Latest news with #LowGerman
Hamilton Spectator
3 days ago
- Health
- Hamilton Spectator
Spotty attendance for measles at Norfolk elementary school
Measles continues to be an unwelcome visitor to schools in Norfolk County, causing kids to miss class as the school year enters the home stretch. Staff and students at Houghton Public School — a rural elementary school in southwestern Norfolk — were potentially exposed to measles on two separate occasions in May, with each exposure lasting several days. The school of just over 300 students has made numerous appearances on Grand Erie Public Health's measles exposure list since Norfolk's measles outbreak was declared in January. 'The students getting measles are those who are unvaccinated or whose immunization status is incomplete,' Houghton principal Robert Weber told The Spectator. The health unit has legal authority to order unvaccinated students into a 21-day quarantine after a possible measles exposure at their school. Weber confirmed some unvaccinated Houghton students have been sent home. 'Children learn best at school,' Weber said. 'When this is not possible, we find ways to provide enriching experiences and make the most of the challenges we have been presented.' But spotty internet access in rural Norfolk creates a barrier to online learning, and studying at home can be difficult as many Houghton families speak Plautdietsch, also known as Mennonite Low German, as their first language. 'Our focus has been on maintaining continuity of learning and supporting the health and safety of all students and staff in close co-ordination with public health,' said Weber, who has been Houghton's principal for nearly seven years. Health units in Norfolk and bordering Elgin and Oxford counties have identified Low German-speaking Mennonites as communities at higher risk due to vaccine hesitancy. Health and school officials have tailored outreach efforts accordingly. That means translating memos about measles into Low German and bringing in a local non-profit, the Norfolk Community Help Centre, to connect with Houghton parents and caregivers in their first language. Most of the 273 measles cases reported in Grand Erie since the end of October can be traced to western Norfolk. In late May, a baby born with measles died in the neighbouring Southwestern health unit. Norfolk's health unit sent home memos after the most recent measles exposure at Houghton on May 20 and 21. Families and school staff got information about the risk of measles and how to get vaccinated to stop the spread of the highly contagious respiratory illness. 'Measles self-testing kits are also made available to impacted families to reduce further transmission,' health unit spokesperson Shawn Falcao told The Spectator. Public health also organized five vaccination clinics at the school and nearby sites to help students and families get the two doses of measles, mumps and rubella vaccine that provide virtually total lifetime protection. 'Many of our families took advantage of these clinics and received vaccinations,' Weber said. The health unit did not divulge the vaccination rate at Houghton, with Falcao saying data about individual schools is not publicly shared 'to respect the privacy of schools, communities and individuals.' The recurrence of measles at Houghton 'continues to be a reminder that vaccination is the best defence against the virus,' Falcao said. Students with measles symptoms should stay home until the fifth day after the telltale rash first appears to limit the potential spread, he added. Ideally, Weber said, every Houghton student would be healthy and in class every day. 'There is no alternative learning experience that comes close to the quality experience of attending school with teachers and peers,' he said. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
CTV News
4 days ago
- Health
- CTV News
How Mennonite women are building bridges between public health and community amid measles outbreak
Catalina Friesen, a personal support worker and Low German-speaking liaison, stands in front of a bus outfitted as a mobile walk-in clinic, in St. Thomas, Ont., May 20, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Hannah Alberga LEAMINGTON, ONT. — Catalina Friesen got a call one night in February from one of her clients, a Low German-speaking mother in Aylmer, Ont. Her daughter had a rash that covered her body. The five-year-old had a fever and was coughing out of control. 'I said, 'Just take her to emerge, especially if she's not eating or drinking,'' says Friesen, a personal support worker and liaison for a health clinic in St. Thomas, Ont., that caters to the Low German-speaking Mennonite community. But her client said she already went to the hospital, and that they turned her away. Friesen called the hospital and found out her client was told to go back to her car — standard practice for a measles patient while they prepare a negative-pressure room. 'But because they couldn't understand exactly what they were saying, they thought they told them to go home,' says Friesen, of the misunderstanding. Friesen helps more than 700 Low German-speaking Mennonites navigate the health-care system in southwestern Ontario. She says she has guided at least 200 people through the current measles outbreak, translating test results and public health measures. Every Thursday, she drives a bus outfitted as a walk-in-clinic to a church parking lot in Aylmer, Ont., that serves Low German-speaking Mennonites in the surrounding rural areas, where the community has been based for approximately 75 years. Many of these families are from Mexico and have been migrating to the region for seasonal agricultural work since the 1950s, in some cases staying due to better economic opportunities. Some drive from as far as Leamington, two hours away, for the clinic. Friesen says some don't have health cards as they apply and wait for permanent resident status, and she estimates about half of the people she sees are vaccinated. Friesen says communication and language barriers paired with a historic distrust in authorities has set the stage for a unique set of challenges during the largest measles outbreak the province has seen in almost three decades, infecting more than 2,000 people. Many of them have been unvaccinated children in southwestern Ontario. On Thursday, Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore said an infant in the region who was born prematurely had died after getting measles from their mother. As the outbreak continues to spread, health providers have had to reckon with why some standard approaches to managing a highly contagious virus do not work for all patient populations, and in doing so, address their own assumptions to better shape communication for the community. Friesen innately knows how to navigate some of these roadblocks because, she says, 'They're basically my people.' She was born in a tiny Mexican town called Nuevo Ideal. She was around 10 years old when her family moved to Tillsonburg, southeast of London, Ont. 'When we moved here, it was extremely scary. I didn't know what anybody was talking about. We got made fun of a lot. Most of my childhood, most of my school life, I got made of as the Mennonite, Low German-speaking, whatever you want to call us,' she says, with a nervous laugh. At the time she says she only spoke a little English and wore hand-me-down clothes to school. Students said she had an accent, her braids were weird, she smelled bad. Friesen brings this past with her when she sits across from patients on the mobile clinic bus, or when she accompanies them to appointments, who tell her about similar experiences. She says she has seen doctors and nurses talk down to her patients. 'It's the stigmatism of – 'You're not from here. We don't like you,'' she says of the way her patients feel when they are treated this way. Dr. Ninh Tran, the head of the Southwestern Public Health unit, gives regular virtual updates on the region's measles outbreak, and each week he holds a briefing, he is asked about unvaccinated Mennonites. Every time, he warns the public of a false sense of safety that can come from blaming a single group for a widespread outbreak. 'Why name any specific groups when it's not entirely representative of that group anyways?' Tran said in a recent interview on a cold and wet day in late May. Southwestern Public Health said it does not report on faith-based denomination in its measles immunization data. In March, Dr. Moore sent a memo to local medical officers of health linking the rise of measles cases in the province to an exposure at a large Mennonite gathering in New Brunswick last fall, which then spread to Ontario and Manitoba. He wrote, 'Cases could spread in any unvaccinated community or population but are disproportionately affecting some Mennonite, Amish, and other Anabaptist communities due to a combination of under-immunization and exposure to measles in certain areas.' In an April interview with The Canadian Press he reasserted that the 'vast majority' of Ontario's cases are among people in those communities. When asked about Moore's memo in a subsequent media briefing, Tran again cautioned against singling out a group. 