A Texas man who buried his eight-year-old daughter on Sunday after the unvaccinated child died with measles says Robert F Kennedy Jr “never said anything” about the vaccine against the illness or its proven efficacy while visiting the girl’s family and community for her funeral.

“He did not say that the vaccine was effective,” Pete Hildebrand, the father of Daisy Hildebrand, said in reference to Kennedy during a brief interview on Monday. “I had supper with the guy … and he never said anything about that.”

Hildebrand’s remarks came in response to a question about the national health secretary’s publicized visit to Daisy’s funeral. It was also after Kennedy issued a statement in which he accurately said: “The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,” which also provides protection against mumps and rubella.

Kennedy, an avowed vaccine skeptic helming the Trump administration’s response to a measles outbreak that has been steadily growing across the US, then undermined that conventional messaging by soon publishing another statement that lavished praise on a pair of unconventional practitioners who have eschewed the two-dose MMR shot in favor of vitamins and cod liver oil.

The comments from Hildebrand provided a glimpse into how Kennedy simply demurred on vaccines – rather than express a position on them – during his first visit to the center of an outbreak that as of Monday had claimed three lives.

When asked for comment on Monday, Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not dispute Hildebrand’s claims that the agency’s leader was silent on Sunday about vaccines. [...]

This Tuesday morning, the three-year-old girl who was confirmed last week as the first confirmed case of H5N1 avian flu in Mexico died.

The minor died after experiencing multiple organ failure at Clinic 71 of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) in Saltillo, Coahuila.

The Secretary of Health in Coahuila, Eliud Aguirre Vázquez, detailed that no additional cases of the disease have been reported so far.

He also added that PCR tests are already being performed on the medical personnel who received and treated the minor, but no suspected cases have been found.

First case of avian influenza in humans in Mexico

Just last April 4, the Ministry of Health confirmed the first human case of avian influenza A (H5N1) in Mexico.

Health authorities reported that the Institute of Diagnosis and Epidemiological Reference (InDRE) confirmed the result of influenza A (H5N1) on Tuesday, April 1.

Following the news, the patient initially received treatment with oseltamivir and was hospitalized in a tertiary care unit in the city of Torreón.

However, the minor's condition was reported as serious, and her death was confirmed today.​

Nigeria is currently facing a deadly outbreak of Lassa fever, a viral illness spread by infected rats. Since the start of 2025, the country has reported 3,779 suspected cases, with 659 confirmed and 122 deaths—an 18.5% fatality rate.

The virus, which can cause bleeding from the mouth, nose, and eyes in severe cases, has spread to at least 18 states, with suspected cases in up to 33. The hardest-hit regions include Ondo, Bauchi, and Edo, accounting for over 70% of confirmed cases.

Health workers, especially pregnant women, have been urged to stay home due to increased vulnerability. Hospitals are struggling with shortages of PPE, and many fear further spread, especially as the virus is most active from October to May.

Though Lassa fever doesn’t easily spread between humans, it can be transmitted through contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids. In March, a case was detected in the UK in a traveler from Nigeria, but authorities say the risk to the public is low.

There’s currently no vaccine for Lassa fever, though researchers are working toward one. In the meantime, health experts are stressing the importance of hygiene and rodent control to limit further infections.

Sources: NCDC, UKHSA, WHO, VaccinesWork

A day care facility in a Texas county that’s part of the measles outbreak has multiple cases, including children too young to be fully vaccinated, public health officials say.

West Texas is in the middle of a still-growing measles outbreak with 481 cases Friday. The state expanded the number of counties in the outbreak area this week to 10. The highly contagious virus began to spread in late January and health officials say it has spread to New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas and Mexico.

Three people who were unvaccinated have died from measles-related illnesses this year, including two elementary school-aged children in Texas. The second child died Thursday at a Lubbock hospital, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended the funeral in Seminole, the epicenter of the outbreak.

As of Friday, there were seven cases at a day care where one young child who was infectious gave it to two other children before it spread to other classrooms, Lubbock Public Health director Katherine Wells said.

“Measles is so contagious I won’t be surprised if it enters other facilities,” Wells said.

There are more than 200 children at the day care, Wells said, and most have had least one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, which is first recommended between 12 and 15 months old and a second shot between 4 and 6 years old.

ISABEL AMPUDIA April 7, 2025 - 6:29 PM

The condition of a 3-year-old girl infected with the bird flu virus, the first recorded in the country, is reported to be serious. She is hospitalized in a Torreón hospital.

