- cross-posted to:
- texas
- cross-posted to:
- texas
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.”
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…
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.