betef The Texas Measles Outbreak Is Even Scarier Than It Looks

data de lançamento:2025-03-25 04:44    tempo visitado:139

This article has been updated to include new information about the number of measles cases.The news that an outbreak in Texas has caused the nation’s first confirmed measles death in a decade — an unvaccinated child — is as unsurprising as it is tragic. Spreading largely in rural Mennonite communities that typically have low vaccination ratesbetef, the outbreak has already grown to at least 146 cases since late January. Almost all of them are children.

Parents whose children got infected but survived are no doubt grateful that their family was spared. But startling research about the virus unfortunately tells a new and very different story, recasting what was previously known about how measles works and making clear why the Trump administration’s approach to vaccines is nowhere even close to meeting the moment.

That research, conducted over the past decade by the immunologist and medical doctor Michael Mina and others, revealed that measles destroys immune cells. Even people who recover from the virus lose much of their immune memory, and therefore the protection they had acquired from prior infections or vaccines to all the other childhood illnesses. This leaves survivors more vulnerable to many other diseases for years afterward. Worse, these victims may now face those childhood diseases, to which they lost immune protections, as older children, which puts them more at risk for complications.

Before vaccines were introduced, Mina told me, earlier measles infections may have been implicated in as many as half of all childhood deaths from all infectious diseases. Which, given these findings, would mean the true harm of measles is far greater than its death toll,66jogo.com and the legacy of this outbreak may still be felt years after it’s officially contained.

234bet

It’s not just those families that opt out of vaccinations who are at risk. Measles is one of the most transmissible diseases known to humanity. Children don’t get their first vaccine dose until after 12 months, and full protection doesn’t kick in until they get their booster, usually when they’re between 4 and 6. Like other vaccines, it is less effective for elderly people whose immune systems aren’t as robust, and it isn’t as helpful or even a possibility for people who are immunosuppressed because of other factors such as cancer treatments.

Overall, the vaccine is highly effective and the rare breakthrough cases — a few in a thousand exposures — tend to be mild. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns, however, that those cases can be vectors for the illness.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

On Monday and Wednesday, the deaths of two mothers in Georgia were linked to the state’s far-reaching abortion ban in new reports from ProPublica.

The data suggests that some of the tools used to combat opioid overdosesbetef, such as naloxone, the overdose-reversing medication, were having a significant impact. But researchers and federal and state health officials have puzzled over the exact reasons for the decrease, including why overdoses have fallen so much in recent months.