'It's always nice to finger point at someone, but it's not necessarily the reality … We're seeing cases everywhere and in different groups, and really the main thing is vaccination.' Speaking as a vaccinated Mennonite, Amanda Sawatzky says anyone who believes all Mennonites are unvaccinated is wrong. Just like any other population, some are immunized and some are not. 'To be clear, many, many many, many, Mennonites are vaccinated. Let's not continue this narrative that this population group as a whole is not vaccinated,' says Sawatzky, who works in the social service sector and consults with health providers on best practices for working with Mennonites and newcomers in southwestern Ontario. She also has a Master of Social Work. That's not the only misconception about Mennonites, she says. 'We come from all walks of life and practice in different ways. Some of us dress traditionally and some of us don't,' she says. Sawatzky grew up in a Low German Mennonite village in Mexico's northwestern Chihuahua state where all of the houses were on one side of a dirt road and fields of fava beans and corn were harvested on the other. She didn't have indoor plumbing or hydro until she was seven. But now, she lives in a suburban house on a cul-de-sac in Leamington with a car parked in the driveway and a pool in the backyard. She sports a baby blue blazer and beige heels. She still identifies as a Mennonite. There are approximately 60,000 Low German-speaking Mennonites living in southwestern Ontario, according to a 2024 guide by the Low German Speaking Mennonite Community of Practice in Elgin, St. Thomas, Oxford, and Norfolk. Michelle Brenneman, executive director of Mennonite Central Committee Ontario, says that's likely a low estimate. She also notes there are more than 30 different groups that identify as Mennonite in Ontario and hold a variety of views on how to practice their faith, dress and live. Sitting beside her, Linda Ruby, a Low German liaison adds, 'There's this assumption that Mennonites that are being talked about in the media are these horse-and-buggy-driving Mennonites. But Low German-speaking Mennonites do not drive a horse and a buggy at all, ever. They drive cars,' says Ruby. Sawatzky says historical context dating back hundreds of years is relevant to understand the current outbreak. She says governments asked members of the Low German-speaking Mennonite community to work the land in exchange for absolute autonomy to run schools and preserve their faith, language, and culture. But she says governments went back on their word in Europe, and then in Western Canada. Low German-speaking Mennonites left to Mexico and South American countries in the 1920s, but returned to Canada for better economic opportunities in the 1950s. 'Knowing what I've explained about the migration and the government taking back what they had promised, there is a lot of mistrust with the government as a whole,' she says, noting that extends to public health. 'So now, when you take any public health crisis – COVID, measles now, I'm not sure what the next thing is going to be, but there will be a next thing – there is mistrust when the government says, thou shall do A-B-C, because of what has happened in the past.' Sawatzky says she was recently at a community gathering and overheard a parent chatting about how they had pushed back when contact tracers called, refusing to answer their questions. Sawatzky approached the person and explained the purpose of the call was to keep the community safe. 'We were able to have a good conversation, even though they were completely different points of view … And at the end, they were like, 'Oh, okay, they're supposed to call me back again. Maybe I'll give them a little bit more.'' Not long before that conversation, a local health provider reached out to Sawatzky to try to understand why some Mennonites refused or resisted to provide their whereabouts for infection control. She asked how they worded their messaging and identified the word 'investigation' could be the problem. 'That sounds really punitive when we say that word to individuals who maybe have a very limited understanding of what public health's role is … because they have tried not to engage with any system that's government-funded.' She suggested softening the language to explain that health providers are trying to understand where people have been to determine who is at risk of getting sick. For Brenneman, executive director of Mennonite Central Committee Ontario, the public is looking at this outbreak as a cause and effect moment – the outbreak started at a Mennonite gathering and it is therefore spreading within that community. But the longer the outbreak lasts, she says the public narrative will have to expand to hold more nuance and become more accurate. 'It spreads because people are not vaccinated. And if it's going to spread further … it's not going to be because of the Mennonites. It is going to be because there are other groups of unvaccinated people in the population and it will spread the way science tells us these things spread.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 5, 2025. Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content. Hannah Alberga, The Canadian Press
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
How measles tore through a remote West Texas city
SEMINOLE, Texas — 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 County, a rural community with one of the lowest childhood vaccination rates in the country. For two weeks, lines of families had snaked around the building's dusty parking lot, almost all belonging to the area's 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's bodies and weakened their breathing, but their distrust of vaccines and hospitals ran deeper. Edwards' alternatives seemed a safer bet. Hastily repurposed from general store to clinic, the space Edwards worked in held little besides folding tables, plastic chairs and boxes of vitamins and supplements flown in by private plane. Feverish children coughed and whimpered. A flushed baby lay in his mother's arms. Another child curled under a blanket on her mother's lap. A crew from the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense documented it all. Edwards handed out cod liver oil — pungent liquids and pills rich in vitamins A and D — and prescribed steroid inhalers. Neither treatment can prevent or cure measles, and medical associations have warned against them; Edwards said he had seen the therapies 'work beautifully.' 'They had nowhere else to turn,' Edwards said later on his podcast, defending his decision to run the children's clinic while he was contagious. But down the road at Seminole's only hospital, a waiting room made for measles patients often sat empty. And even as infections soared, there was little demand for the only proven way of preventing them: On a recent weekday, just four people had come by the county's free vaccine two responses were in motion to deal with an extremely contagious disease that threatens small children the most. One was grounded in science and evidence, led by overwhelmed public health officials. The other was driven by distrust and propaganda — spread by anti-vaccine activists and alternative practitioners like Edwards, and, for the first time in memory, backed by the federal government itself under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. As founder, chairman and chief counsel of the nonprofit Children's Health Defense, Kennedy had spent two decades building the modern anti-vaccine movement. Now, as health secretary, he was downplaying the dangers of measles, spreading falsehoods about the risk of vaccines and urging parents to 'do your own research.' Kennedy broadcast these messages as the worst measles outbreak since the 1990s flared in one of the most vulnerable places — an isolated Mennonite community already skeptical of outsiders, primed to resist government intervention and influenced by misinformation that Kennedy had helped mainstream. In a matter of weeks, an illness once eradicated in the United States would burn through Gaines County's unvaccinated, hospitalizing scores of children and leaving two little girls dead. During the surge, the anti-vaccine movement came to town and turned Seminole into a front line in an information war — fought by fringe doctors, anti-vaccine activists and politicians pushing unproven cures, false hope and a narrative that shifted the blame back to conventional medicine once the costs of vaccine refusal became devastatingly clear. The story of Seminole — based on dozens of interviews, podcasts and news reports and descriptions from public health officials, Mennonite residents, traditional and alternative doctors and anti-vaccine organizations — offers a look behind the battle lines, as