one-shot vax and because it was based on more traditional vaccine technology.

IF I were to want a booster (not old, but not young, either, and I've gotten none so far), I would go Novavax. It and the mRNA vaxxes both themselves have rare coronary side effects, it seems. But, Novavax is a more traditional technology, like J and J, and I venture it has a slower dropoff period than the mRNA vaxxes, like J and J. And, eventually, the more times you get shot, even if they remain very low, the more your chances of some side effect.

AstraZenica is also an adenovirus vax. It, like Johnson and Johnson, also known as Janssen from its Euro subsidiary, has also had very small numbers reported of people with clotting. But, it was never shelved, here or abroad. It and Novavax both have the down side of being two-dose vaxxes in non-booster situations. Other adenovirus vaxxes are Russia's Sputnix and a newer kid, Convidecia. It's one-shot; Sputnik is two. Convidecia, like Sinopharm, which uses dead virus, is Chinese.

There are other "viral vector vaccines" that use vector viruses besides an adenovirus.

And, there's the Indian nasal vaccine (China and others have similar in the pipeline) but based on attempts at nasal flu vaccines here in the US, William Haseltine is highly skeptical.

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Update: Another version of "vaccine loser" is going to be "we the people." Per recent reporting, new subvariants have popped up since the start of work on the bivalent booster that was originally billed as an omnivariant. It looks pretty lokely that the booster won't have full effect against them. That will likely further undermine public trust in mRNA vaxxes, which in turn will bring up further questioning of Biden's COVID policies, questions from his left and his non-wingnut right as well as wingers. And, he'll have "earned" them. Between a focus on mRNA vaxxes as boosters being the latest version of COVID Status Quo Joe putting most of his eggs in one basket, and "we the people" being on the hook for these new vaxxes ourselves, he's richly earned skeptical questioning and more.

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Update 2: Per Pro Publica, it ain't just me saying this. When a Paul Offit raises questions, you know you have problems. Offit cites bad framing over "breakthrough" infections as the cornerstone issue early on. But, on the new bivalent boosters? He's a skeptic and bases it on scientific, empirical evidence, or rather, lack thereof. More here from one of the links in the Pro Publica article. Interestingly, neither it nor any of its links talk about the delay in non-mRNA vax boosters, only the possible rush in mRNA boosters.

For the “Platonic noble lies” expansion of the subheader, as reflected by the latest of these updates, go here.

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Update 3: Tweeted by Offit, this piece from Science Mag pretty much says that mRNA vaxxes by themselves aren't the long-term answer. They need another approach added to their mix. Could be in-vaccine, as the story indicates, but by themselves? Not the best answer. And, the issue of T-cell immunity may tie to the issue of mRNA vax falloff.

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Update 4: Walker Bragman keeps tweeting about various actual or alleged failures of Biden's vaccine policy, but I have yet to see him talk about this. Is he afraid of giving fuel to vax deniers? Offit wasn't. I wonder if, in addition to tribalism, that's why Orac won't talk about the lab leak. Wonder what he'll do if enough people bring up the likes of Offit.

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Update 5: Your Local Epidemilogist hasn't read Offit. And thus, saying "science update"? Kuff, didn't run her in the roundup.

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Update 6: Here's my COVID next post from a week later, following up on some of these issues, mainly the issue of whether we're at least getting nearer to post-pandemic. More to the point, here's my piece from the week after that, more explicitly tackling mRNA vaxxes again and taking a first small look at whether tribalism isn't involved with the likes of Bragman. And, I'm going to keep doing it.

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Update 7: I think it's a new version of Fauci's Platonic Noble Lie for people like Tom Frieden and Peter Hotez, who know better, to be telling all Americans, whether over 50 or under 50, contra Updates 2 and 3, to "go get your bivalent boosters," as both were on Twitter over Thanksgiving weekend.

I quote-tweeted Hotez with this post, and he quote-tweeted me back.

I’m confused by this tweet: 1) actually at our @TexasChildrens vaccine center we developed one of the most commonly used non-mRNA primary immunization and boosters globally. Also 2) the bivalent mRNA is indeed indicated for both adults and children in the US? https://t.co/ElrO8V4E6e

— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) November 27, 2022

I in turn did another quote-tweet, which noted that's "global" not American and there's no non-mRNA vax here in the USofA, and added that I was aware of his global work. (Either Pro Publica or the Trib, or the two together, wrote about it several months ago.) We'll see if he does another quote-tweet back talking about WHY we don't have this in the US. And, that's the issue, Dr. Hotez, is that we don't have it here. And, that's true of initial-line shots as well as boosters. We're pretty much being peddled mRNA and nothing but. AND, you're connected enough to DC insiders on this issue, that you could, in my opinion, "push" more on this issue yourself. Saying, "oh, look, we've got non mRNA boosters globally is not the US.)

