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https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/measles-cost-vaccine-rates-decline-billion-year-forecast-rcna260734>
"In early 2025, as measles began to tear through West Texas, Katherine Wells
knew she needed money.
Though the outbreak was concentrated in Gaines County, a community an hour
away, Wells, who heads Lubbock’s public health department, needed more staff to
respond to numerous exposures at local pediatricians’ offices, urgent care
centers, restaurants and day cares.
“We were really relying on staff that aren’t hourly, because I can work them
for 80 hours if I have to, which is horrible,” Wells said. In emergency
planning meetings with the Texas Department of State Health Services, she
pleaded for roughly $100,000 to hire temporary workers to help her exhausted
staff.
“I was like, can I just have money so that if I need a few hours of work from a
retired school nurse who we’ve worked with before, I can just pay them?” Wells
said.
The answer, she said, was consistently “no.” The state did send a few travel
nurses from other areas to help, but no extra funding.
To stop a measles outbreak from escalating out of control, public health
workers have to snap into action, contacting every person exposed to the virus
as fast as possible, determining their vaccination status or health risk, and
then try to woo them into either getting vaccinated or staying home for three
weeks in quarantine.
Wells pulled at least half of her staff to work the outbreak response on top of
their other daily duties."
Via Kenny Chaffin.
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