well as a warning for a country increasingly fractured not just by politics, but by competing realities. Sick children began showing up at Texas hospitals in January. Dr. Leila Myrick was on call when the first child landed in Seminole's emergency room, where she consulted a medical textbook to confirm measles, a disease she had never actually seen. Myrick had moved her family from Atlanta to Seminole in 2020, drawn by the promise of small-town medicine in a city cut out of the desert, a conservative but diverse community where many of her patients were Mennonite and Latino. She had taken care of their families in the five years since — through Covid and baby deliveries and everything in between. A framed poster of Myrick cradling newborns hangs in the hallway outside her office. Measles now threatened these children, and Myrick did what she could to persuade parents to vaccinate them. She gave interviews, answered calls on a local German-language radio show, stayed late at her clinic and worked weekends at the hospital. But her message faced competition. Children's Health Defense, the country's largest anti-vaccine nonprofit, has downplayed the danger of measles for decades, falsely calling it benign and beneficial to the immune system. Seminole's outbreak didn't deter the group, which wrongly suggested it had been caused by a local vaccination campaign and then floated other contradictory theories: that the vaccines were failing, shedding the measles virus, or perhaps working too well, leading somehow to a super virulent strain. Myrick watched her neighbors repeat these distortions in a local Facebook group, 'Seminole TX Residents NEED to KNOW,' sometimes naming her directly. 'Every doctor that pushes the jabs gets commission from the big Pharma,' one woman wrote. In late February, the Gaines County library posted a flyer 'kindly' asking that unvaccinated and measles-sick patrons not come in. By the evening, after an outcry in the comments, the library removed the post. 'I see a vulnerable population getting fed the wrong information and making decisions for their children's health based on wrong information,' Myrick said. 'And I feel helpless.' Responsibility for managing the outbreak fell on Zach Holbrooks, executive director of the South Plains Public Health District. Holbrooks grew up in Seminole and after stints in Lubbock and Austin moved back in 2008 to lead public health across four counties. Run on about $2 million in grants a year, the health department's responsibilities are broad — vaccines and family planning, but also disaster response, fire protection, food safety, landfills, inspections, permits and more. Holbrooks didn't see measles coming, though he is quick to say he probably should have — vaccine exemptions in Gaines County had more than doubled in the last 10 years, and about 1 in 5 kindergarteners were now skipping the shots. When the first cases were confirmed at the end of January, 'my heart sank,' Holbrooks said. The district kept only a couple of doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines on hand — enough for new families moving into the area, not to meet the sudden need of an outbreak. The two epidemiologists Holbrooks had on staff were immediately overwhelmed by case investigations. Holbrooks also didn't have outreach materials in Low German or a relationship with the Mennonite community, which he now urgently needed a way into. He turned to the state, which brought in nurses, testing supplies and vaccines. He set up a vaccine and testing clinic outside Seminole Hospital District; a spray-painted arrow on unfinished plywood signaled where to go. Billie Dean, a nurse and site leader at the clinic, remembered one Mennonite woman who drove by every day in a compact gold car. 'We would see her pull in, and we were like, 'Oh, she's back,'' Dean said. Each day, they told her how many people had gotten vaccinated the day before, how none had come back with side effects. After two weeks, she rolled down her window and said she was ready. A few days later, she came back with her daughter and grandson. Holbrooks printed flyers in English, Spanish and, with the assistance of a local author, Low German, to distribute at grocery stores, libraries, post offices and churches, and he gave updates on the local TV and radio stations. Still, cases in the area ticked up, nearly doubling in a week to 80, a sure undercount, since officials knew many people weren't being tested. In a letter published in February in The Mennonite Post, a German-language newspaper, a married Seminole couple reported 'a lot of sick people here. Many have fever or diarrhea, vomiting or measles.' Epidemiology deals in numbers. With measles, they go like this: With 1,000 cases, about 200 children will require hospitalization, 50 will develop pneumonia, and one to three will die. The numbers caught up to Seminole on Feb. 26. Kayley Fehr was 6 years old. She had two brothers and two sisters and, according to her obituary, she loved to sing and make people laugh. She was unvaccinated. Kayley got measles around the same time as her four siblings. As her fever rose, she struggled to breathe and became tired. The doctor gave her Tylenol and something for her cough, but she was still unable to catch her breath and couldn't eat because of the sores in her mouth. Kayley's parents took her to Covenant Children's Hospital in Lubbock, where she was diagnosed with pneumonia and admitted to the intensive care unit. Kayley deteriorated quickly. Her final hours were spent too weak to speak, her breathing shallow, her mouth sticky from thirst. She was sedated, intubated and placed on a ventilator. The details surrounding Kayley's death came weeks later when her parents sat for an interview with Children's Health Defense. Speaking through an interpreter and tears, they shared the story of their loss. That interview solidified a shifting narrative. After Kayley's death, Children's Health Defense pivoted to a frame that the group had sharpened during previous outbreaks and perfected with Covid: that Kayley had died with measles, not from it; that the virus was incidental and some other ailment or failure had killed her. To communicate that story, the activists needed someone with more authority. They needed a doctor. Ben Edwards practiced conventional family medicine in a small-town clinic in Post, Texas, but around 2013, as he tells it, he grew disillusioned, awed by an Amarillo holistic practitioner who denied the power of germs and preached the outdated theory of terrains: that the body's constitution determines whether a sickness takes hold. Edwards' new guru, who had lost his medical license and who the Texas Medical Board called a 'threat to the public welfare,' sold nutrition, supplements and lifestyle coaching — and some unorthodox and unproven interventions, such as ketamine to 'cure' autism. When Edwards tried to implement what he was learning, he was fired from his county clinic — now free, as he saw it, to strike out on his own. More than a decade later, Edwards has a sleek cash-only clinic in downtown Lubbock with a small waterfall outside the lobby, a lounge for IV treatments and a studio where he hosts his podcast, 'You're the Cure.' Kayley's death set off a series of events that brought Edwards — and later Children's Health Defense — to Seminole. At the end of February, Edwards got a call from Tina Siemens, one of his earliest patients, who often describes herself as 'the bridge' between Seminole's Mennonites and the outside world. Siemens, who runs a small museum of local Mennonite history, had helped local officials translate materials on vaccination and testing into Low German. Now, she told Edwards that Kayley's parents were worried about their other children, who were still sick with measles. Edwards met the family at Kayley's viewing on March 1, where he gave them cod liver oil and a prescription for budesonide, a steroid inhaler that's mostly used for asthma. Edwards had gotten the idea from Richard Bartlett, a devout Christian and emergency medicine doctor in Odessa, who said he discovered the steroid as a 'silver bullet' against Covid after being divinely inspired during a nap. (Research on its efficacy is mixed.) The next morning, Edwards wondered: What if he could treat everybody? He ordered 1,000 bottles of cod liver oil and vitamin C from his supplier, and a pilot — also a patient of Edwards — flew to Scottsdale, Arizona, to pick them up. Volunteers back in Seminole unloaded the boxes of capsules and liquids in the empty space next to a Mennonite-owned shop, Health-2-U. By the afternoon, people had brought in tables and chairs, making a waiting room on one side and a clinic on the other. Children's Health Defense launched a fundraiser, taking in more than $16,000 to 'defray the cost of essential vitamins, supplements and medicines necessary to treat children enduring complications from the measles.' About 70 kids came through the first day by Edwards' count. Some were already sick — with fevers that wouldn't break and coughs that lingered. Others were just beginning to show symptoms. Edwards returned to his pop-up clinic the next day. Another packed room waited for him. The story of the Lubbock doctor helping kids for free spread fast. Asked about his newfound popularity among the Mennonites, Edwards began to cry. 