As far as the last part? Maybe CDC finally indicated it, but that was NOT its original plan, Dr. Hotez, and I have no doubt that you, like Offit, know that CDC originally planned to "indicate" the bivalent booster for only those 50-plus.

I should add that Hotez has gone Twitter radio silent since my last quote tweet.

AND ... proof that he's a tribalist and twosider? He's also a tribalist and twosider on the lab leak. Bigly, starting with attacking non-wingnut Richard Burr over the Senate minority committee report by Pro Publica over the lab leak theory, which it has now reviewed and strongly defended, despite the pushback by #BlueMAGA like Hotez, who comes off as a kinder, gentler Orac:

Bottom line: the lab leak GOF is all political theater, designed to cripple our national biomedical infrastructure. All so a few uneducated chuckleheads in the US Congress can flex their muscles, exercise authoritarian control. It will make us more vulnerable to future pandemics

— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) November 1, 2022

And this isn't new from Hotez, as his Twitter feed and stories will show.

Not at all. As I said in quote-Tweeting that first tweet, he's lost some serious credibility in my book. I noted that Alina Chan, Scott Gottlieb and Jaime Metzl, among others, are not members of Congress (and by extension, not chuckleheads or uneducated). May blog just about that.

And, I DID just blog about that, calling him a gaslighter.

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Update 7, Jan 1, 2023: STAT talks about lessons from COVID so far. One is how public health measures have both been imposed, and to some degree, opposed, without nuance either way. It also notes the rapid dropoff of mRNA effectiveness.

In that piece, re the one big issue above, Nancy Messionier notes there's still no accepted definition of Long COVID. That's one of many science-tentative issues around COVID, she says.

Antixvaxxers lose another one

I actually agree with Nino Scalia! Once in every 10 blue moons, eh? Whoa.

As to the why of agreement?

He was part of a 6-2 majority dismissing a vaccine-related suit against Pfizer's Wyeth unit.

I don't buy Sonia Sonomayor's counterclaim:

Sotomayor said the ruling “leaves a regulatory vacuum in which no one ensures that vaccine manufacturers adequately take account of scientific and technological advancements when designing or distributing their products.”

No, no, no. Theoretically, at least, the FDA still has that role. How well it does it is another issue. She's also wrong in claiming the law establishing the vaccine court didn't intend consequences like this.

More on the case and its background here. While this isn't guaranteed to keep antivaxxers out of either federal or state court systems on spurious claims, it will certainly help.

For people who believe as Sotomayor does, and have the power to do something, fine. Start by giving better funding to the FDA. Beyond that, look at what's good about the current vaccine court structure and ask if it can't be translated to other science-heavy legal cases which are susceptible to tort abuse. (It happens, trial lawyers, setting aside the BS of the GOP.)

For example, whether from bomb testing dust or uranium mining dust or poor reactor management, perhaps all cases of radiation sickness should have a similar court. At the same time, each guilty finding should have mandatory punitive damages if it's part of a pattern.

Anyway, Orac has (as I had hoped and expected) now posted much more about this case.

Now, a lot of antivaxxers will claim this is stopping state-level lawsuits. No.

As for the state court issue nothing's changed there. The original 1986 law precluded suits from starting in state court. Orac note this. ALL this ruling did was state that the Court says the 1986 law pre-empts initial state court action on design-defect claims as well as on other claims where initial action at state court level was already pre-empted. So, it stops nothing; rather, it clarifies what was already stopped.

Was the majority's ruling a proper one? Here's what 42 U. S. C. §300aa–22(b)(1), the relevant section of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, says:

No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings.

Subsection 2 goes on:

For purposes of paragraph (1), a vaccine shall be presumed to be accompanied by proper directions and warnings if the vaccine manufacturer shows that it complied in all material respects with all requirements under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act [21 U.S.C. 301 et seq.] and section 262 of this title (including regulations issued under such provisions) applicable to the vaccine.

So, design defects, it seems, were meant to be heard by the court. There is one exception.

Sub-subsection A of subsection 2 says that if a plaintiff shows:

(B)y clear and convincing evidence that the manufacturer failed to exercise due care notwithstanding its compliance with such Act and section (and regulations issued under such provisions).

