Late last month, authorities confirmed the first U.S. death from measles in more than a decade – a child in West Texas. The outbreak continues to spread, with hundreds of cases in Texas, and an additional death reported in New Mexico.
The measles outbreak has taken a heavy toll on families and Mennonite communities in small Texas towns where the first cases were reported.
Reporter Tom Bartlett recently visited Seminole, Texas, for The Atlantic. Seminole is the home of the six-year-old girl who lost her life to the virus. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Tell us about your visit to Seminole. Did you expect to be able to speak with the family of the girl who passed away?
Tom Bartlett: No, I didn’t. I mean, I really went to Seminole hoping to to speak to residents there, hoping specifically to speak to members of the Mennonite community where this outbreak seems to have been the worst, and to try to get a sense of how authorities were helping to encourage people to get vaccinated, to get tested. And to get a sense of the feeling in the town that really is kind of the epicenter of this outbreak.
Well, the experience of losing his child, no doubt, was devastating for this father, named Peter, and his family. What did he tell you about his daughter and her illness?
I mean, he told me quite a bit about the illness. What often happens in very severe measles cases – she became sicker and sicker, and she developed pneumonia, which I think it’s about 20% of measles cases that’s what develops.
They took her to the hospital a couple of times and she was taken to Lubbock, which is the closest large hospital to Seminole in West Texas. And that’s where, very sadly, she died.
And so he talked to me a lot about her illness and was somewhat reluctant to get into some of the details of the family and of the community in general. The Mennonites in that area have told me that they are uncomfortable with some of the national scrutiny that they’re now under.
So he’s part of that Mennonite community. I’ve interviewed Mennonites here in the region where I am, and they don’t normally seek any kind of public attention. So I can imagine how difficult this is.
How do the people you talked to in Seminole view the measles outbreak? Many of them are not vaccinated, some for religious reasons. Do they continue to resist vaccination?
There’s nothing in Mennonite doctrine per se that precludes vaccination or modern medical care. However, there is a general sort of cultural resistance to some aspects of modernity, including sometimes medical care. And there are a number of Mennonites who turn to homeopathic remedies and maybe more traditional remedies first.
But yeah, I mean, in general, I think there is the feeling that they are being, as several Mennonites told me, singled out.
They’re not the only people who’ve contracted measles. This isn’t the only outbreak that’s happened. And they’re being stigmatized and sort of targeted in a way that’s not fair.
Now, clearly, others in that area who are not a Mennonite are also unvaccinated. Despite what we know about the number of measles cases reported, there may be more and more unvaccinated people maybe at risk. What did you learn about this?
That’s exactly right. I don’t think that we have really any sense of how big that outbreak is.
The testing sites that public health authorities have set up in Seminole and in other areas aren’t very frequently visited. Most of the information that they’re getting is from when people actually have to come to the hospital. And most people who get the measles aren’t going to the hospital. So we don’t really have a sense of the number of positive cases there are, or how it’s spreading.
It could be many multiples higher than what’s been reported. And there’s quite a large Mennonite community and quite a number of them, as you said, are unvaccinated. There are thousands just in Gaines County.
And so I really don’t think we have a real sense of how big this outbreak is.
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Well, finally, what is the mood as you talk to people in these communities and in that region. How are people feeling about this right now?
I think it varies. I talked to people who were anxious about what was going on and were concerned about the impact on the community.
There are others who feel as if this has been, perhaps, blown out of proportion. And so that is a feeling as well.
And certainly the public health authorities feel as if they are in the midst of a crisis and they’re trying to figure out how best to address it. And they’re coming up with new strategies and new ways of trying to reach out to communities that perhaps have historically been resistant to that kind of messaging.
And so it’s still evolving. This is far from over.
