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posted by mrpg on Thursday January 24 2019, @10:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the smart-phones-but-no-smart-people dept.

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. 


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday January 24 2019, @08:28PM (1 child)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Thursday January 24 2019, @08:28PM (#791420) Homepage Journal

    Not just lives:

    Melnick said the first several days of the outbreak response effort cost somewhere around $31,000.

    “This is going to be likely hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more,” Melnick told the council. “This is going to be pretty expensive.”

    I think there are so far twenty-three confirmed cases; that would come to $1,347 per case so far. Twenty-two of the cases are unvaccinated, also twenty-two are children.

    That's just "so far"; the continued quarantining will cost more. Quite likely some of those children are on Medicaid and so will cost mostly the Federal Taxpayers several thousand in hospital bills.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @02:12AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @02:12AM (#791562)

    Sounds like an idiot tax to me. No one is making them freak out except themselves.