In other words, willful negligence suits can still proceed, unless the new ruling invalidated them, too.

Full SCOTUS ruling here (PDF).

Edward Jenner: A historical anniversary for vaccine conspiracy theorists to remember

For all the nutbars who refuse to vaccinate their children and even hold “measles parties” (search the blog), and for all the mothers who let themselves be deluded about vaccines causing autism (search the labels), and, outside the U.S., African Muslims who believe vaccination is a U.S. conspiracy to sterilize them, May 14 should be a red-letter day. Two hundred years ago today, Edward Jenner first tried his cowpox virus vaccine against smallpox on a human subject.

Due to Jenner’s invention of vaccination, the World Health Organization declared smallpox eliminated in 1979.

Measles outbreak – doorknob justice would hit measles parties parents

About six weeks ago, I blogged about the latest nuttery in California: measles parties.

That’s where parents who indulge in various conspiracy theories, either autism-type ones against vaccinations specifically, or broader alt-medicine type ones against the “medical establishment” in general, refuse to get their kids inoculated, and instead take them to a party to deliberately expose them to someone with measles.

(I also added that I’m surprised we don’t have more of this stupidity here in Texas since Tejas, like California, lets parents exempt their children from vaccination on non-religious as well as religious grounds.)

Anyway, maybe the chickens are coming home to roost, courtesy of the biggest measles outbreak in seven years. No deaths yet here, but globally? About 500,000 measles deaths a year, primarily in countries where they can’t get or can’t afford vaccines. (That’s excepting places like the Muslim-majority portion of Nigeria, where you have other conspiracy theory peddlers saying vaccines are created to make people sterile.)

How anti-vaccination parents claim they ‘won’ in court

The legal standards have changed.

Specifically, in cases of alleged vaccine-induced injury heard in special court under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, there used to be a preponderance-of-evidence standard, similar to other civil cases.

No longer. That’s how Hannah Poling’s parents “won”:

back on science by dropping preponderance of evidence as a standard. Now, petitioners need merely propose a biologically plausible mechanism by which a vaccine might cause harm — even if their explanation contradicts published studies. In 2006, for example, Dorothy Werderitsh claimed in the vaccine court that a hepatitis B vaccine had triggered an autoimmune response in her brain that led to multiple sclerosis. Two large studies had clearly shown that hepatitis B vaccine could neither cause nor exacerbate multiple sclerosis, but the court ruled in favor of Werderitsh, elevating a hypothesis above epidemiological evidence.

As Paul Offit notes, in the last few years, 4,800 parents of autistic children, blinded by grief and deluded by pseudoscience, have lined up to sue.

Texas follows bad California law creates public health risks

Child Protective Services is needed instead of this stupid law

Nine of 12 California children who recently got measles did so because their parents refused to vaccinate them, and had the right to do so under a California law that lets parents opt school-age children out of vaccinations.

And, Texas joins California among 20 states that allow personal exemptions, beyond religious-grounds objections:

“I refuse to sacrifice my children for the greater good,” said Sybil Carlson, whose 6-year-old son goes to school with several of the children hit by the measles outbreak here. The boy is immunized against some diseases but not measles, Ms. Carlson said, while his 3-year-old brother has had just one shot, protecting him against meningitis.

And, she does so willingly:

Carlson said she understood what was at stake. “I cannot deny that my child can put someone else at risk,” she said.

Worst of all, she illustrates the dark side of the Internet — too often, it’s about what could at best be called “knowledge” or “information,” but certainly not wisdom, and “information” that fuels preconceptions:

“When I began to read about vaccines and how they work,” she said, “I saw medical studies, not given to use by the mainstream media, connecting them with neurological disorders, asthma and immunology.”

In other words, “they,” whomever “they” are, are blocking us average citizens from knowing the medical truth.
Sybil Carlson isn’t the most nutbar parent in the deck, though:

Some parents of unvaccinated children go to great lengths to expose their children to childhood diseases to help them build natural immunities.

In the wake of last month’s outbreak, Linda Palmer considered sending her son to a measles party to contract the virus. Several years ago, the boy, now 12, contracted chicken pox when Palmer had him attend a gathering of children with that virus.

“It is a very common thing in the natural-health oriented world,” Ms. Palmer said of the parties.

Where is Child Protective Services, or the California equivalent, when you need them? Seriously. I’m not hyperbolizing.