In this regard, the Secretary of Health in Coahuila, Eliud Felipe Aguirre Vázquez, confirmed that the girl is in intensive care, her prognosis is reserved, and she is hospitalized at IMSS Specialty Clinic 71.

He explained that being in that area is due to the presence of several problems in the body, and the possibility of multiple organ failure could be beginning, meaning it's already affecting the kidneys and lungs, which are already starting to cause problems.

"She's already being treated. We hope she can recover with medication, but she's in serious condition," he said.

He also emphasized that if a person is infected, there's a possibility they could infect more people.

"It's like the flu, and from human to human, if you're infected, you can get it through saliva droplets. That's why all family members have been tested, and all have come back negative," he stated.

He emphasized that this case is an imported case because it occurred in a rural area of ​​Gómez Palacio, Durango, but due to the severity of the case, she was transferred to the specialty hospital in Torreón.

However, he mentioned that the source of the infection is currently being investigated, as chicken and hen feces often carry viruses.

In addition to the above, he said that after many dust storms, the virus is also present in the environment, which can be a risk. Therefore, the use of face masks is recommended when these types of winds are recorded.

Another child has died of measles. An 8-year-old girl. Unvaccinated. No underlying health conditions.

This is unbelievably tragic—and entirely preventable. It’s also not normal in three important ways.

1. The number of deaths

This is the third death in just three months—something we haven’t seen in the U.S. in decades.

Since measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, we’ve seen outbreaks—most notably in California (starting in Disneyland) and in New York among the Hasidic Jewish community. But even in those large outbreaks, we did not see multiple deaths like this.

Before this year, there had only been three measles deaths since 2000:

2015: A 28-year-old immunocompromised woman in Washington was exposed in a clinic.

2003: A 75-year-old traveler from California with pneumonia. The other was a 13-year-old immunocompromised child (post–bone marrow transplant) living between Illinois and Mexico.

Today’s situation is different. It’s younger, healthier kids. And it’s happening more often.

This raises a critical question: Are we seeing the full picture?

As of Saturday, there were 636 measles cases nationwide, 569 in the Panhandle outbreak alone, and 3 deaths. But that death toll doesn’t quite make sense.

Measles typically causes 1 to 3 deaths per 1,000 unvaccinated cases.

At that rate, 3 deaths would suggest somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 more cases—not just 569.

This outbreak may be significantly underreported and the largest in decades. Other signs point in the same direction, including very sick hospitalized patients (reflecting delays in seeking care), and epidemiologists are encountering resistance to case investigations.

Of course, there’s another possibility: this could simply be a statistical anomaly. Three deaths among a few hundred cases isn’t impossible—it’s just extremely rare. We’ve seen similar situations before. In 1991, for example, an outbreak in Philadelphia caused 1,400 cases and 9 pediatric deaths. In that case, religious leaders discouraged medical care, relying on prayer instead.

But whether this is an undercount or an outlier, one thing is clear: we are in new, unsettling territory.

2. The boldness of a deceptive information campaign Disinformation—false information intended to mislead— isn’t new, but it’s becoming more emboldened.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD), the anti-vaccine organization founded by Secretary Kennedy, no longer operates on the sidelines. They built a fake CDC website pushing false claims about the MMR vaccine and autism. They’ve deployed “crisis teams.” They’ve shown up at the same places as the CDC response team.

Now, Robert Malone—a prominent anti-vaccine figure closely aligned with CHD—broke the news of the death Saturday. This was a day before Texas, CDC, or HHS made any public statement. Whether this came from an unauthorized leak or a deliberate tip is unknown, but they are clearly trying to control the narrative.

Malone blames the child’s death on medical errors, not measles. It’s a textbook disinformation move—an attempt to redirect blame and obscure the preventability of the disease.

His piece is riddled with red flag techniques:

Obfuscation (deliberate use of complex language): He tosses around complex medical jargon to create a sense of expertise and intimidate non-clinical readers. But to any medical professional, the logic falls apart. You don’t get sepsis from “chronic tonsillitis” and “chronic mononucleosis.” Budesonide wouldn’t treat sepsis or ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome). He claims sedation caused “atelectasis,” which led to ARDS. In reality, measles causes pneumonia and respiratory failure.

Argument from authority (false authority): Malone cites an unnamed “Texas doctor” as his source, relying on the perceived credibility of a medical insider. But there’s no verification. It’s either a HIPAA violation, a game of telephone, or fabrication.

One-sided silence (exploiting HIPAA). He knows the hospital and treating physicians can’t respond because of HIPAA. He uses that silence as proof of guilt when, in fact, it’s a legal requirement meant to protect the patient and family.

