Cool Zone Media.
I'm Stephen Monchelli. I'm a journalist in Dallas and an occasional Cool Zone Media contributor. You may have seen in the news lately that there's a major measles outbreak centered in Texas. It started back in January of this year in the West Texas County of Gaines, and it has since spread to at least two other states. As of this recording, Texas has reported over seven hundred cases associated
with the measles outbreak. New Mexico has reported over sixty, Oklahoma has reported over fifteen, and there are other states that have also reported measles cases that may or may not be linked to this outbreak. It's the first major measles outbreak in a decade, and it's already taken three lives, two unvaccinated children, the first of such deaths in more
than twenty years, and one adult. All were unvaccinated at the res of the outbreak are low vaccination rates, which took a sharp downturn after the twenty twenty COVID nineteen pandemic as dubious vaccine skepticism and opposition to vaccines, both mandatory and in general, became a partisan political issue. It is no coincidence that the low vaccination rate in Gaines County, where the outbreak first began, corresponds with deep red Republican politics.
Measles is a sort of canary in the coal mine. It's one of the most highly communicable diseases and consequently is among the first to appear in communities with low vaccination rates. An outbreak in California about a decade ago was eventually stemmed when the state legislature banned vaccine exemptions for school aged children. This action spurred response and gave a shot in the arm to a nascon coalition of vaccine skeptics and outright anti vaccination groups that had previously
struggled to get political traction. By twenty twenty, such groups had gained meaningful amounts of infolruents in red states like
Texas and Oklahoma. Then came COVID nineteen, and suddenly a disparate set of groups big pharma skeptics, wellness influencers, health freedom libertarians, and conservative religious groups, to name a few, coalesced in a formidable political force under the banner of the Republican Party, whose politicization of the COVID nineteen pandemics served as a sort of ideological cement to unite them.
The logical conclusion of this development is represented in the avatar of RFK Junior, a long time vaccine misinformation peddler who now sits atop the highest federal government health bureaucracy, a perch from which he continues to spread debunked anti
vaccination tropes like a proverbial fox in the henhouse. RFK Junior has repeatedly downplayed the importance of vaccines in the battle against measles, and has refused to distance himself from long debunked anti vaccination arguments such as that vaccines cause autism.
His influence and the influence of the vaccine Skins movement, of which he is a central figure, can be seen in responses from local West Texans who have opted for junk palliatives like vitamin A or measles exposure parties over vaccination. The viral spread of anti vax ideology threatens to pitch us back one hundred years in time, when thousands of children and adults either died or disabled every year from
diseases like measles, polio, and smallpox. Research into the side effects of vaccines has repeatedly shown that the risks associated with vaccination are far lower than the risks of an infection, particularly for vulnerable populations like young children, the elderly, and people with suppressed immune systems. Some people genuinely cannot get vaccines, such as certain new board babies, and thus are at higher risk should an outbreak of a deadly disease occur.
When ninety five percent of a population is vaccinated in an area, diseases can be entirely removed from circulation, and that's indeed what happened to smallpox and for a time, measles. But the downward trend in vaccination rates, supercharged by the marriage of right wing politics with anti vaccination beliefs of all stripes, means that our collective immunity is at risk.
This week, I will be your host on It Could Happen Here As I take you through a five episode mini series called Anti vax America, three interviews with public health officials, vaccine scientists, medical professionals, and historians. I will explore the ongoing measles outbreak and how it serves as a microcosm for where we are, how we got here, and where we could go if anti vaxx beliefs continue
to become mainstream in the United States. In the first episode, I will cover the origin of the measles outbreak in Texas, it's deadly consequences, the varying responses from public health officials at different levels of government, and the consequence of misinformation
being spread at the national and local level. In the second episode, I will on earth the deep roots of anti vaccination belief in the United States, how it's changed over time, and why it's basically become synonymous with right wing politics in our current day. In the third episode, I will explore the overlap between anti vaxx beliefs and the belief in supernatural healing and miracles that is common among a particular movement of conservative Christianity that has tied
itself closely to President Donald Trump. In the fourth episode, I will untangle the twisted history of eugenics and how it's influenced public health and vaccination attitudes, as well as the historical echo of eugenics that can be found in RFK Juniors Make America Healthy Again agenda. And in the last episode, I'll consider what could happen in the United States, What could happen here if vaccination rates continue to plummet and vaccine skeptics like RFK Junior continue to dictate public
health policy. But before we get there, a quick ad break. Gaines County, the epicenter of the West Texas outbreak, is a largely rural place home to oil field workers, farmers, ranchers, and several Mennonite communities. Politically, it's very conservative. It sits on the Texas New Mexico border, about three hundred and sixty miles west of Dallas, where I live. The largest city in the region, Lubbock, is two counties over. Lubbock is home to two hundred and sixty thousand plus people
and has the largest hospitals in the area. It was at one of those hospitals that the first child died of measles in over two decades. As the number of cases in the region began to increase, Lubbock became a central hub for both treatment and the dissemination of public health information. Weeks before RFK Junior or Texas Governor Abbot spoke on the issue, local pub health officials and medical institutions were on the front lines in Lubbock.
