{"id":9617,"date":"2025-06-04T10:34:25","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T15:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=9617"},"modified":"2025-06-04T10:34:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T15:34:29","slug":"how-measles-tore-through-a-remote-west-texas-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/06\/04\/how-measles-tore-through-a-remote-west-texas-city\/","title":{"rendered":"How measles tore through a remote West Texas city"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/measles-outbreak-mennonites-west-texas-seminole-vaccines-rcna208284\">NBC News<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>SEMINOLE, Texas \u2014 On a Saturday in mid-March, Dr. Ben Edwards put on his scrubs and drove to a sheet metal building in this tiny West Texas city to treat children with measles. Red spots mottled his face; Edwards was sick with measles, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An outbreak of the disease was swelling in Gaines County, a rural community with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dshs.texas.gov\/immunizations\/data\/school\/conscientious-exemptions\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"one of the lowest childhood vaccination rates, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">one of the lowest childhood vaccination rates<\/a>&nbsp;in the country. For two weeks, lines of families had snaked around the building\u2019s dusty parking lot, almost all belonging to the area\u2019s Mennonite community, a religious group known to speak Low German and keep to themselves, mostly sending their children to church-run schools. The parents were concerned by the illness that had speckled their children\u2019s bodies and weakened their breathing, but their distrust of vaccines and hospitals ran deeper. Edwards\u2019 alternatives seemed a safer bet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/measles-outbreak-mennonites-west-texas-seminole-vaccines-rcna208284\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" style=\"display: none;\" title=\"SPt FF YcYuAwkVEA\"><!-- SPt FF YcYuAwkVEA --><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NBC News SEMINOLE, Texas \u2014 On a Saturday in mid-March, Dr. Ben Edwards put on his scrubs and drove to a sheet metal building in this tiny West Texas city to treat children with measles. Red spots mottled his face; Edwards was sick with measles, too. An outbreak of the disease was swelling in Gaines [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-measles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9618,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617\/revisions\/9618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}