<
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/measles-outbreak-mennonites-west-texas-seminole-vaccines-rcna208284>
"SEMINOLE, Texas — On a Saturday in mid-March, Dr. Ben Edwards put on his
scrubs and drove to a sheet metal building in this tiny West Texas city to
treat children with measles. Red spots mottled his face; Edwards was sick with
measles, too.
An outbreak of the disease was swelling in Gaines County, a rural community
with one of the lowest childhood vaccination rates in the country. For two
weeks, lines of families had snaked around the building’s dusty parking lot,
almost all belonging to the area’s Mennonite community, a religious group known
to speak Low German and keep to themselves, mostly sending their children to
church-run schools. The parents were concerned by the illness that had speckled
their children’s bodies and weakened their breathing, but their distrust of
vaccines and hospitals ran deeper. Edwards’ alternatives seemed a safer bet.
Hastily repurposed from general store to clinic, the space Edwards worked in
held little besides folding tables, plastic chairs and boxes of vitamins and
supplements flown in by private plane. Feverish children coughed and whimpered.
A flushed baby lay in his mother’s arms. Another child curled under a blanket
on her mother’s lap. A crew from the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health
Defense documented it all.
Edwards handed out cod liver oil — pungent liquids and pills rich in vitamins A
and D — and prescribed steroid inhalers. Neither treatment can prevent or cure
measles, and medical associations have warned against them; Edwards said he had
seen the therapies “work beautifully.”
“They had nowhere else to turn,” Edwards said later on his podcast, defending
his decision to run the children’s clinic while he was contagious.
But down the road at Seminole’s only hospital, a waiting room made for measles
patients often sat empty. And even as infections soared, there was little
demand for the only proven way of preventing them: On a recent weekday, just
four people had come by the county’s free vaccine clinic.
So two responses were in motion to deal with an extremely contagious disease
that threatens small children the most. One was grounded in science and
evidence, led by overwhelmed public health officials. The other was driven by
distrust and propaganda — spread by anti-vaccine activists and alternative
practitioners like Edwards, and, for the first time in memory, backed by the
federal government itself under Robert F. Kennedy Jr."
Via Violet Blue’s
Threat Model - Covid: June 5, 2025
https://www.patreon.com/posts/covid-june-5-130756371
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