'It makes me real sad,' Edwards said in a phone interview in March. 'Why am I the only doctor out there treating these kids?' Meanwhile, Edwards urged his friend Bartlett, the doctor who advocated for budesonide, to go to Covenant Children's Hospital to intervene in the most serious cases. Wearing his white doctor's coat, Bartlett met the parents of one sick child as she lay in the pediatric ICU. Announcing himself as a 'friend of the family' — a term he later said on his podcast he used to gain access to the secure floor — he pulled Covenant's attending doctor aside. Bartlett said that budesonide had saved Covid patients and it would work now. According to Bartlett, the doctor relented and added the treatment, because the parents wanted it. Bartlett then went to another pediatric ICU room. 'The same doctor looked at me,' Bartlett said. 'He was ticked. He said, 'You again?'' Covenant Children's Hospital viewed Bartlett's intervention as interfering with care. The hospital issued a trespass warning and put a photo of Bartlett in the security office. Children's Health Defense glowingly covered Edwards' makeshift clinic, and Kennedy spoke directly to the doctor, praising his treatments on Fox News as producing 'very, very good results.' The following week, Children's Health Defense landed in Seminole and turned the crisis into content. Led by Polly Tommey — a self-described autism mom and co-creator of the anti-vaccine 'Vaxxed' films — they drove in from Austin through dust storms, 'to see for ourselves what was going on.' A group of Mennonite parents, including Kayley's, gathered to tell their stories of vaccines and measles on camera. They described a boy who developed seizures after an MMR shot when he was a baby in Mexico; a teenage girl with exhausting tics and limb pain caused by childhood vaccines; a mother whose church raised money for a stem cell transplant in China to undo the vaccine damage that had left her son in a wheelchair. These stories — compelling and unverifiable — were the kind Children's Health Defense had used to raise more than $67 million over the last decade. Siemens, who had brought Edwards in to treat Kayley's siblings, hosted the taping in her museum of Mennonite history. She described the parents' stories as 'mighty, mighty testimonies,' living warnings passed through the community's families and congregations that led the newest generation of parents to decide that vaccinating their children was too great a risk. Kayley's parents knew those stories well. They told Tommey that even now, they still wouldn't vaccinate. 'The measles wasn't that bad,' her mother, Eva Fehr, said. The hospital's insufficient care, she implied and Children's Health Defense outright said, was to blame for Kayley's death. Kayley's parents didn't respond to requests for comment. After the video featuring them circulated online, Covenant Children's issued a statement saying it contained 'misleading and inaccurate claims.' While the hospital was bound by patient confidentiality, 'What we can say is that our physicians and care teams follow evidence-based protocols and make clinical decisions based on a patient's evolving condition, diagnostic findings, and the best available medical knowledge.' Children's Health Defense, Tommey and Siemens did not respond to requests for comment. Bartlett declined to comment. Stopped recently on a walk near his clinic, Edwards said he would only speak off the record, but he later responded to several questions in writing. Doctors and nurses at Covenant Children's who were mourning Kayley — and were still caring for the sickest measles patients — took the claims personally. 'It is exhausting to hear, 'I have my own facts, and I've done my own research, and I don't believe your facts, and I know you're a doctor, but I have different knowledge,'' said Dr. Lara Johnson, the hospital's chief medical officer. 'And I always want to be compassionate and sympathetic to patients, because everyone's trying to do the best for themselves, everyone's trying to make the best decisions that they can.' The alternatives came with their own complications. Johnson said children with measles turned up at the hospital with liver problems from taking too much vitamin A, one of the supplements promoted by Edwards. In a text, Edwards discounted the idea that any children got sick from cod liver oil. 'I have a suspicion that the alleged vitamin A toxicity diagnosis is very questionable,' he said. For Johnson, the public mistrust felt like a replay of Covid. 'Everyone's kind of mourning the loss of the way it used to be,' she said. Kayley's death spurred Texas to ask for federal help. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent a group of epidemiologists to Lubbock, and one of them, Jonathan Yoder, moved into Holbrooks' Seminole office. Yoder had asked to come. He'd grown up in a conservative Amish Mennonite church. His father, who he says 'got off the farm and went to school,' ran a small environmental health department in the Florida panhandle, fielding calls about septic tanks, rabid animals — whatever came in. Yoder swore he'd never work in public health. He studied psychology and worked as a social worker, but he burned out, and after going back for a master's degree in public health, Yoder ended up at the CDC. For two decades he's traveled to disasters around the globe: Ebola, Covid and Flint, Michigan. Once in Seminole, Yoder started making calls to pastors, midwives, the county judge, the host of the German-language radio show, the editor of a 50-year-old Mennonite newspaper — anyone with a link to the community. He speaks softly, with a slow, careful cadence. On these calls, he mostly listened. He learned that the Mennonite pastors weren't keen to talk about vaccination from the pulpit and no one wanted a clinic in their church or school. Mistrust of outsiders generally and governments specifically was woven into the community's history. The conservative Anabaptist group had settled in Gaines County after moving from Mexico in the late 1970s. After pooling their money and pouring millions into bad land deals — which secured acres of farmland but not the rights to the water below it — hundreds of families were told within months that they would be deported. They pushed back, and their work ethic and faith won over neighbors, the mayor of Seminole, Texas lawmakers and, eventually, Congress, which passed a law in 1980 granting them residency. Fears of being kicked out of the country lingered, though, as did anxiety among undocumented Mennonite families who had come from Mexico more recently. Yoder knew it would be important, as Lubbock's public health director had written in an email to the state earlier in the year, to 'not go in telling people what to do.' So Yoder focused on building bridges. In March, he met with John Dueck, a former school superintendent in Paraguay and long-haul truck driver who now edits The Mennonite Post, a bi-monthly newsletter that connects far-flung communities from Bolivia to Canada, where Dueck now lives. Many of the Post's readers live in rural areas — some without internet or cell service — where the paper serves as a lifeline, delivering news of births, deaths and harvests. Dueck travels to gather stories. On Dueck's trip to Seminole, he couldn't stay with families as he usually did — too many kids were sick. A few weeks later, he published an editorial outlining the facts about measles and vaccination. 'Let's demonstrate our love and care for others by taking steps to prevent the spread of this disease,' he wrote. Dueck faced criticism, which he said he understood. Many of the people he'd spoken with in Seminole believed newer vaccines were more dangerous. Some told him the Covid pandemic had shown how health authorities might orchestrate a crisis — or even use vaccines to control people's lives. 'They were afraid,' Dueck said. A little over a month after Kayley, another child died. Daisy Hildebrand was 8 years old. She had blonde hair and wore glasses. She was the oldest of three children and she loved to play outside. She was unvaccinated. Daisy was generally healthy but had been feeling bad for weeks. On a family trip to Mexico, her eyes got sore and she had trouble breathing. She was diagnosed with measles and pneumonia. When Daisy was admitted to UMC Health System's hospital in Lubbock, she fought to breathe, was intubated and on April 3, she died. A cast of fringe doctors associated with Children's Health Defense returned to the playbook, separating the pneumonia from the measles that preceded it, and claiming, once again, that the hospital was at fault. Via webcam this time, Tommey interviewed Daisy's father, Peter Hildebrand, who blamed the hospital for Daisy's death and stood by his choice not to vaccinate. Tommey told him the interview would 'save lives.' In the weeks that followed, as Hildebrand tried to get measles removed from his daughter's death certificate, he and his wife started getting 'random phone calls, people telling us that we're going to hell for killing our daughter.' 