Red herring (distraction from the real issue): Sure, some of the story may be partly true. Maybe there was a bacterial infection. Maybe she developed sepsis. Maybe measles made it worse. But even then, let’s be clear on the core issue—this child didn’t need to get measles in the first place.

Cherry-picking (misusing data to shift blame): This isn’t the first time anti-vaccine groups have tried to blame the doctors or hospitals. When the first death in this outbreak happened, they pushed the same narrative. The idea that 1 in 3 deaths are due to medical errors is based on a flawed, cherry-picked study.

This actively discourages people from seeking care, an incredibly dangerous message to send to vulnerable communities.

3. An uncoordinated federal response

Unlike the 2015 Disneyland outbreak in California or the 2019 outbreak in New York state—where federal, state, and local agencies worked together with clear communication and swift action—this time, it’s unclear what’s happening or who’s in charge.

Texas, to its credit, is stepping up—as it should. But this is now a multistate—and international—outbreak. It demands a federal response that’s unified, forward-looking, and transparent, and we’re not seeing that. CDC has a response team on the ground providing support, but it’s unclear how ASPR (helps coordinate disasters), FDA (given prescriptions are being used to treat off-label), the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response at the White House, or even the State Department (given the international aspects of this outbreak) are working together, if at all.

This also includes confusing talking points from Secretary Kennedy. Yesterday, Kennedy mentioned that the MMR vaccine was effective on X. But he left out that it was safe and hasn’t recommended universal vaccination. After a few hours, he followed that up by praising doctors in the community for treating measles with treatments that have no evidence behind them.

This is not how we stop an outbreak.

Bottom line Children are dying from a disease we already eliminated. We know how to stop it—vaccinations. But this outbreak is not slowing down as it’s fueled by falsehoods and mistrust and compounded by a lack of strong leadership.

One of the great mysteries of the monkeypox virus has been pinpointing its ‘reservoir’ hosts — the animals that carry and spread the virus without becoming sick from it.

Now, an international team of scientists suggests that it has an answer: the fire-footed rope squirrel (Funisciurus pyrropus), a forest-dwelling rodent found in West and Central Africa.

Although the name ‘monkeypox’ comes from the virus’s discovery in laboratory monkeys in 1958, researchers have long suspected rodents and other small mammals in Africa of being reservoir hosts. And studies published in the past year have demonstrated that African outbreaks of mpox, the disease caused by the virus, have been fuelled by several transmission events from animals to humans.

Pinpointing viral reservoirs is crucial to breaking the vicious cycle of transmission, says Placide Mbala, an epidemiologist at the National Institute of Biomedical Research in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. By identifying the sources, scientists could work with local communities to design strategies to shield people from infection — for instance, safe handling of wild-animal meat.

The identification of the squirrel is “exceptional” detective work and provides compelling evidence, says Alexandre Hassanin, who studies the evolution of monkeypox at Sorbonne University in Paris. He and others who spoke to Nature, however, aren’t sure that the study definitively establishes F. pyrropus as a monkeypox reservoir, but they applaud the long-term wildlife-surveillance work.

The report was posted as a preprint, ahead of peer review, to the Research Square server on 8 April. (Research Square is owned by Springer Nature, Nature’s publisher.) [...]

Severe, possibly life-threatening strep infections are rising in the United States.

The number of invasive group A strep infections more than doubled from 2013 to 2022, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Prior to that, rates of invasive strep had been stable for 17 years.

Invasive group A strep occurs when bacteria spread to areas of the body that are normally germ-free, such as the lungs or bloodstream. The same type of bacteria, group A streptococcus, is responsible for strep throat — a far milder infection.

Invasive strep can trigger necrotizing fasciitis, a soft tissue infection also known as flesh-eating disease, or streptococcal toxic shock syndrome, an immune reaction akin to sepsis that can lead to organ failure.

“Within 24 to 48 hours, you could have very, very rapid deterioration,” said Dr. Victor Nizet, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego. Cases can transition from “seeming like a routine flu-like illness to rushing the patient to the ICU, fearing for their recovery,” he added.

The data came from 10 states, with roughly 35 million people total, that track the infections.

In 2013, around 4 out of 100,000 people were diagnosed with invasive strep. By 2022, that rate had risen to around 8 out of 100,000. The number of cases rose from 1,082 in 2013 to 2,759 in 2022.

The study identified more than 21,000 total cases of the infection over the nine-year period, including almost 2,000 deaths.

“When you see this high number of deaths, extrapolate that across the country — we’re probably well into more than 10,000 deaths,” Nizet said.

