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.”

  • @stardust@lemmy.ca
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    425 months ago

    Just a reflection of how huge portions of the US has been brainwashed and part of a cult. It’s why appeals to logic never work anymore.

    • @ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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      35 months ago

      And perhaps that’s because education and healthcare are both massively monetized in the US, and Simpleton Jr. out there in the middle of nowhere isn’t gonna bring anyone any profit, so they’re blissfully forgotten until they want their vote.

      “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.”

  • FuglyDuck
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    375 months ago

    Fun fact, there’s a very strong geographical correlation between the measles outbreak and rates of antivaxers declining to vaccinate their kids.

    “Fun” in the “omg it’s awful people are that fucking stupid” sense.

    Also. Fuck RFK JR.

        • @ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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          95 months ago

          They weren’t smarter, but they or their parents experienced first hand what life was like before the vaccines.

          Nowadays we’re horrified when a baby dies, and rightfully so. Way back when, that was just another Monday…

          • @RozhkiNozhki@lemmy.world
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            45 months ago

            I was trying to do the math on that one because my parents didn’t really tell me anything about mass epidemics, but I didn’t realize that the measles vaccine wasn’t introduced until 1963, when both of my parents were already toddlers.

  • ThePowerOfGeek
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    195 months ago

    And pretty soon with Bobby Brainworm in charge of that aspect of the government, the antivax dipshittery that’s so rife in medically backward places like Texas will spread (like an unchecked contagion) across the nation.

    Yaaaay!

    This fucking timeline.

    • Jolly Platypus
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      185 months ago

      I’m here for it. I felt horrible when all the antimasker antivaxxer freedumb people were dying for nothing during Covid, but I’m all out of fucks to give.

      When they start dying in the millions, I’m gonna be jerkin it on the daily.

      • ComradeSharkfucker
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        135 months ago

        I don’t think you understand how deadly bird flu is. If bird flu reaches pandemic levels we will need burn pits for the bodies

      • @floofloof@lemmy.ca
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        25 months ago

        Why do you think bird flu will only kill people who don’t believe in vaccines? Even if there is a vaccine for it (which I don’t think there is right now), a virus circulating freely due to large numbers of unvaccinated people, antimaskers, etc. will kill all kinds of people, not just the antivax/antimask people. This is what we saw with COVID, and bird flu will be a lot worse.

    • @bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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      35 months ago

      I’m wondering if it might have. Just about everyone I know has been destructively I’ll in the past couple weeks (myself included), and everyone’s just chalking it up to a seasonal flu and carrying on.

    • madjo
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      15 months ago

      Looking at the reaction to COVID 5 years ago, too long.

  • billwashere
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    65 months ago

    Maybe RFK should go to Texas for a bit. How ironic would it be for him to get measles.

  • SuiXi3D
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    55 months ago

    Well, this problem should rectify itself given enough time…

  • @MrSulu@lemmy.ml
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    45 months ago

    I can imagine the idiot driven clarion call to fight the communists / Libs etc. who want you to poison your bodies, modify your DNA, be chipped etc by a simple vaccination. Those idiots put everyone at risk

    • @atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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      255 months ago

      Remember being so stupid you countered “people are being hospitalized” with “but Bobby was fine on the Brady Bunch!”

    • @reddig33@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      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/

    • @Tinidril@midwest.social
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      5 months ago

      Point? And who is telling anyone to “BeEeE aFrAiD!!”. Vaccination is incredibly effective for measles, so most people have nothing to worry about personally. Still, who wants to see kids get an unnecessary disease that hospitalizes 1/4 and kills 1/1000?

      This isn’t fear, it’s just disgust at having one more reason to despise far right morons. These are the same people who will wring their hands and cry “think of the children” for every damn oppressive piece of bullshit legislation they want to pass.

    • madjo
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      115 months ago

      The Brady Bunch is fiction. I can’t believe someone needs to tell you this in 2025!