Texas is experiencing a measles outbreak.
Predictably, the great majority of cases are in unvaccinated people.
Statistically, this isn’t a catastrophe or an epidemic; outbreaks of this kind are fairly common and usually localized.
Nevertheless, it is a bellwether marking out the real-world consequences of dangerous mind-games.
Vaccine rates are in decline, according to the pre-purge CDC; good public health wants around a 95% vax-rate; Gaines County reports that close to 20% of its kids are unvaccinated, an alarmingly high rate that’s not unusual across red counties. We’ll get into why. (Spoiler: it isn’t because “Ya’ll stoopid.”)
But first some important preliminaries.
Anti-vax sentiment isn’t new. Americans and Europeans have been nervous about inoculations since they were invented, an unease tap-rooted into populist reactionary discomfort with microbiological models of illness.1
Unsurprisingly, religion has played its part in validating that discomfort. For instance, English cleric…