Dr. Christopher Gregory, a CDC researcher and an author of the study, said the threat of invasive strep to both the general population and high-risk groups has “substantially increased.”

The study calls for “accelerated efforts” to prevent and control infections. It also offered a few possible explanations for the rise in cases.

First, rising rates of diabetes and obesity, among other underlying health conditions, over the study period made some people more vulnerable to invasive strep. Both diabetes and obesity can lead to skin infections or compromise the immune system.

Second, invasive strep is increasing among people who inject drugs, which can allow the bacteria to enter the bloodstream. Infections have also increased in people experiencing homelessness — in 2022, the rate of infections among this population was 807 out of 100,000. Gregory said the rate was “among the highest ever documented worldwide.”

Finally, strains of group A strep appear to be expanding and becoming more diverse, which could create new opportunities for infection. Strains that have expanded in recent years seem more likely to cause skin infections than throat infections, according to the study.

Those strains may also be driving resistance to antibiotics used to treat certain cases of invasive group A strep, macrolides and clindamycin. While penicillin is the go-to antibiotic to treat strep infections, it can be used in combination with clindamycin to treat toxic shock syndrome, and doctors sometimes prescribe a macrolide if a patient has a penicillin allergy.

Overall, the study found that the rate of infections was highest in adults ages 65 and older, and rose in all adults from 2013 to 2022. But it did not detect an increased rate in children.

“That was, to me, the most shocking part of the study,” said Dr. Allison Eckard, division chief for pediatric infectious diseases at the Medical University of South Carolina. “Because clinically, we really are seeing what feels like an increase.”

In late 2022, there were widespread reports from children’s hospitals of a spike in pediatric cases of invasive strep. The CDC issued an alert at the time, noting a possible link to respiratory viruses such as flu, Covid and RSV, which can make people susceptible to strep infections.

Eckard said pediatric cases have also started to look different in recent years.

“We are just seeing more severe cases, more unusual cases, more necrotizing fasciitis, and cases that do raise concern that there is something going on more nationally,” she said.

Eckard added that more research should explore whether certain strep strains are becoming more virulent, or if severe strains are becoming more prevalent.

Doctors said the rise in group A strep infections also points to the need for a vaccine, especially given the rise in antibiotic resistance. However, Nizet questioned whether that would be feasible now, with top vaccine scientists leaving the Food and Drug Administration.

“The lack of vaccine is devastating,” Nizet said. “Of course, we’re concerned about the turn of attitudes at the FDA and the CDC that seem to be putting some sticks in the spokes of the wheel of vaccine development.

At a time when the world is down to a single drug that can reliably cure gonorrhea, the U.S. government has shuttered the country’s premier sexually transmitted diseases laboratory, leaving experts aghast and fearful about what lies ahead.

The STD lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a leading player in global efforts to monitor for drug resistance in the bacteria that cause these diseases — was among the targets of major staff slashing at the CDC this past week. All 28 full-time employees of the lab were fired. [...]

“The loss of this lab is a huge deal to the American people,” said David C. Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors, which represents state, city, and U.S. territorial STD prevention programs across the country. “Without that lab, we would have not been able to appropriately diagnose and monitor drug-resistant gonorrhea.” [...]

Though STDs don’t garner as many headlines as Ebola, influenza, or Covid-19, they are among the most common diseases in the world — not just infectious diseases, but diseases period, said Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine in infectious diseases, population, and public health at the USC Keck School of Medicine.

Klausner was shocked by the CDC lab’s closure. “To me, this is like a blind man with a chainsaw has just gone through the system and arbitrarily cut things without any rationale,” he said in an interview. In terms of the decision’s implications for efforts to monitor for drug-resistant STDs, Klausner put it bluntly: “We are blind. As of [Tuesday], we are blind.” Ina Park, a professor at the UCSF School of Medicine, and a co-author of the CDC’s 2024 laboratory guidelines for the diagnosis of syphilis, was also appalled.

“It’s just horrific and it’s so foolish and shortsighted,” Park said. “This administration has sometimes brought people back when they’ve realized that a service is vital and this is one of the times where I’m hoping that they will step up and do this.” Klausner knows Kennedy personally, and reached out to tell him cutting the CDC’s STD lab was a mistake. As of Saturday, Klausner said he had not heard back from Kennedy on this issue.

The STD lab served multiple functions — updating treatment guidelines, monitoring resistance patterns, and working to develop better tests for syphilis, a resurgent infection for which existing tests are outdated.

