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Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Emergency declared near Portland for measles outbreak in anti-vaccine hotspot
Health officials in Clark County, Washington have declared a public health emergency for a measles outbreak in an area with a high rate of unvaccinated children.
[...] Nearly eight percent of children in Clark County were exempt from standard vaccination for the 2017-2018 school year, according to state records reported by the Washington Post. Breaking down that eight percent, about seven percent of kids had personal or religious exemptions and the remaining one percent or so had medical exemptions. Factoring in the rest of the population, the county is below the 92 percent to 94 percent range some experts consider required to prevent the spread of highly contagious diseases such as measles.
[...] “It’s really awful and really tragic and totally preventable,” Peter J. Hotez told the Post. Hotez is a professor of pediatrics and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “Portland is a total train wreck when it comes to vaccine rates,” he added.
[...] Correction: This article has been updated to correct the state in which Clark County resides. It is in Washington State, not Oregon.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday January 24 2019, @12:06PM (3 children)
Not correct, rather politically conservative.
As much as Portlandia likes to keep it weird, Clark County repeatedly elects a Trump supporter to the house. Crystal Meth is the drug of choice here, Heroin in Portland.
And yes: I live in Clark County. Portland is getting all the news because everything thinks that by "Vancouver", one refers to Vancouver British Columbia despite that the one in Washington was the first, having been an early nineteenth century British Army fort that was later turned over to the American Army when the US and The Great White North established the border that we have today.
Captain Vancouver was an early Columbia River explorer.
Some joker attended a Portland Trailblazers game with an active case of Measles but so far he seems not to have spread it to others.
Fortunately for me, the Measles in Vancouver is mostly in the rural parts of Clark County such as Battle Ground to the north. But the skyrocketing job opportunities in Portland led to a building boom in Battle Ground and other North County communities, so there's lots of kids in the schools there to breathe each others' sneezes and coughs.
As for me, while not actually Germophobic - not yet anyway - I've quite suddenly become meticulous about washing my hands. I even use a dry paper towel to grasp the door handles as I exit public restrooms.
_Thorough_ hand washing really does remove both bacteria and varii as bacterial cell membranes are viral capsoids of made of lipids - grease. They adhere to our skin oil; to strip that skin oil leaves them nowhere to stick. That soap dissolves grease while not as effective as alcohol does kill some of them.
After I sing this afternoon I'll pick up some Cough Masks for use on public transit.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday January 24 2019, @01:17PM (2 children)
One of the curses of American society is the simple act of shaking hands, and the more successful and famous one becomes the worse this terrible custom seems to get. I happen to be a clean hands freak. I feel much better after I thoroughly wash my hands, which I do as much as possible.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @03:52PM (1 child)
We all know it's really because shaking hands shows off how small your hands are.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Snow on Thursday January 24 2019, @04:15PM
You can use photoshop to fix that problem. [theweek.com]