'I love my kids,' he said in a phone interview. 'On top of what I've been dealing with, I don't need that type of bulls---, you know?' UMC Health declined to comment, citing patient confidentiality. Hildebrand drew support from a surprising official source: Kennedy, who flew to Seminole to attend Daisy's funeral on April 6, and then publicly shared her name for the first time on X. It was a stunning departure from public health protocol, in which the deaths of individual patients — especially children — are shared carefully. Kennedy bucked other norms. The HHS secretary communicated directly with Siemens, who ran the Mennonite history museum, and Edwards, who ran the makeshift clinic. He offered only the faintest endorsement of vaccines — while downplaying their effectiveness and exaggerating their risks. He incorrectly speculated on national television that the girls who died may have been unhealthy or malnourished. He praised Edwards' unproven therapies as 'miraculous.' Now he was in Seminole: the nation's top health official championing alternative medicine in the midst of a deadly outbreak. That evening, after Daisy's funeral, Kennedy joined the families for a quiet dinner at Siemens' museum. Edwards and Bartlett, the budesonide advocate, were there. Holbrooks, who led the county's measles response, came too, shaking Kennedy's hand and thanking him for sending Yoder. Kennedy later tweeted photos from the gathering. In the caption, he called Edwards and Bartlett 'extraordinary healers.' By early May, the outbreak had finally run out of unvaccinated children to infect. Yoder had packed up and returned to Atlanta. At an empty show barn that still offered drive-through vaccines, it was getting too hot for the pair of nurses who staffed it — and there were few takers left. And the metal building at the center of town showed no trace of Edwards or his treatments. It's now a general store, where traditional Mennonite dresses hang beside bolts of fabric, herbal teas and soft lovies crocheted by the shopkeeper's granddaughter. 'Sigh of relief,' Rob Franklin, editor of the Seminole Sentinel, the long-running semiweekly newspaper, said of its May headline: No New Measles Cases in County. Franklin said the community was fed up with the outside attention. Everyone just wanted to move on. 'They got tired of being portrayed like a problem,' he said. Holbrooks is still working to capture the full toll of the outbreak, collecting data from alternative practitioners. On Friday, following an inquiry from NBC News, Edwards emailed Holbrooks the accounting of his measles patients: 261 cases, nearly all children. In his office recently, when asked what he's learned over the last few months, Holbrooks paused. He ticked off the people who helped him — doctors, city judges, epidemiologists, paramedics, school leaders — and seemed to regret the relationships he hadn't been able to cement. 'If it taught me anything, it's just how important it is to build connections before an outbreak,' he said. 'Don't wait.' Holbrooks recalled a pre-dawn tornado that tore through Seminole in 1982, leveling some homes and businesses and leaving others untouched. One reporter wrote the city looked like it had survived a small war. The recovery effort pulled the town together, Holbrooks remembered. 'You never know when you're going to need your neighbor.' This article was originally published on
NBC News
6 days ago
- Health
- NBC News
The Seminole Sentinel chronicled the public health crisis. Shelby Tauber for NBC News Measles Outbreak How measles tore through a remote West Texas city Anti-vaccine activists seized on a deadly outbreak in Seminole, setting off a battle between fringe doctors and mainstream medicine.
June 4, 2025, 5:00 AM EDT By Brandy Zadrozny SEMINOLE, Texas — 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 County, a rural community with one of the lowest childhood vaccination rates in the country. For two weeks, lines of families had snaked around the building's dusty parking lot, almost all belonging to the area's 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's bodies and weakened their breathing, but their distrust of vaccines and hospitals ran deeper. Edwards' alternatives seemed a safer bet. Hastily repurposed from general store to clinic, the space Edwards worked in held little besides folding tables, plastic chairs and boxes of vitamins and supplements flown in by private plane. Feverish children coughed and whimpered. A flushed baby lay in his mother's arms. Another child curled under a blanket on her mother's lap. A crew from the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense documented it all. Edwards handed out cod liver oil — pungent liquids and pills rich in vitamins A and D — and prescribed steroid inhalers. Neither treatment can prevent or cure measles, and medical associations have warned against them; Edwards said he had seen the therapies ' work beautifully.' 'They had nowhere else to turn,' Edwards said later on his podcast, defending his decision to run the children's clinic while he was contagious. But down the road at Seminole's only hospital, a waiting room made for measles patients often sat empty. And even as infections soared, there was little demand for the only proven way of preventing them: On a recent weekday, just four people had come by the county's free vaccine clinic. For more on this story, watch "Hallie Jackson NOW" on NBC News NOW at 5 p.m. ET So two responses were in motion to deal with an extremely contagious disease that threatens small children the most. One was grounded in science and evidence, led by overwhelmed public health officials. The other was driven by distrust and propaganda — spread by anti-vaccine activists and alternative practitioners like Edwards, and, for the first time in memory, backed by the federal government itself under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. As founder, chairman and chief counsel of the nonprofit Children's Health Defense, Kennedy had spent two decades building the modern anti-vaccine movement. Now, as health secretary, he was downplaying the dangers of measles, spreading falsehoods about the risk of vaccines and urging parents to 'do your own research.' Kennedy broadcast these messages as the worst measles outbreak since the 1990s flared in one of the most vulnerable places — an isolated Mennonite community already skeptical of outsiders, primed to resist government intervention and influenced by misinformation that Kennedy had helped mainstream. In a matter of weeks, an illness once eradicated in the United States would burn through Gaines County's unvaccinated, hospitalizing scores of children and leaving two little girls dead. During the surge, the anti-vaccine movement came to town and turned Seminole into a front line in an information war — fought by fringe doctors, anti-vaccine activists and politicians pushing unproven cures, false hope and a narrative that shifted the blame back to conventional medicine once the costs of vaccine refusal became devastatingly clear. The story of Seminole — based on dozens of interviews, podcasts and news reports and descriptions from public health officials, Mennonite residents, traditional and alternative doctors and anti-vaccine organizations — offers a look behind the battle lines, as well as a warning for a country increasingly fractured not just by politics, but by competing realities. Measles arrives, then misinformation Sick children began showing up at Texas hospitals in January. Dr. Leila Myrick was on call when the first child landed in Seminole's emergency room, where she consulted a medical textbook to confirm measles, a disease she had never actually seen. Myrick had moved her family from Atlanta to Seminole in 2020, drawn by the promise of small-town medicine in a city cut out of the desert, a conservative but diverse community where many of her patients were Mennonite and Latino. She had taken care of their families in the five years since — through Covid and baby deliveries and everything in between. A framed poster of Myrick cradling newborns hangs in the hallway outside her office. Measles now threatened these children, and Myrick did what she could to persuade parents to vaccinate them. She gave interviews, answered calls on a local German-language radio show, stayed late at her clinic and worked weekends at the hospital. But her message faced competition. Children's Health Defense, the country's largest anti-vaccine nonprofit, has downplayed the danger of measles for decades, falsely calling it benign and beneficial to the immune system. Seminole's outbreak didn't deter the group, which wrongly suggested it had been caused by a local vaccination campaign and then floated other contradictory theories: that the vaccines were failing, shedding the measles virus, or perhaps working too well, leading somehow to a super virulent strain. Myrick watched her neighbors repeat these distortions in a local Facebook group, 'Seminole TX Residents NEED to KNOW,' sometimes naming her directly. 