Texas official warns against "measles parties" as outbreak keeps growing 20 people have been hospitalized.

[FSogol]

Most cases are in children.

A Texas health authority is warning against "measles parties" as the outbreak in West Texas grew to at least 146 cases, with 20 hospitalized and one unvaccinated school-age child dead. The outbreak continues to mainly be in unvaccinated children.

In a press briefing hosted by the city of Lubbock, Texas, on Friday, Ron Cook, chief health officer at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, offered the stark warning for Texans in his opening statements.

"What I want you to hear is: It's not good to go have measles parties because what may happen is—we can't predict who's going to do poorly with measles, be hospitalized, potentially get pneumonia or encephalitis and or pass away from this," Cook said. "So that's a foolish idea to go have a measles party. The best thing to do is make sure that you're well-vaccinated."

Lubbock sits about 90 miles northwest of the outbreak's epicenter in Gaines County, which is one of the state's least vaccinated counties. It has recorded 98 of the outbreak's 146 cases. While Lubbock has only reported two of the 146 cases, patients from elsewhere have been treated in Lubbock. That includes the first two cases in the outbreak as well as the child who died of the infection earlier this week, who was not a resident of Lubbock.

More at:

https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/02/texas-official-warns-against-measles-parties-as-outbreak-keeps-growing/

[Celerity]

1. Official warnings will just ensure that the MAGATs actually have them, then when some of the children die, they'll blame

Biden, Clinton, Obama, all other Dems, PoC, LGBTQ, and all the 'libs'.

[Solly Mack]

2. Imagine having to be told to not expose your child to a potentially deadly disease.

How thick do you have to be?

I don't care what someone's parents did at one time. It was stupid then. It is stupid now.

Just because no one died at the time, it doesn't change how stupid it was.

[marybourg]

4. It wasn't stupid "then". Measles is so contagious that everyone was going to contract it

sooner or later. It was much less serious in young children than in teens or adults, so it was beneficial to expose children who had not yet contracted it naturally.

[Solly Mack]

6. How beneficial was it to those who died? Those who became deaf? Encephalitis/convulsion that lead to brain damage?

Who developed Dawson disease? (they all die)

Young children and babies are at serious risk, actually. Look it up.

Stupid. It was stupid. It is stupid.

[marybourg]

9. Young children are at risk. Teens and adults are at greater risk.

I lived through those years. Not only did adults die, but if they survived it was often with deafness, blindness and/or infertility

[Solly Mack]

12. Nothing you've said makes it any less a stupid thing to do.

[marybourg]

13. Well, clearly we are much smarter than the generations

that preceded us. Including the one that won WWII.

[Solly Mack]

16. We actually do know more now about diseases. You get that there is no correlation between winning a war and people

making intelligent choices in their lives, yes?

[stopdiggin]

21. you mean the bunch that chain smoked cigarettes

and drank like fish? And occasionally smacked around their 'wimmin' and kids? Tried their level best to keep "those other people' out of their towns and neighborhoods? Knew sex education should definitely be kept out of the schools. And thought their daughter's college ambitions (if they had the 'extra' money in the first place) really ought to center around finding a 'nice doctor' to marry?

Yeah ... I can have a certain amount of respect ... But that doesn't mean I'm taking a lot of advice .... (medical or otherwise)

[stopdiggin]

14. It was absolutely moronic. Both then and now.

And the idea that babies and children routinely had 'milder' cases, is pretty much an old wives tale. The truth of the matter is - that measles did not actually kill a large proportion of those infected (either young or old) - but it damned sure made a lot of them 'hella' sick while they suffered through.

[stopdiggin]

7. "stupid then - stupid now" sums it up nicely.

Your 'granny' also smoked (and drank) during pregnancy - refused to use a seat belt or car seat, while smoking up a storm w/ young passengers in the car - routinely left children in the car while 'popping in' to the shops - and left the potato salad out from early morning on, before serving at church picnic in late afternoon.

And in fact - some of us DID die ... But ya know ... Thoughts and prayers ...

[Solly Mack]

10. Thank you. I get so tired of those memes that go around talking about what kids used to do and can't now.

As if it wasn't unsafe then. Children died from accidents and such then - it just didn't make national news.