So my name's Catherine Wells, and I am the director for Lubbock Public Health and Lubbock Public Health is the city and county health department in both the city and county of Lubbock, Texas. I've been in this role for about ten years now. We're about seventy five miles from Gaines County, which is where kind of the epicenter of this measles outbreak is.
Let's maybe go back all the way to the day that you know it sort of began. The first case came out in January, So can you take us a little back to that day and what was going on in your world and you know, what were you doing, and how did you hear about this first case and what your reaction was.
And we'll actually need to take a couple of days kind of before the announcement. I first found out out the possibility of measles that Friday, the twenty eighth. I have all my dates messed up, but it's that Friday before the first case was announced. One of my staff came and told me that we had two children that had been admitted to our local hospital. So we have
the children's hospital for this whole region. People come, you know, over two hundred miles to come to the children's hospital in Luppock, and she mentioned that there was two children. The physician thought it might be measles that they were going to send for testing. So in public health, measles is so rare that even sending somebody for testing is required to be reported to public health. That physician thought
it was measles. We kind of waited over the weekend, and then that Monday and Tuesday, I started hearing some rumors that there were measles cases down on the ground in Gaines County, which was interesting. People were calling and saying, you know, I heard this rumor, have you heard this? And I'm like nope. And then all of a sudden, those two cases or those two cases both tested positive.
And then when we went and started talking to the families and learning more, we realized that those rumors about measles circulating and Gaines County was true, and there were reports of you know, multiple individuals that had been sick and measles had probably been there or at least a little bit of time. And then when we got the confirmed cases, that really just put everything into really you know, moving very quickly trying to really figure out what was going on for measles.
So at that time, it was it was flu season, and so were you all was your office preparing, you know, or working on anything else at that time when you had first heard about this first testing and you know, started hearing about these rumors.
Yeah, I mean, we had increases in flu, we had increases in COVID. We actually had some birds that had died that had tested positive with the new Avian flu. You know, just that's a busy time of the year for public health with lots of different reports coming in, lots of multiple reports of pertussis, and it's not unusual that we have a physician wanting to test for measles ruling out I mean, it happens a couple of times a year, but in my entire career, every time that happened,
it had always been negative. So I was kind of thinking that it was one of those cases, especially that Friday afternoon, like, oh, this is just a doctor, you know, you know, just wanting to rule something out. You know, it's probably flu or something else going on with those children.
And so when you had gotten that confirmation, it was verified that those cases had indeed been measles. I mean, what was going through your mind at that time.
I mean that was like, you know, people have always talked about we're kind of on the edge of seeing more measles outbreaks in the United States, and it was really kind of a no, no crab moment of Wow, this is in our backyard, is our department you know, ready to take this on? And then also reaching out to Gaines County, which has a much smaller health department, and being like, what can we help you with? Do
you guys know what you need next? You know, they don't have a communications person, so it was like my staff writing the press release for Gaines County to send out to make the notifications about the first measles cases. So it was just really what can we do to help them immediately and figure out what the next steps would be with that.
So since January, cases have been on the rise, and so we're in a different place now than just two cases. Can you just tell us a little bit about where things are now in Lubbock and how medical forties have responded to the outbreak.
So initially, you know, all of the cases were in Gaines County. The only exposures we were seeing outside of Gaines County was when somebody was seeking medical care and was sitting in like say, a waiting room at a physician's office, and then they were exposing other individuals. But after a couple of weeks, we started seeing spread outside of Gaines County, so we were seeing more and more cases in those surrounding counties, and then we started getting
cases in Lubbock, that's seventy five miles away. Over the last three weeks, we've really seen the cases in Lubbock increase. You know, we originally just had a handful. Now we're up to forty one or forty two, and that number will be updated again tomorrow. So just seeing more and more spread of measles, and the concern is that public Health can't necessarily trace those back to a specific case. So people that have got out to the store or gone to a public place have now contracted measles.
