Here is Dr. Klotman’s Week 256 video address. The highlights are:
- Respiratory virus season continues to rage with Influenza A high and RSV moderately widespread. Wear your mask out in public and stay healthy.
- In Texas, COVID is low, but nationwide, it is raging.
- TEPHI now has a public-facing wastewater viral load dashboard [The Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute (TEPHI) Dashboards]
- H5N1 clade D1.1 is now the most prominent subtype of bird flu in the US.
- China, Egypt, and France are all vaccinating their poultry flocks against H5N1 – we are not.
- Not only is the price of eggs continuing to rise, but egg farmers are feeling the pain of having their flocks culled, their facilities sanitized, the cost of PPE for their workers, and the cost of rebuilding their flocks.
- For perspective, 157 million US birds have been culled because of H5N1 infection.
- The Measles outbreak in West Texas continues with a majority of affected children requiring hospital care.
My Commentary:
When the Week 256 video was produced, I think that the Texas Measles outbreak was limited to Gaines County in West Texas, bordering New Mexico. There were ~24 cases. Today, MSNBC news reported 48 cases affecting persons in three counties adjacent to and including Gaines County.
Measles spreads by the airborne route. Each infected individual, on the average, causes 18 other infections. So, it is far more infectious than Influenza or COVID. The reason for the West Texas outbreak is a low level of childhood MMR vaccination in Gaines County. The initial cases were traced to a religious school where some unvaccinated, adult family members had travelled abroad.
I find this story both familiar (it had previously happened several years ago among Hassidic Jewish visitors to Ukraine, if memory serves) and disturbing. It is disturbing because Measles causes severe childhood illness, disability, and even death. It is also disturbing because the Senate has just confirmed a notorious anti-science, antivaxxer to head the US’s health agencies.
What could possibly go wrong?