We’ll get to that in a minute. But first, here’s something else to worry about.
As Texas battles against its largest measles outbreak in decades, immunization data obtained by Houston Landing shows that more than 1,000 kindergarten and seventh grade students in the Houston ISD either had vaccination exemptions or lacked proof they were fully immunized against the highly contagious virus.
The data, which is from mid-December, indicates that 91 schools across HISD – the largest school district in Texas – may be at increased risk of a measles outbreak because of pockets of children who are not fully vaccinated.
At these schools, fewer than 95 percent of the kindergarten or seventh graders were up-to-date on their measles shots – the percentage the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is needed to create “herd immunity,” which prevents the onward spread of the disease.
Some HISD elementary schools had particularly low levels of measles protection, with fewer than 80 percent of kindergarteners listed as fully vaccinated for their age, the Landing found.
The measles virus, which is particularly dangerous for babies and young children, causes a high fever, rash and sometimes serious complications such as pneumonia, brain swelling and loss of hearing or speech. The current outbreak has so far killed two children in West Texas and a third person in nearby New Mexico.
Texas statewide school immunization requirements mandate that children who lack proof of vaccination against measles and several other communicable diseases be excluded from class until they are either up-to-date on their shots, or they provide a form exempting them from vaccination for medical, religious or other reasons of personal conscience.
But HISD told the Landing that the district’s schools aren’t enforcing these rules.
The district’s records indicate that the vast majority of students who weren’t up-to-date on their measles shots had no exemption, no evidence of being fully vaccinated, and they also weren’t in the process of getting immunized or transferring records.
“At this time, we are not excluding students from learning based on vaccine status,” the district said in an emailed statement, which noted its schools “are focused on ensuring all students have access to high-quality instruction every day.”
District officials did not grant interviews. In their emailed statements, they emphasized that district-wide – when students at all schools in all grades are combined – current data shows that students are “96.6% compliant” for the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine. That includes students who are fully immunized with this vaccine – as well as those who aren’t, but who have a vaccine exemption on file.
The district acknowledged that some of its individual schools have lower measles vaccination rates – including below the 95 percent level health experts say is needed to prevent outbreaks.
The data analyzed by the Landing was gathered by the district in December as part of annual state reporting requirements. It represents a snapshot in time of the measles immunization status of students in two key grades – kindergarten and seventh grade – that nationally are used as benchmarks for assessing vaccine coverage.
HISD said that throughout the school year it has tried to address low measles immunization rates at individual schools by sending information to parents and providing “targeted immunization efforts” in partnership with healthcare providers.
Yet between December and mid March, the district had only managed to reduce by 133 students the number of kindergarten and seventh graders who were at risk of measles infections.
At that time, there were still 1,011 students in these two grades who were either not up-to-date on their measles shots or were exempt from vaccination against the disease, according to information HISD provided in response to the Landing’s questions.
Many of these students are clustered at specific schools, making those locations more vulnerable to outbreaks if one of the students becomes infected.
Did you need another reason to be mad at Mike Miles? You’re welcome. There’s a searchable table in the story, so you can see what the immunization levels are for the kindergarten near you. There’s still time this school year to do better, if HISD cares enough to try.
Anyway. Here are the latest numbers.
Texas health officials reported 36 new measles cases on Friday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases since late January to 597.
The state’s public health department estimates that fewer than 30 of the confirmed cases — about 4% — are “actively infectious.”
Ten counties remain under “ongoing measles transmission” status: Cochran, Dallam, Dawson, Gaines, Garza, Lynn, Lamar, Lubbock, Terry and Yoakum.
Lamar County in northeast Texas is closest to the Dallas-Fort Worth area and has reported 11 measles cases. Gaines County, near the New Mexico border, where the measles outbreak began, has reported the majority of measles cases, with 371.
More than 30 measles cases have been reported in Kansas, which public health officials believe may be linked to the Texas outbreak, The New York Times reported.
In North Texas, a measles case was confirmed in Rockwall County on Tuesday. The illness was confirmed in an adult who recently traveled to West Texas and may be connected to the outbreak because of the person’s travel history, according to a public health alert issued by the county’s health authority.
The first confirmed measles case in Rockwall County, which was reported in late February, was not believed to be connected to the West Texas outbreak.
El Paso County now has 18 cases, and Collin County may have some cases; this has not been officially confirmed yet, as far as I can tell. And let’s not forget the other states.
Michigan officials confirmed a new measles outbreak Thursday near Grand Rapids, bringing the U.S. to eight states with active outbreaks of the vaccine-preventable disease. Earlier this week, Pennsylvania declared an outbreak in Erie County as well.
[…]
States with active outbreaks — defined as three or more cases — include Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and New Mexico.
The multistate outbreak across Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas confirms health experts’ fears that the virus will take hold in other U.S. communities with low vaccination rates and that the spread could stretch on for a year. The World Health Organization has said cases in Mexico are linked to the Texas outbreak.
This may have felt like a relatively quiet week in Texas as far as the measles went, but we’re probably underestimating the case count.
The Trump administration has been busy hacking away at the Department of Health and Human Services, and the results have been devastating.