So tell me a little bit more about what efforts have taken place and what sort of initiatives have been put into place as measles has spread. You know, what does that look like from love at Public Health or any of your partners.
Yeah, so ours is really the first one was getting testing set up Originally when this started, all of our testing samples had to go to Austin, which is about a five and a half hour drive, So working with the state Health Department to get testing capability up here in Lubbock so we could quickly identify people. The next one is really about education, providing information to the physicians' offices the hospitals about measles because we hadn't seen it
in twenty one years here. So just think about how many physicians have been trained over the last twenty one years never saw a measles case in their residency. So getting them to feel comfortable about what the signs and symptoms are, and really making sure that we were notifying or that they were notifying public health and getting people tested and then doing that contact tracing, and then the other big ones vaccinations. You know, there's two ways to
prevent measles. You know, one is the vaccination that's going to protect you, and then the other one is avoiding being exposed to measles. So really getting more and more people vaccinated with pop up clinics and then running a measles vaccination clinic here at our Health department.
Can you tell me a little bit about what the response in particular too. You know, the vaccination clinics being set up has been you know, I have a lot of people shown up for that. Has it drawn a lot of you know, new people that are trying to get their children vaccinated.
It's a mix. I feel that our vaccination clinic here at our health department's been pretty successful in that we're getting people every day coming in to get vaccinated, and we're seeing people that were hesitant prior, that had chosen not to vaccinate their children kind of with the idea, well, I've never seen measles or moms or rebella, so why give my child a vaccine if that doesn't exist. Now that measles are circulating in the community, they're changing that
thought process and are coming forward to get vaccinated. Some of the rural clinics have been a lot harder to get people to come in. I mean, they've stood up clinics and only a handful of people have come in to that clinic that day. So real mixed response. But I think is public health, it's important for us to be offering the MMR vaccine with as few barriers as possible.
So you were in this position during the COVID pandemic and when that began and all throughout it. So can you tell me a little bit what it was like working in your role as a public health official ads that time, and then also maybe whether things are any different today, has anything changed?
I mean, I think our community did fairly well throughout COVID, given you know, everything that went on. I've always believed in just being honest and talking about what I do know what I don't know, what the science is showing, and I think that helped our community get vaccinated and take some of the precautions during COVID. And I'm kind of taking that same you know, thought process and that same you know, leadership style as we're dealing with measles
out here. You know, with measles, it's a challenge. I think people are paying attention to it because it's really impacting children, whereas we didn't see, you know, that same impact with COVID. It's frustrating because we know what the solution is. When COVID showed up, you know, nobody in public health and the medical community, you know, knew exactly
what COVID is. With measles, we know what we're dealing with and We also have a known solution, which is a vaccine, so it is frustrating that people are choosing not to vaccinate. Still, the other challenges is during COVID, all of our other work for public health got put on hold. Here with measles, our health Department's still expected to do all of our other jobs and respond to a measle's outbreak, which is really stressful on staff.
I can completely understand that in terms of some stressful things. I understand that just from doing some background research and reading up that your office or maybe even you yourself, were subject to some threats or some sort of pretty extreme reactions during COVID. Is that the case and is that still happening?
Thankfully, it's not happening. During COVID, we did have some very strong opinions and some threats, mostly around when the children's vaccine was released and why we were promoting that. We have not seen that with measles, which is very good. I don't want any of my staff to be threatened. I mean, you always got these random posters on people that post on social media, but they're not even individuals from our community.
Got it okay? Well, I'm glad to hear that genuinely that that is a positive change. I suppose that is something that's a good difference.
And also good support from our pediatricians and the medical community has been very good and outspoken about the importance of getting vaccinated, which has helped us.
So where do you see things going from here? I mean, do you think we'll continue to see more cases? I know that they're on the rise, but do you think that will continue? Or do you have other concerns about potentially other outbreaks of diseases that had been kind of pushed out of circulation coming back.
Yeah, all of the above. I think in Gains count in particular, we don't have a good understanding of where we are in the epidemic, like how many vulnerable individuals in that community are still remaining, so we don't know how long that initial epicenter outbreaks going to last. We're also seeing, you know, as measles gets into a community, it is so infectious that it is going to find all of those little pockets of people that are unvaccinated.
And that's what we're seeing here in Lubbott County is you know, measles taking hold and finding little pockets and public health trying to go put out you know, little fires, trying to make sure that we've figured out who's been exposed and who's at risk.
