The Texas Girl Who Died From Measles

[Nevilledog]

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/03/texas-measles-outbreak-death-family/681985/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/1aK7Z

Peter greeted me in the mostly empty gravel parking lot of a Mennonite church on the outskirts of Seminole, a small city in West Texas surrounded by cotton and peanut fields. The brick building was tucked in a cobbled-together neighborhood of scrapyards, metal barns, and modest homes with long dirt driveways. No sign out front advertised its name; no message board displayed a Bible verse. No cross, no steeple—nothing, in fact, that would let a passerby know they had stumbled on a place of worship. When my car pulled up, Peter emerged to find out who I was.

He hadn’t been expecting a stranger with a notepad, but he listened as I explained that I had come to town to write about the measles outbreak, which had by that point sent 20 people from the area to the hospital and caused the death of an unnamed child, the disease’s first victim in the United States in a decade.

Of course Peter knew why Seminole was in the news. He had heard that President Trump was asked about the outbreak here during a Cabinet meeting, and he told me that he didn’t like the attention. The Mennonites were being unjustly singled out. It wasn’t like they were the only ones who came down with measles. The coverage, he insisted, was “100 percent unfair.” He didn’t think it was just the Seminole area that had problems; he said that he had family in Canada and Mexico who had also gotten measles recently. I told him I’d heard that the child who’d passed away might have come from his congregation. He said that was true.

Peter dug the toe of his boot into the gravel. I asked him if he knew the family. His voice broke slightly as he answered. “That’s our kid,” he said.

*snip*

[UpInArms]

1. I am so sick of the sky daddy bullshit

The death of his daughter, Peter told me, was God’s will. God created measles. God allowed the disease to take his daughter’s life. “Everybody has to die,” he said. Peter’s eyes closed, and he struggled to continue talking. “It’s very hard, very hard,” he said at last. “It’s a big hole.” His voice quavered and trailed off.

[DURHAM D]

2. Please put 2 and 2 together Peter.

"he said that he had family in Canada and Mexico who had also gotten measles recently"

[Scrivener7]

3. "It's God's will," Peter says. Fuck Peter. It's not God's will. God gave us vaccines. It's Peter's ego.

[bluestarone]

4. HE ashould be charged with MURDER!

What a no good fucking bastard.

[bluesbassman]

5. That's a pretty fucked up god you follow Peter.

What did that little girl ever do to this "god", that he felt compelled to kill her? So his name could be glorified? That's some really sick shit right there.

[Stuckinthebush]

9. This

I say that all the time. What a fucked up deity you worship. No thanks from me. I am more ethical and moral than your god. Pass!

[WhiskeyGrinder]

6. What a heartbreaking article.

[hatrack]

7. Fucking sick of these people.

You let her die because of the imaginary angry sky fairy who dislikes bacon and foreskins.

Yeah, sounds legit.

[Mosby]

12. Christians eat bacon and have foreskins.

Not sure what your point is, the vast majority of Jews are reality based.

Why are you making this about Jews?

[MagickMuffin]

8. I have a suggestion for them

At one point in the parking lot, Peter had asked me why his daughter matters to the rest of the country. I’d struggled in the moment to come up with an answer. For Peter and his family, the loss of their daughter is a private tragedy, one that would be excruciating no matter how she died. The fact that she died of measles, though, is a sign that something has gone wrong with the country’s approach to public health. Twenty-five years ago, measles was declared “eliminated” in the United States. Now a deadly crisis is unfolding in West Texas.

It is a preventable disease and whether or not you think it’s god’s will and we’re all gonna die anyway. Perhaps you should think of others. Your daughter’s death is because you refused to vaccinate her, and her siblings. You are putting more people at risk because of your backward ways of thinking.

[Attilatheblond]

10. 'God will provide, fix, save.... yada yada' per bible thumping control freaks

I wanna start asking why these people live in structures that people built! Their GOD set mankind in wilderness, according their 'holy book/word of God'. So why aren't they living naked and without shelter, as GOD intended?

Oh, 'God' gave them intelligence and so mankind built shelter and made clothes to protect themselves? HUH???!?! But vaccines are a no-no because.... WHY?

Often I entertain the possibility that we humans have already split off onto new branches of the tree of life and folks on some branches are incapable of evolution and getting beyond what was once thought of as 'truth'. IOW, too stupid to survive.

[yardwork]

11. "Why his daughter's death matters to the rest of the country..."

People's deaths matter to all of us.

A murdered person's death matters, and we have laws to arrest the murderer, even if we didn't know the victim personally. Even if the victim isn't a member of our family.

A child dying from an easily preventable disease matters to all of us, especially as it's the beginning of an epidemic that will affect us all.

This idea that "it's my family and I'll do whatever I want with them" is against our Constitution. We are a nation of laws. If Peter doesn't like that, he can move.

[Solly Mack]

13. Ignorance kills.