'Every doctor that pushes the jabs gets commission from the big Pharma,' one woman wrote. In late February, the Gaines County library posted a flyer 'kindly' asking that unvaccinated and measles-sick patrons not come in. By the evening, after an outcry in the comments, the library removed the post. 'I see a vulnerable population getting fed the wrong information and making decisions for their children's health based on wrong information,' Myrick said. 'And I feel helpless.' Responsibility for managing the outbreak fell on Zach Holbrooks, executive director of the South Plains Public Health District. Holbrooks grew up in Seminole and after stints in Lubbock and Austin moved back in 2008 to lead public health across four counties. Run on about $2 million in grants a year, the health department's responsibilities are broad — vaccines and family planning, but also disaster response, fire protection, food safety, landfills, inspections, permits and more. Holbrooks didn't see measles coming, though he is quick to say he probably should have — vaccine exemptions in Gaines County had more than doubled in the last 10 years, and about 1 in 5 kindergarteners were now skipping the shots. When the first cases were confirmed at the end of January, 'my heart sank,' Holbrooks said. The district kept only a couple of doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines on hand — enough for new families moving into the area, not to meet the sudden need of an outbreak. The two epidemiologists Holbrooks had on staff were immediately overwhelmed by case investigations. Holbrooks also didn't have outreach materials in Low German or a relationship with the Mennonite community, which he now urgently needed a way into. He turned to the state, which brought in nurses, testing supplies and vaccines. He set up a vaccine and testing clinic outside Seminole Hospital District; a spray-painted arrow on unfinished plywood signaled where to go. Billie Dean, a nurse and site leader at the clinic, remembered one Mennonite woman who drove by every day in a compact gold car. 'We would see her pull in, and we were like, 'Oh, she's back,'' Dean said. Each day, they told her how many people had gotten vaccinated the day before, how none had come back with side effects. After two weeks, she rolled down her window and said she was ready. A few days later, she came back with her daughter and grandson. Holbrooks printed flyers in English, Spanish and, with the assistance of a local author, Low German, to distribute at grocery stores, libraries, post offices and churches, and he gave updates on the local TV and radio stations. Still, cases in the area ticked up, nearly doubling in a week to 80, a sure undercount, since officials knew many people weren't being tested. In a letter published in February in The Mennonite Post, a German-language newspaper, a married Seminole couple reported 'a lot of sick people here. Many have fever or diarrhea, vomiting or measles.' Epidemiology deals in numbers. With measles, they go like this: With 1,000 cases, about 200 children will require hospitalization, 50 will develop pneumonia, and one to three will die. The numbers caught up to Seminole on Feb. 26. A child's death brings anti-vaccine activists to town Kayley Fehr was 6 years old. She had two brothers and two sisters and, according to her obituary, she loved to sing and make people laugh. She was unvaccinated. Kayley got measles around the same time as her four siblings. As her fever rose, she struggled to breathe and became tired. The doctor gave her Tylenol and something for her cough, but she was still unable to catch her breath and couldn't eat because of the sores in her mouth. Kayley's parents took her to Covenant Children's Hospital in Lubbock, where she was diagnosed with pneumonia and admitted to the intensive care unit. Kayley deteriorated quickly. Her final hours were spent too weak to speak, her breathing shallow, her mouth sticky from thirst. She was sedated, intubated and placed on a ventilator. The details surrounding Kayley's death came weeks later when her parents sat for an interview with Children's Health Defense. Speaking through an interpreter and tears, they shared the story of their loss. That interview solidified a shifting narrative. After Kayley's death, Children's Health Defense pivoted to a frame that the group had sharpened during previous outbreaks and perfected with Covid: that Kayley had died with measles, not from it; that the virus was incidental and some other ailment or failure had killed her. To communicate that story, the activists needed someone with more authority. They needed a doctor. Ben Edwards practiced conventional family medicine in a small-town clinic in Post, Texas, but around 2013, as he tells it, he grew disillusioned, awed by an Amarillo holistic practitioner who denied the power of germs and preached the outdated theory of terrains: that the body's constitution determines whether a sickness takes hold. Edwards' new guru, who had lost his medical license and who the Texas Medical Board called a 'threat to the public welfare,' sold nutrition, supplements and lifestyle coaching — and some unorthodox and unproven interventions, such as ketamine to 'cure' autism. When Edwards tried to implement what he was learning, he was fired from his county clinic — now free, as he saw it, to strike out on his own. More than a decade later, Edwards has a sleek cash-only clinic in downtown Lubbock with a small waterfall outside the lobby, a lounge for IV treatments and a studio where he hosts his podcast, 'You're the Cure.' Kayley's death set off a series of events that brought Edwards — and later Children's Health Defense — to Seminole. At the end of February, Edwards got a call from Tina Siemens, one of his earliest patients, who often describes herself as 'the bridge' between Seminole's Mennonites and the outside world. Siemens, who runs a small museum of local Mennonite history, had helped local officials translate materials on vaccination and testing into Low German. Now, she told Edwards that Kayley's parents were worried about their other children, who were still sick with measles. Edwards met the family at Kayley's viewing on March 1, where he gave them cod liver oil and a prescription for budesonide, a steroid inhaler that's mostly used for asthma. Edwards had gotten the idea from Richard Bartlett, a devout Christian and emergency medicine doctor in Odessa, who said he discovered the steroid as a ' silver bullet ' against Covid after being divinely inspired during a nap. (Research on its efficacy is mixed.) The next morning, Edwards wondered: What if he could treat everybody? He ordered 1,000 bottles of cod liver oil and vitamin C from his supplier, and a pilot — also a patient of Edwards — flew to Scottsdale, Arizona, to pick them up. Volunteers back in Seminole unloaded the boxes of capsules and liquids in the empty space next to a Mennonite-owned shop, Health-2-U. By the afternoon, people had brought in tables and chairs, making a waiting room on one side and a clinic on the other. Children's Health Defense launched a fundraiser, taking in more than $16,000 to 'defray the cost of essential vitamins, supplements and medicines necessary to treat children enduring complications from the measles.' About 70 kids came through the first day by Edwards' count. Some were already sick — with fevers that wouldn't break and coughs that lingered. Others were just beginning to show symptoms. Edwards returned to his pop-up clinic the next day. Another packed room waited for him. The story of the Lubbock doctor helping kids for free spread fast. Asked about his newfound popularity among the Mennonites, Edwards began to cry. 'It makes me real sad,' Edwards said in a phone interview in March. 'Why am I the only doctor out there treating these kids?' Meanwhile, Edwards urged his friend Bartlett, the doctor who advocated for budesonide, to go to Covenant Children's Hospital to intervene in the most serious cases. Wearing his white doctor's coat, Bartlett met the parents of one sick child as she lay in the pediatric ICU. Announcing himself as a 'friend of the family' — a term he later said on his podcast he used to gain access to the secure floor — he pulled Covenant's attending doctor aside. Bartlett said that budesonide had saved Covid patients and it would work now. According to Bartlett, the doctor relented and added the treatment, because the parents wanted it. Bartlett then went to another pediatric ICU room. 'The same doctor looked at me,' Bartlett said. 