You described, you know, how this is an incredibly infectious disease and it is you know, finding all the pockets people that are vulnerable or not vaccinated. And so I'm wondering if you can, you know, if they're any examples or specifics that you could share about how the outbreak
is impacting communities or particular communities. Has it resulted in disruptions in school for children, Has it caused any other sort of notable breakdowns or sort of pauses in day to day regular activity in Lubbic.
You know, those breakdowns have been more minor that a child, say that's unvaccinated's been exposed and that's requiring that child to sit out from school. So there is that, you know, element that they're missing those important days of education. Our bigger impacts here have been around daycares. We had a large outbreak, or large in the sense that we've had now eight children or eight individuals associated with one daycare
all test positive with measles. So that's meant that you know, children have had to be sent home from daycare, which then impacts parents' ability to work and also impacts you know, you know, daycare along with you know, the number of students there children having to go home that have been exposed working a lot to get additional doses of vaccine
into a daycare. So it both impacts the public health system, our healthcare system because kids need health, but then it also impacts parents because if your child's not in daycare, a parent can't go to work. Those have been the bigger disruptions and then disruptions in our healthcare system that we're now having to do a lot of screen Like you call to make an appointment for the doctor, and it's kind of like COVID, have you been exposed to measles?
Are you vaccinated? They're asking all those screening questions before people enter our healthcare facilities.
In terms of sort of interactions with the state and their response to this, can you tell me a little bit more about how the State of Texas has responded and partnered with local authorities.
So we have a good working relationship with the State of Texas. Texas has to do everything differently, so we kind of have this decentralized system where the state and locals both kind of have their own authority, very independent at the county level, but the state is offered support to us. They've helped me bring in temp nurses to be able to assist with vaccine clinics. They're paying for some additional staff d answer phones, so we're getting that
kind of support. And then I meet with the state, you know, regularly about what's going on in Lubbock, how Lubbock fits in the context of the rest of this outbreak, and you know, how we're going to work together to move forward. We always thought of measles as an airplane ride away, so we would see, you know, somebody travel to a foreign country, come back to the United States and maybe pass measles to a couple of people in
their household. This outbreak is not that we're seeing transmission within a community, and it's making measles more of a car ride away. And that's concerning because we have individuals that are susceptible to measles, either through to young to be vaccinated, not vaccinated, or some other immune compromised state.
So just concerning that we're going to see more outbreaks spreading out into the United States, especially as we're moving into spring and summer where people are traveling and driving through communities that we could just see kind of explode everywhere, which is my biggest fear. Yeah.
Absolutely.
I mean, given that vaccinations and to some degree, public health in general has kind of become a politicized issue, I can only imagine that it can make it quite difficult for you to convey these messages to people for them to understand them.
Yeah, and I'm talking. I mean I've talked to many health department directors across the country, and you know, one of the values of local public health is that you know, all of us local health department directors and those staff were coming from these individuals, communities and our goals to keep our community safe. And it really doesn't matter what's happening at the federal level. It's about your community, your connections, watching out for this diseases, and then convincing your community
to do the right thing. And luckily we have you know, twenty five hundred health departments across the US, and that is their goals, and hopefully people will continue to trust their local directors.
That is a great point. And I'm wondering if is there anything else that you can speak to on how the distrust that is there can potentially be bridged, or you know, the specific things that y'all have done to try to sort of rebuild that trust or establish that trust.
I mean with us locally, it's making sure that we're talking to our local news and our local reporters and answering the phone call when a concerned parent calls, and going through the information we know, and utilizing our local physicians to tell them the story, because I think if you can still see it at the local level, you know, people can really understand that this is a risk and really make that right choice to get the vaccine or if they've been exposed, to stay home.
We'll hear more from Catherine in just a moment at first, as we are obligated to do. Here's some ads. So I do understand there's quite a bit of skepticism towards vaccination, and that's certainly going to be a subject that we're exploring in this podcast. And at least by the numbers, it shows that in places like West Texas and particularly more rural areas even more than a place like Lobbick,
that there's pretty low vaccination rates. Several counties are below the I guess, was it ninety five percent threshold that really helps bring diesels out of circulation And so, you know, I'm kind of curious. You've been there for over a decade. Do you have a sense sort of what the key drivers of vaccine hesitancy are and why so many West
Texans choose not to get their children vaccinated. You already mentioned, you know, the fact that it's it hasn't been seen for so long, so sort of out of sight, out of mind maybe, But are there other other drivers that come to mind for you?