[haele]

15. Because back in the day, that was how parents thought they could stop an epidemic from continuing.

This is how my mom explained it.
First kid that gets serious measles, every kid in the neighborhood who didn't have measles yet gets sent over for a sleepover with pot-luck and drinks.
After the sleepover, the measles house is quarantined for two weeks.
Then one of two things happens:
- If you went to the party and no one in your household had measles, or if someone is bedridden due to a serious health condition you get quarantined with the rest of the measles house and has to stay there through quarantine. Fun.
- If you went to the party and most of your family had already had or already gone through a quarantine, you returned home and your house was pretty much quarantined for a week to see if you become symptomatic. However, any infant or adult in your house who had never had measles, or has an internal organ or chronic health problem but is not bedridden needs to leave before you can come home from the party and don't come home until the all clear.

My parents went through that; they also never put me or my brother through that, because vaccination, treatment and quarantine procedures had advanced significantly from the time they were kids.

On edit - both my parents knew kids who never came out of quarantine or came out blind, deaf, or with organ or nerve damage from measles. In the 1960's, I had a classmate die and her older sibling go blind from measles because their parents weren't concerned about vaccinations.
Measles is a FAFO disease.

[Solly Mack]

18. I'm not changing what I said.

But I've heard older people talk about it when I was younger - all the reasons it was done.

I've always thought it a stupid risk.

[Hugin]

19. The "parties" thing only sort of worked for the Chicken Pox.

Then, only because of it’s lower fatality rate than measles.

So, it became conventional wisdom ( ) that parties were the way to go.

[Solly Mack]

22. My mother did that with my two middle siblings. This was before I was born. When they talked about it

to me the first time, I called my mother an idiot. Meant it too. She didn't like it, but I didn't care. Not even when she punished me.

It was for chicken pox. Wasn't a party so much as older brother got chicken pox and older sister was deliberately exposed.

[Hugin]

27. I remember a discussion some of my older relatives had back in the day...

It was very difficult to distinguish between what they called the red measles and chicken pox. They knew that the measles were a worse disease due to the fatalities and severe complications.

Due to this, as a rule, the family opted out of any disease parties.

It’s strange now remembering this stuff that vaccination should have relegated to the dark ages. Here we are again.

[Solly Mack]

31. Oh, don't get me started on people who refuse to vaccinate their children.

I mean those without an actual medical reason.

[haele]

20. I agree with you.

Just commenting on why they did this prior to vaccines.
Measles, like Chicken Pox and Mumps, was more dangerous to catch the further from puberty you were because of potential reproductive organ and greater brain damage as those organs were developing into their final stages.

Parents would cross their fingers and expose little Jimmie and Annie early to hope their stronger immune systems of childhood would protect them from the greater risks that could develop later on.

[Solly Mack]

23. They went with what they understood, which wasn't always a lot. Hard to combat "folk" wisdom sometimes.

Still a stupid risk though.

[Mariana]

24. The problem with that is that by the time someone is sick with measles

they've already spread it all over creation. Measles is very contagious for days before the first symptoms appear.

[EarnestPutz]

3. If all the anti-vaxxers die off in the next hundred years, is it still "natural selection" even though drug companies...

......and their vaccines are the cause? Oh wait, it's "and their UNUSED vaccines" that are the cause. Nevermind.

[Mariana]

25. They won't die off. Most people survive these diseases.

[EarnestPutz]

32. I was thinking more about the upcoming, new-and-improved super-covid.

[lindysalsagal]

5. From the state that has a soaring maternal death rate and abandoned babies

These fools will happily die for their religion: "God is my vaccination!"

[ananda]

8. Insanity rules these days.

People have literally lost their minds and often their hearts.

This is also what is now destroying our government and
whole country.

!@#$%

[republianmushroom]

11. Jesus, how did humans ever become the head of the food chain.

Dumb and dumber.

[Igel]

17. It's worse than they say.

Measles tends to cause "immunity amnesia" so that you can easily lose protection against diseases you've already acquired immunity to through previous exposure (or vaccination).

https://asm.org/Articles/2019/May/Measles-and-Immune-Amnesia

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/measles-immune-system-memory-infection

[Initech]

26. Every time I think it can't possibly get any worse, it does.

[Lovie777]

28. Whoa......

that’s pretty dangerous especially with unvaccinated children.

[synni]

29. It's like that episode of "South Park"

Remember "Chicken herpes?"

It's not so funny, when it happens in real life.

[spanone]

30. Idiocracy

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=idiocracy+movie&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#vhid=OyDkIzyrQBiisM&vssid=l