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Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Celebrating unvaccinated kids in Texas, as measles epidemic spreads [1]
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Date: 2025-03-08
For anyone interested in witnessing the natural outcome of Republican health care “policy,” there’s no better place to look than the state of Texas. That state’s near-monolithic Republican contingencies’ response to the rapidly spreading (and probably now uncontrollable) outbreak of measles among the state’s children looks like just the most recent of a long litany of willful indifference to the health of the general public.
The current epidemic is not confined to Texas, but that is where — by far — it’s been the worst, doubling in the last two weeks. Thus far their homegrown outbreak has officially numbered 230 cases (including 30 across the border in New Mexico), with 23 hospitalizations and two deaths, but reports seem to agree that the number of cases is being “vastly undercounted,” suggesting infections in the thousands.
As noted by Lyndon Haviland, writing for The Hill, hospitalization for measles is no joke: “Once admitted, children often require IV fluids and sometimes ventilator support to breathe.”
As reported by Eleanor Klibanoff writing a week ago for the Texas Tribune:
Texas is facing its worst measles outbreak in decades, as cases have jumped from two to 146 in just one month. A child is dead, 20 more are hospitalized and the worst is likely still ahead, public health experts say, as Texas’ decreasing vaccination rates leave swaths of the state exposed to the most contagious virus humans currently face. [***] But neither Gov. Greg Abbott nor lawmakers from the hardest hit areas have addressed the outbreak publicly in press conferences, social media posts or public calls for people to consider getting vaccinated. State and local authorities in West Texas have not yet enacted more significant measures that other places have adopted during outbreaks, like excluding unvaccinated students from school before they are exposed, or enforcing quarantine after exposure.
You have to wonder exactly how difficult it would be for these GOP elected officials to make even the most basic of PSA’s: a social media post, a speech, a newsletter, anything, urging their own constituents to ensure their kids are vaccinated. As crass as it may sound, the reality appears to be that they value their own political hides rather than the health of their constituents’ children.
As Klibanoff reported last week, the responses of elected officials representing the hardest hit areas are either offering their “thoughts and prayers” or just saying nothing:
House Speaker Dustin Burrows, a Republican from Lubbock, said in a statement that he was closely monitoring the situation, and was praying for the family who tragically lost their child. State Rep. Ken King and state Sen. Kevin Sparks, Republicans who represent Gaines County, did not respond to requests for comment about the measles outbreak. Neither they nor Abbott or Burrows have posted publicly about the outbreak.
Klibanoff notes that “vaccine hesitancy” (or more accurately, “vaccine idiocy”) among the population in these areas purportedly prompts a tepid approach to elected officials’ acknowledging the reality that vaccination is absolutely necessary to save their children’s health. After all, nothing could possibly be worse than telling your constituents that they’re misinformed.
On top of this obstinacy and ignorance (which was itself enormously boosted by the GOP in response to the COVID-19 pandemic) doctors in Texas are now being forced to combat the misinformation being fed to them from the highest levels of the federal government.
Chad Terhune, reporting for Reuters, cites the experience of a Lubbock, Texas pediatrician, Dr. Ana Montanez:
One mother, she said, told her she was giving her two children high doses of vitamin A to ward off measles, based on an article posted by Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. nearly a decade before he became President Donald Trump's top health official. "Wait, what are you doing? That was a red flag," Montanez said in an interview. "This is a tight community, and I think if one family does one thing, everybody else is going to follow. Even if I can't persuade you to vaccinate, I can at least educate you on misinformation.
At least one “religious leader” in the state is actually celebrating the fact that the children of local residents remain unvaccinated.
As reported by Adrian Ashford for the Dallas Morning News:
The pastor of a Fort Worth megachurch is celebrating that a school affiliated with his church has the lowest vaccination rate for measles of any school in Texas. “Shoutout to MC Prep for being the least vaccinated school in Texas!” Landon Schott, pastor of Mercy Culture Church, said in a Wednesday Instagram video.
Only 14.3% of kindergarteners at the Mercy Culture Church Prep are vaccinated against measles, according to Ashford’s report.
It’s stunningly sad that we’re dealing with this type of boneheaded denialism in the year 2025, but I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, look who this country re-elected as its president.
But maybe I’m being too gracious. Maybe it isn’t ignorance, or denialism, or some half-assed notions of religious "freedom" at work here.
Maybe they really, really just don’t give a fuck.
I could talk, talk, talk, talk, talk myself to death
But I believe I would only waste my breath
[END]
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