Yeah, I mean I don't think. You know, West Texas is unique from many other communities in the United States. You know, people are very much influenced by social media and some of our media outlets, and there's a lot of you know, scare tactics or misinformation around vaccines and you know, anything from autism that's been debunked so many times about vaccines causing autism, other misinformation about what's in vaccines and the risks of vaccines. I mean, every medical intervention,
every medication has some type you know, of risk. But vaccines have been long studied, and especially when you're looking at the MMR vaccine we've been using this for fifty years and that's why we don't have measles cases or hadn't had measles cases. But people have really bought into a lot of that information out there, and it's really
hard to combat that. I've gone and read the stories and I can see how people feel miss and pick up on this, but I just don't know from public health standpoint how we combat it.
Right right, It's a very difficult problem, the challenge that has a long history and has a lot of different factors.
And things are so complex. It's not a it's not a one for one. It's just it's been a challenge. But I think out here I always felt like we hadn't been impacted as much from some of these anti vaccine movements. I think post COVID people you know, have a mistrust in government or wanting to listen to mandates
or recommendations or whatever we call them. We're just seeing that more and more, and that hesitancy you know, to come through and trust both government trust the medical system are all concerns and that all contributes to these lower vaccination rates.
In a media environment rife with misinformation about vaccines and public health, Catherine's perspective is refreshing and a bit hardening. Local public health officials like her have done great work to raise the alarm around viral outbreaks, but they're up against a problem that is much bigger than what they can address on their own, and that's the widespread belief in bogus theories, be they scientific or religious, that undercut
the proven science around vaccines. Much of this misinformation comes from places far from West Texas, like the anti vaccination group Children's Health Defense, which RFK Junior previously led. It is widely recognized as a major source of online vaccine misinformation,
including the debunk allegation that vaccines cause autism. After the death of a six year old child of measles in March, Children's Health Defense released a video interview with the parents, who said they still would not take the vaccine and wouldn't recommend it to other parents. Here's a clip from that interview in which the Mennonite parents speak in their Lowland German dialect.
So when you see the fairmong gring in the quest, which is what we once stop, We want to get the truth that what do you say to the parents that are rushing out Hannah Kang to get the EMMA for a six months or failure beca think that that child is gonna die of measles from this appartment to your daughter, and it would sign is only sous so bad. Like there's doctors with the whometown.
She says, they would still say don't do the shots. There's doctors that can help with measles. They're not as bad as they're making it out to be.
Yeah, and also the measles.
Are good for the body for the people because the measles are then give the what is it.
What can and synem contraction but infection, yeah, did you get infection out?
And he's immune system. Yeah, they're trying to say that the measles actually help build the immune system in the long run. If they get the measles, now you don't achieve in the long run, and were in the salation like okay, So in the long run, he said, they wouldn't get cancer as easily, and like it pipes off a lot of a lot of stuff, the immunity that they get from the from the measles.
But some of what public officials like Catherine have been trying to combat is coming from other medical professionals much closer to home, such as doctor Ben Edwards, who appeared in a Children's Health Defense video and has promoted anti vaccination misinformation on his own podcasts, including the recommendation to take vitamin A to treat measles, an approach that has resulted in several cases of vitamin A toxicity among children
diagnosed with measles in West Texas. During their interview with Children's Health Defense, the Mennonite parents of the first child to die of measles actually said they were working with doctor Ben Edwards for their treatment. One video that went viral online showed Edwards visibly infected with measles at the time, treating patients with measles and inhabiting spaces where individuals who were not infected with measles were present, and this elicited
widespread condemnation from the medical community, quite unsurprisingly. Nevertheless, it demonstrates the sort of attitude of certain medical professionals in the area who have used their platforms and their credentials to sow doubt about the importance of the vaccine, making matters worse. Rfka Junior praised doctor Edwards as a quote extraordinary healer just one week after Edwards was seen in
that video treating patients while himself infected with measles. While anti vaccination beliefs have certainly gone viral in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, they are by no means new. Practitioners like Edwards and advocacy groups like Children's Health Defense have been peddling their snake oil for decades, But the roots of anti vaccination belief around even deeper than that.
In the next episode of Anti vaxx America, I'll do a deep dive into the history of anti vaccination beliefs to understand the origins of them, how they've changed over time, and why they've become embraced in mainstream right wing politics, which is a change from the sort of bipartisan and even sometimes progressive nature of some anti vaccination skepticism. But until then, thanks for listening. I'm Stephen Manschllei for cool Zone Media and this is Anti vaxx America.
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