David Sugerman, a senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that a large number of measles cases are going unreported—and that the government’s ability to respond has been strained by recent federal budget cuts.
“We do believe that there’s quite a large amount of cases that are not reported and underreported,” Sugerman said during a rare meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices Tuesday.
“In working very closely with our colleagues in Texas, in talking with families, they may mention prior cases that have recovered and never received testing, other families that may have cases and never had sought treatment,” he explained.
Sugerman is the first CDC official the Trump administration has allowed to directly address the public about the growing measles outbreak.
“We are scrapping to find the resources and personnel needed to provide support to Texas and other jurisdictions,” he said.
Sugerman pointed to the $11.4 billion in COVID-19 funding cuts ordered by President Donald Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy last month, which he said has created “funding limitations” in places like Texas.
The funding previously supported clinics that treated illnesses like measles and supported vaccination programs.
[…]
Sugerman estimated that each measles case may end up costing the government between $30,000 and $50,000 for a public health response.
Meanwhile, Kennedy was once again pushing misinformation about the measles vaccine, calling it “leaky” and saying that it “wanes,” during a separate press event on Tuesday.
“He’s dead wrong, the measles vaccine protects you for the rest of your life. The notion that it’s a leaky vaccine is dead wrong,” Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia told USA Today.
NBC News also reported on the latest RFK Jr follies. In addition to lying about vaccines and displaying astonishing ignorance about autism, the Brainworm in Chief has some highly sketchy friends who are undermining the already weak messaging he is bringing to this crisis.
As Kennedy tries to respond to the spread of measles cases in the United States — more than 700 cases have been reported in at least 25 states as of April 10, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — medical experts say that messaging has been mixed. But any focus on vaccination is also being undermined by CHD, the anti-vaccine nonprofit Kennedy chaired from 2015 to 2023, the year he launched a presidential campaign.
As of December 2024, Kennedy has said he is no longer officially affiliated with the group, which has repeatedly questioned the safety of vaccines, including through lawsuits. But CHD still prominently displays its former ties to Kennedy. The secretary has a standalone tab on the group’s “About” section, which credits him as its founder. Its video site features public appearances that Kennedy has made in his current role as secretary, including a recent trip to Indiana and his first major news conference in the role.
This year, CDH published a website that mimicked the design of a CDC site — with nearly identical layout, logos and typefaces — that laid out what it called research that vaccines cause autism (they do not) alongside some data debunking the theory. The InfoEpi Lab Substack first reported on the existence of the mock site.
When asked about the site by The New York Times, a spokesperson for Kennedy said the secretary would send a request to ask the group to take down the site.
[…]
The scope of the CHD messaging — including interviews with parents expressing vaccine skepticism — shows how so-called anti-vaxxers may be weaponizing tragedy to promote an agenda, said Kelsey Suter, a partner at Upswing, an opinion research and strategy firm that supports Democratic candidates and progressive causes. Suter has monitored online disinformation about vaccines since around the start of the pandemic for several clients.
“This group in particular has long cherry-picked individual stories and sort of held them up to represent a broader trend that doesn’t exist,” she said, noting that CHD has shared parent-centered videos in the past about purported vaccine injuries.
Kennedy is a longtime vaccine skeptic who tried to distance himself from that record during his contentious Senate confirmation process earlier this year to lead the country’s expansive health department. Before Kennedy’s longshot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination — which culminated in an independent candidacy and subsequent endorsement of Republican President Donald Trump — he was closely tied to the Children’s Health Defense.
The nonprofit, previously known as the World Mercury Project, says it aims to end “childhood health epidemics by eliminating toxic exposure.” Kennedy, also its former chief litigation counsel, took a leave from CHD in 2023 to run for office. During a Wednesday news conference, Kennedy speculated that environmental toxins could play a role in autism — a framing that autism groups have strongly denounced. (CHD has publicly linked vaccines to autism, a debunked claim.)
CHD’s messaging — which includes a standalone site for “news and views” and an accompanying newsletter — highlights an evolution of how misinformation and disinformation over vaccines is being directed at parents at a time when vaccination rates for kindergarteners is declining. Parents are already targeted by social media influencer accounts about their children’s health and wellness. Some of that information is packaged in video that can be more widely shared than in previous eras of vaccine skepticism, a phenomenon that has existed since the development of the first vaccine more than 200 years ago.
Some of the misinformation circulating online is that measles was not a dangerous disease when it spread rampantly in the 60s. (In the decade before a vaccine was available in 1963, an estimated 3 million to 4 million Americans were infected with measles each year. Between 400 and 500 died and thousands were hospitalized each year at the time.)
“It’a this kind of broader lifestyle perspective that incorporates vaccine hesitancy and is being sort of packaged up and targeted for moms in particular, but parents generally,” Suter said.
Read also this Trib story about the more local efforts, and get yourself all worked up again. Which brings us back to where we started, with not enough children getting vaccinated, sometimes because their parents have been brainwormed and sometimes because they face obstacles in getting their kids vaccinated and no assistance or consequences along the way. That is something we all can do something about right now. Call a principal, call Mike Miles, call your favorite member of the Board of Managers and/or your Trustee, hell call your City Council member. HISD can damn sure make an effort to improve its own numbers here.
