The state of Kansas has also reported no new cases of measles for 41 consecutive days. 42 days in a row (today) means the outbreak is over.
It was never as bad or as widespread as in the one-star state, but there were several counties affected.
Does Measles have a seasonal aspect?
I’m cold asking, I have no clue.
When I’m at my computer I can look it up. At the moment it’s not possible…
It’s not. Before the chicken-pox vaccine, that was how you vaccinated your kid against it - let them get it early in life because apparently it is worse much later in life. I had a blood transfusion from my sister after she had the Pox so I am apparently immune to it … this was early 970s so I may have been one of the first people vaccinated against it.
According to the CDC:
Measles is not a seasonal virus. However, measles is often spread over times of high travel (like spring break) or in situations where unvaccinated persons are in close quarters (like summer camp).
I’m surprised (actually, I’m not) that they didn’t mention school as a place where the unvaxed are in close quarters.
Well, when was the episode relative to the chicken pox vaccine becoming available (and widely known about, of course)? I never watched the show, but I know a chickenpox vaccine (no idea if the same as currently used) has been available in the US since 1995. Don’t know when it took off, though. I was too old/exposed to need it by 1995, and too young for most of my friends to have kids (I never did) so wasn’t familiar with that vaccine until years later.
That’s cromulent. Thanks.
But, yeah, the school would’ve been my first idea about proximity.
My grandkids have been in school a little over a week. The twins both have had tummy upset over last weekend. Two others have cold/allergy symptoms.
No fevers yet.
I think it was more about “This is what our parents did with us.” rather than the state of the CP vaccine. At least that’s how I interpreted the episode.
It is certainty worse to have first exposure to it later in life. Yet exposure as a child does not protect you from its mainly painful return (“the Shingles”) sometime after 50 years old, usually. My mother had it and to me it sounds like 20 days of plentiful Vicodin isn’t enough. And the doctor’s just going to tell you Paracetamol or Ibuprofen.
I’ve no idea - and I suppose the data isn’t in yet - about it’s return for those vaccinated.
The South Park episode aired in December 1998 when there were, at best, clinical trials as a thing you could do. AFAIK the episode doesn’t mention any vaccines.
As a kid in the 1960s I got each of CP, measles, and mumps the old-fashioned way: random infection at (probably) school.
Had a minor shingles event 5-ish years ago, so my early 60s. No big deal, but I was fortunate. Got the 2- shot course of shingles vax later. No problems since 
.
The outbreak in West Texas is declared over but it is spreading outward. Interesting article on the bumbling efforts by the CDC and other agencies along with a lot of knuckleheads that decide vitamin A is a better option than a vaccine that works. Also note, not the CDCs fault.
I don’t want to hijack, but I don’t want to start a new thread just for a yes-or-no question.
This was on the radio yesterday:
The U.S. confirms its first human case of New World screwworm.
“Over a 50-year period, screwworm was pushed back from the United States through Mexico, through Central America, to the Panama-Colombia border. That was about 20 years ago,” Scott says. “It was stopped at the border and then was held for a long time until the barrier broke and screwworm came back.”
Did I hear something in the last number of years that we used to have some sort of insect firewall that kept the pests out, and that it was defunded at some point? Or am I thinking of something else.
Again: Just looking for a specific answer, and I won’t pursue it in this thread.
As far as I know, the firewall, i.e. release of sterile male insects in Panama, is still there. The problem is that that firewall can be bypassed by importing cattle from regions that still have screwworm flies. Inspections of imported cattle are supposed to block this, but they aren’t perfect.
Thanks. [end hijack]
“CDC hasn’t reached out to us locally,” Katherine Wells, the public health director in Lubbock, Texas, wrote in a Feb. 5 email exchange with a colleague two weeks after children with measles were hospitalized in Lubbock. “My staff feels like we are out here all alone,” she added…. In the chaos, CDC experts felt restrained from talking openly with local public health workers, according to interviews with seven CDC officials with direct knowledge of events, as well as local health department emails obtained by KFF Health News through public records requests.
That was the article I posted yesterday right about the screwworm discussion.
Oops. You’re right. It used to be that Straight Dope would notify you if you reposted the same URL in a thread–has this changed?
I did a quick check, if I copied your link @PastTense OR @wguy123’s , it did give me a pop up saying it had been linked previously by PastTense, but it DIDN’T mention the earlier link.
I’m ignored around here a lot so that isn’t surprising. I guess I can blame Discourse! 
Kid dies a delayed death from measles. They were too young when they contracted it to have been vaccinated, but they caught it from someone, obviously.
L.A. child dies from complication of infant measles infection - Los Angeles Times