'He was ticked. He said, 'You again?'' Covenant Children's Hospital viewed Bartlett's intervention as interfering with care. The hospital issued a trespass warning and put a photo of Bartlett in the security office. Children's Health Defense glowingly covered Edwards' makeshift clinic, and Kennedy spoke directly to the doctor, praising his treatments on Fox News as producing 'very, very good results.' The following week, Children's Health Defense landed in Seminole and turned the crisis into content. Led by Polly Tommey — a self-described autism mom and co-creator of the anti-vaccine 'Vaxxed' films — they drove in from Austin through dust storms, 'to see for ourselves what was going on.' A group of Mennonite parents, including Kayley's, gathered to tell their stories of vaccines and measles on camera. They described a boy who developed seizures after an MMR shot when he was a baby in Mexico; a teenage girl with exhausting tics and limb pain caused by childhood vaccines; a mother whose church raised money for a stem cell transplant in China to undo the vaccine damage that had left her son in a wheelchair. These stories — compelling and unverifiable — were the kind Children's Health Defense had used to raise more than $67 million over the last decade. Siemens, who had brought Edwards in to treat Kayley's siblings, hosted the taping in her museum of Mennonite history. She described the parents' stories as 'mighty, mighty testimonies,' living warnings passed through the community's families and congregations that led the newest generation of parents to decide that vaccinating their children was too great a risk. Kayley's parents knew those stories well. They told Tommey that even now, they still wouldn't vaccinate. 'The measles wasn't that bad,' her mother, Eva Fehr, said. The hospital's insufficient care, she implied and Children's Health Defense outright said, was to blame for Kayley's death. Kayley's parents didn't respond to requests for comment. After the video featuring them circulated online, Covenant Children's issued a statement saying it contained 'misleading and inaccurate claims.' While the hospital was bound by patient confidentiality, 'What we can say is that our physicians and care teams follow evidence-based protocols and make clinical decisions based on a patient's evolving condition, diagnostic findings, and the best available medical knowledge.' Children's Health Defense, Tommey and Siemens did not respond to requests for comment. Bartlett declined to comment. Stopped recently on a walk near his clinic, Edwards said he would only speak off the record, but he later responded to several questions in writing. Doctors and nurses at Covenant Children's who were mourning Kayley — and were still caring for the sickest measles patients — took the claims personally. 'It is exhausting to hear, 'I have my own facts, and I've done my own research, and I don't believe your facts, and I know you're a doctor, but I have different knowledge,'' said Dr. Lara Johnson, the hospital's chief medical officer. 'And I always want to be compassionate and sympathetic to patients, because everyone's trying to do the best for themselves, everyone's trying to make the best decisions that they can.' The alternatives came with their own complications. Johnson said children with measles turned up at the hospital with liver problems from taking too much vitamin A, one of the supplements promoted by Edwards. In a text, Edwards discounted the idea that any children got sick from cod liver oil. 'I have a suspicion that the alleged vitamin A toxicity diagnosis is very questionable,' he said. For Johnson, the public mistrust felt like a replay of Covid. 'Everyone's kind of mourning the loss of the way it used to be,' she said. Federal public health workers try to build bridges Kayley's death spurred Texas to ask for federal help. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent a group of epidemiologists to Lubbock, and one of them, Jonathan Yoder, moved into Holbrooks' Seminole office. Yoder had asked to come. He'd grown up in a conservative Amish Mennonite church. His father, who he says 'got off the farm and went to school,' ran a small environmental health department in the Florida panhandle, fielding calls about septic tanks, rabid animals — whatever came in. Yoder swore he'd never work in public health. He studied psychology and worked as a social worker, but he burned out, and after going back for a master's degree in public health, Yoder ended up at the CDC. For two decades he's traveled to disasters around the globe: Ebola, Covid and Flint, Michigan. Once in Seminole, Yoder started making calls to pastors, midwives, the county judge, the host of the German-language radio show, the editor of a 50-year-old Mennonite newspaper — anyone with a link to the community. He speaks softly, with a slow, careful cadence. On these calls, he mostly listened. He learned that the Mennonite pastors weren't keen to talk about vaccination from the pulpit and no one wanted a clinic in their church or school. Mistrust of outsiders generally and governments specifically was woven into the community's history. The conservative Anabaptist group had settled in Gaines County after moving from Mexico in the late 1970s. After pooling their money and pouring millions into bad land deals — which secured acres of farmland but not the rights to the water below it — hundreds of families were told within months that they would be deported. They pushed back, and their work ethic and faith won over neighbors, the mayor of Seminole, Texas lawmakers and, eventually, Congress, which passed a law in 1980 granting them residency. Fears of being kicked out of the country lingered, though, as did anxiety among undocumented Mennonite families who had come from Mexico more recently. Yoder knew it would be important, as Lubbock's public health director had written in an email to the state earlier in the year, to 'not go in telling people what to do.' So Yoder focused on building bridges. In March, he met with John Dueck, a former school superintendent in Paraguay and long-haul truck driver who now edits The Mennonite Post, a bi-monthly newsletter that connects far-flung communities from Bolivia to Canada, where Dueck now lives. Many of the Post's readers live in rural areas — some without internet or cell service — where the paper serves as a lifeline, delivering news of births, deaths and harvests. Dueck travels to gather stories. On Dueck's trip to Seminole, he couldn't stay with families as he usually did — too many kids were sick. A few weeks later, he published an editorial outlining the facts about measles and vaccination. 'Let's demonstrate our love and care for others by taking steps to prevent the spread of this disease,' he wrote. Dueck faced criticism, which he said he understood. Many of the people he'd spoken with in Seminole believed newer vaccines were more dangerous. Some told him the Covid pandemic had shown how health authorities might orchestrate a crisis — or even use vaccines to control people's lives. 'They were afraid,' Dueck said. A second death draws RFK to Seminole A little over a month after Kayley, another child died. Daisy Hildebrand was 8 years old. She had blonde hair and wore glasses. She was the oldest of three children and she loved to play outside. She was unvaccinated. Daisy was generally healthy but had been feeling bad for weeks. On a family trip to Mexico, her eyes got sore and she had trouble breathing. She was diagnosed with measles and pneumonia. When Daisy was admitted to UMC Health System's hospital in Lubbock, she fought to breathe, was intubated and on April 3, she died. A cast of fringe doctors associated with Children's Health Defense returned to the playbook, separating the pneumonia from the measles that preceded it, and claiming, once again, that the hospital was at fault. Via webcam this time, Tommey interviewed Daisy's father, Peter Hildebrand, who blamed the hospital for Daisy's death and stood by his choice not to vaccinate. Tommey told him the interview would 'save lives.' In the weeks that followed, as Hildebrand tried to get measles removed from his daughter's death certificate, he and his wife started getting 'random phone calls, people telling us that we're going to hell for killing our daughter.' 'I love my kids,' he said in a phone interview. 