Measles

Moses Lake has measles.

This is a big deal across the country, apparently, as the Centers for Disease Control says there have been 64 cases in 9 different states since January, and they hadn't even added the 8 cases in Moses Lake into that yet. Seems a family from town went to a church convention in Kirkland in March where a foreign student exposed 2000 people to the measles. Eight children in this family (unvaccinated) now have measles.

This affects our own church, since three of these 8 attend the Christian Academy where we hold our Sunday services in one of their spare classrooms. We are OK to use it on Sundays, but any activities, Bible Studies, or other work usually done in that room during the week can't take place unless the people entering the building can prove immunity/vaccination.

This affects me personally because I was born after 1957. Anyone older than that, it is assumed, has had the measles. Then they developed the vaccine, but apparently the one given out between 1957 and 1968 wasn't always effective. And that is right when I would have received a vaccine ... I seem to remember having had an MMR titer done when I was expecting Dayna, and I think it said it was good (they were worried mostly about Rubella; this is a Rubeola outbreak), but I have no proof that I am safe.

So there is a trickle down effect. So far no other cases outside this one family have been reported , but we won't know until May 20. Activities at the Christian School have been put off; their production of Robin Hood scheduled for next weekend has been postponed. The school administration and health department employees have been working overtime, and continue to do so.

As more and more parents listen to the hype about vaccines and autism (shown to have no link, but talked about as fact on TV and radio as if it did), more and more kids are at risk of having their educations interrupted or actually getting sick from these illnesses. Ironically, the CDC declared ongoing measles transmission eliminated in 2000. While the number of cases in the U.S. has fallen dramatically (from over 700,000 in 1958 to about 150 per year now), with over 20 million cases reported worldwide and lots of international travel, there is still plenty of opportunity for unvaccinated people to become infected.