Mennonite Measles in Texas

[mike]

Well guys, Mennonites made the front page of cnn.com today

[Ken]

Who are the Mennonites in Texas?

Short answer at least from the CNN article is that the group affected by the measles outbreak are mostly Old Colony Mennonites from Mexico who have moved up to Texas in the past several decades.

[Robert]

So if 100 kids get measles, two on average are going to die?

As I said, it is much lower now with modern treatments.

[Judas Maccabeus]

Last outbreak was east coast, in Hasidic Orthodox communities, mostly in Rockland county in New York. Spread into Brooklyn, and even into Baltimore, where we have similar communities. Wife was running the “ladies” side of a mass vaccination clinic at the local Bias Yakov school. She said the ladies did not seem to know what to make of her. There was actually one death from this outbreak, but the individual died outside of the US, so it was not counted. Suspicion is it entered from Israel.

What is the Orthodox Jew’s reason not to?

There was this flyer and poster printed and distributed in Hadisic areas of Williamsburg and upstate in Monsey, that stated that vaccination was contrary to Jewish law. It was, of course in Yiddish. It featured a rabbi from one of the Hasidic groups in Jerusalem, if I recall correctly it was Ger. It featured rather outlandish claims as to side effects. I don’t read Yiddish, but one of the docs I work with does. He went ballistic. According to him this guy was completely off factually, and vaccination is actually a mitzva, a good deed. “He who saves the life of a single person, it is if he saved the world.”

[Judas Maccabeus]

So if 100 kids get measles, two on average are going to die?

As I said, it is much lower now with modern treatments.

The number you have quoted is actually close to what I heard coming out of Samoa. It would have been lower, if they had more than just a few ICU beds, which were completely overwhelmed.

[Soloist]

So if 100 kids get measles, two on average are going to die?

As I said, it is much lower now with modern treatments.

The number you have quoted is actually close to what I heard coming out of Samoa. It would have been lower, if they had more than just a few ICU beds, which were completely overwhelmed.

I’ve heard rumors suggesting the true case count is 10 times the amount reported… if that’s the case, the fatality rate would drop. I suppose that’s part of the problem gathering modern data when people are too afraid to actually report.

[JohnH]

So if 100 kids get measles, two on average are going to die?

As I said, it is much lower now with modern treatments.

The number you have quoted is actually close to what I heard coming out of Samoa. It would have been lower, if they had more than just a few ICU beds, which were completely overwhelmed.

It would seem there could be some minimal research on what are effective treatments with measles. Relying on mass vaccination depends on a lot of things that can’t be assured, such as:

- Complex reliable industrial supply chains
- A public with complete faith in the medical system and public health system
- And a pharma sector that is producing good quality materials and not counterfeits or less effective adulterated material.

After the COVID debacle, we see how quickly supply chains fall apart and that we rely on China and India for a great deal of medicine; public trust in “health authorities” is at an all time low; and the pharma sector is mostly focused on dodging responsibility and making big profits when it comes to vaccines.

[Soloist]

Most viruses have little effective treatments yet. Antivirals tend to be risky or not well studied for some of these previously rare diseases. They are still relatively new for medicine.

[JohnH]

Most viruses have little effective treatments yet. Antivirals tend to be risky or not well studied for some of these previously rare diseases. They are still relatively new for medicine.

There’s plenty of room to explore how to treat the symptoms of the disease, reduce the severity and so forth, which is the approach we should have taken with Covid.

[Soloist]

There’s plenty of room to explore how to treat the symptoms of the disease, reduce the severity and so forth, which is the approach we should have taken with Covid.

I would say we did both. It took a while to develop an effective treatment, but towards the middle of the pandemic, I would say they had a relatively effective treatment