'On top of what I've been dealing with, I don't need that type of bulls---, you know?' UMC Health declined to comment, citing patient confidentiality. Hildebrand drew support from a surprising official source: Kennedy, who flew to Seminole to attend Daisy's funeral on April 6, and then publicly shared her name for the first time on X. It was a stunning departure from public health protocol, in which the deaths of individual patients — especially children — are shared carefully. Kennedy bucked other norms. The HHS secretary communicated directly with Siemens, who ran the Mennonite history museum, and Edwards, who ran the makeshift clinic. He offered only the faintest endorsement of vaccines — while downplaying their effectiveness and exaggerating their risks. He incorrectly speculated on national television that the girls who died may have been unhealthy or malnourished. He praised Edwards' unproven therapies as 'miraculous.' Now he was in Seminole: the nation's top health official championing alternative medicine in the midst of a deadly outbreak. That evening, after Daisy's funeral, Kennedy joined the families for a quiet dinner at Siemens' museum. Edwards and Bartlett, the budesonide advocate, were there. Holbrooks, who led the county's measles response, came too, shaking Kennedy's hand and thanking him for sending Yoder. Kennedy later tweeted photos from the gathering. In the caption, he called Edwards and Bartlett 'extraordinary healers.' The firestorm recedes By early May, the outbreak had finally run out of unvaccinated children to infect. Yoder had packed up and returned to Atlanta. At an empty show barn that still offered drive-through vaccines, it was getting too hot for the pair of nurses who staffed it — and there were few takers left. And the metal building at the center of town showed no trace of Edwards or his treatments. It's now a general store, where traditional Mennonite dresses hang beside bolts of fabric, herbal teas and soft lovies crocheted by the shopkeeper's granddaughter. 'Sigh of relief,' Rob Franklin, editor of the Seminole Sentinel, the long-running semiweekly newspaper, said of its May headline: No New Measles Cases in County. Franklin said the community was fed up with the outside attention. Everyone just wanted to move on. 'They got tired of being portrayed like a problem,' he said. Holbrooks is still working to capture the full toll of the outbreak, collecting data from alternative practitioners. On Friday, following an inquiry from NBC News, Edwards emailed Holbrooks the accounting of his measles patients: 261 cases, nearly all children. In his office recently, when asked what he's learned over the last few months, Holbrooks paused. He ticked off the people who helped him — doctors, city judges, epidemiologists, paramedics, school leaders — and seemed to regret the relationships he hadn't been able to cement. 'If it taught me anything, it's just how important it is to build connections before an outbreak,' he said. 'Don't wait.' Holbrooks recalled a pre-dawn tornado that tore through Seminole in 1982, leveling some homes and businesses and leaving others untouched. One reporter wrote the city looked like it had survived a small war. The recovery effort pulled the town together, Holbrooks remembered. 'You never know when you're going to need your neighbor.' Brandy Zadrozny Brandy Zadrozny is a senior reporter for NBC News. She covers misinformation, extremism and the internet. Erika Edwards contributed.
The Guardian
03-05-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
World may be ‘post-herd immunity' to measles, top US scientist says
A leading immunologist warned of a 'post-herd-immunity world', as measles outbreaks affect communities with low vaccination rates in the American south-west, Mexico and Canada. The US is enduring the largest measles outbreak in a quarter-century. Centered in west Texas, the measles outbreak has killed two unvaccinated children and one adult and spread to neighboring states including New Mexico and Oklahoma. 'We're living in a post-herd-immunity world. I think the measles outbreak proves that,' said Dr Paul Offit, an expert on infectious disease and immunology and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. 'Measles – because it is the most contagious of the vaccine-preventable diseases, the most contagious human disease really – it is the first to come back.' The US eliminated measles in 2000. Elimination status would be lost if the US had 12 months of sustained transmission of the virus. As of 1 May, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 935 confirmed measles cases across 30 jurisdictions. Nearly one in three children under five years old involved in the outbreak, or 285 young children, have been hospitalized. Three large outbreaks in Canada, Mexico and the US now account for the overwhelming majority of roughly 2,300 measles cases across the World Health Organization's six-country Americas region, according to the health authority's update this week. Risk of measles is considered high in the Americas, and has grown 11-fold compared with 2024. Only slightly behind, data released earlier this week from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and WHO also noted that measles cases across Europe were up tenfold in 2024 compared to 2023. That data also indicated that the 2024 measles cases in Europe followed a seasonal pattern, which was not previously noted in 2021 through 2023. Of the European cases, which reportedly hit 35,212 for 2024, 87% were reported in Romania. The ECDC said the dip in vaccine rates has impacted the recent spike in measles, with only three countries, Hungary, Malta and Portugal, having coverage of 95% or more for both doses of the measles vaccine. 'This virus was imported, traveling country to country,' said Leticia Ruíz, the director of prevention and disease control in Chihuahua, Mexico, according to the Associated Press. Many cases are in areas with large populations of tight-knit Mennonite communities. The religious group has a history of migration through the American south-west, Mexico and Canada. Mennonite teaching does not explicitly prohibit immunization, according to an expert in the religion. However, as some in the Mennonite community in Texas resist assimilation and speak a dialect of Low German, community members may have limited contact with public health authorities, leading to lower vaccination rates. Immunologists fear the rate of infection of such diseases – and the unnecessary suffering they bring – will increase as the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, spreads misleading claims about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases, undermines public confidence in vaccines' benefits, threatens to make some vaccines less accessible, guts public health infrastructure and pushes leading vaccine experts out of the department. The National Institutes of Health said it would launch a 'universal' influenza vaccine trial with $500m in funding, but the news comes as the administration displays hostility toward Covid-19 vaccines. 'Here, Robert F Kennedy Jr is exactly who he has been for the last 20 years. He's an anti-vaccine activist, he is a science denialist and a conspiracy theorist,' said Offit. 'He has a fixed belief that vaccines are doing more harm than good – as he's said over and over again.' Although Kennedy has tepidly endorsed the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to prevent measles, he has also made false and inflammatory claims about the vaccine. Just this week, Kennedy told a crowd that it contains 'aborted fetus debris'. The rubella vaccine, like many others, is produced using decades-old sterile fetal cell lines derived from two elective terminations in the 1960s. Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion Kennedy's health department also stated this week that it would implement new safety surveillance systems and approval requirements for vaccines, but did not provide any specifics about the design. Experts said running certain trials, such as for a decades-old vaccine like MMR, would be unethical because it could expose people to a dangerous disease when an intervention is known to be safe. Kennedy recently visited the most affected community in Texas, centered in Gaines county, in his capacity as health secretary. There, he made misleading claims about measles treatment, including that the antibiotic clarithromycin and steroid budesonide had led to 'miraculous and instantaneous recovery'. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that the best way to treat measles is through prevention with the MMR vaccine, which is 97% effective. Still, Kennedy has said he will ask the CDC to study vitamins and drugs to treat the viral disease. Measles is a virus. There is no cure for the viral disease and it is not considered 'treatable' by leading physicians' groups, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). 'There is no cure for measles, and it can result in serious complications. It's misleading and dangerous to promote the idea that measles is easily treated using unproven and ineffective therapies like budesonide and clarithromycin,' the AAP has said of Kennedy's claims. Measles kills about one in 1,000 children who become infected with the disease, and has similar rates of brain swelling, called encephalitis, that can result in lifelong disability. Measles infection suppresses the immune system, which can lead to other infections. Measles vaccination is believed to have saved more than 93 million lives worldwide between 1974 and 2024 and reduced overall childhood mortality.