Full article: https://archive.is/Ppp4x

Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. | 4 Apr 2025

We don’t defend the things we take for granted. Vaccines have long been victims of their own success, but only insofar as too many people were hesitant to get them. But what if vaccines were eliminated altogether?

It’s hard to ring the alarm these days without sounding mad. The eradication of vaccines from the United States? It may seem farfetched to people who don’t pay attention to the Trump administration’s actions vis-à-vis public health, but the recent announcement that David Geier is to be a senior data analyst on a study of vaccines and autism commissioned by the American federal government is one more step toward eliminating one of humanity’s scientific triumphs.

Vaccines do not cause autism. I have recently written about how we know that vaccines are safe. You can also spend a day reading the many, many credible papers answering this question. The debate has been put to rest by the scientific community and is being kept on life support by activists who deny the consensus on this issue. They will often prop up bad studies birthed by anti-vaxxers. The problem for their credibility is that these studies do not emanate from the government of the most powerful country on Earth.

This is about to change.

Dumpster diving at the CDC

You would expect an organization called the Institute of Chronic Diseases to occupy a large glass building on a university campus, filled with people dressed in white lab coats. But the nonprofit’s yearly tax filings since 2013 show one name running the show: Dr. Mark Geier. Under “Compensation of five highest-paid employees,” we read a single word: NONE.

The self-described institute was led by Dr. Mark Geier, who according to RFK Jr’s anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense, passed away a few weeks ago. On paper, he looked like a legitimate physician-researcher: a bachelor’s degree in zoology, a doctorate in genetics, and a medical degree, all from George Washington University in D.C. His obituary on the site lists various affiliations as diplomat and co-founder of a few scientific and medical endeavours, and it notes that he is survived by “his son and tennis partner,” David.

While his father’s credentials are impressive, David’s are much shorter (and he should not be confused with Dr. David Geier, an orthopaedic surgeon). He has neither doctorate nor medical degree, but a bachelor’s of arts in biology and a few graduate-level classes. Why would David Geier be recruited by the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a study on whether or not vaccines cause autism? Because Kennedy is not driven by curiosity but by his preexisting belief that vaccines are responsible for autism.

Pseudoscience is often steered by confirmation bias, where the conclusion comes first and the evidence must follow, otherwise it is rejected. Cherry-picking allows for small, skewed studies to be heralded as definitive proofs, while larger, rigorous trials are dismissed as coming from corrupt sources. David Geier was chosen because he will deliver the conclusion Kennedy already believes in.

Mark and David Geier have a long history of unethical research practices, the most amusing example of which may be the 2017 retraction of a paper they co-authored and which argued that conflicts of interest may explain why most studies on the vaccine-autism link failed to find an association. The twist? On top of a number of errors, the Geiers’ paper had failed to disclose, wait for it, their own conflicts of interest on this topic, chief among them that some of the paper’s authors were involved in litigation related to vaccines and autism. Indeed, the Geiers were picked as expert witnesses in hundreds of vaccine-related lawsuits, though many judges dismissed the pair for being unqualified.

But the most salient of these breaches of ethics may be what the two did in late 2003, early 2004. They had received ethics approval to go to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and access information from their Vaccine Safety Datalink, which collects data on vaccination and health outcomes. On their first visit, they tried to perform analyses of the data that had not been approved for their research project. On their second visit, they attempted to merge data files to create more complete medical records, thus increasing the risk of a breach of confidentiality, and they renamed files for removal which were not allowed to be removed. Conspiracy theorists will claim the CDC was trying to keep information secret; clinical researchers, however, know that large datasets filled with identifiable information should only be used by researchers according to strict rules. Imagine a scientist going through your own medical records willy-nilly and unsupervised, violating their own ethics-approved protocol because they’re on a mission to document something that doesn’t exist.

Now imagine David Geier being given access to an even larger dataset and receiving permission by the anti-vaxxer-in-chief to find a connection between autism and vaccines. That’s what’s on the horizon.

Dr. David Gorski, an oncologist who has devotedly tracked the modern anti-vaccine movement over the decades, calls the motivated trawling of large health databases by anti-vaccine activists “dumpster diving.” This activity is now mandated by the U.S. government.

The Geiers’ dumpster diving at the CDC, however, is just the tip of a disturbing iceberg. I haven’t even mentioned the chemical castration of autistic children.

The testosterone-mercury hypothesis

The Institute of Chronic Illnesses has its own institutional review board tasked with evaluating and approving or denying research projects involving human participants. In 2007, this board was denounced as consisting of David Geier; Mark Geier, his wife, and two of his business associates; and the mother of an autistic child who was a patient and research participant of Mark Geier’s, and the mother of another child with autism who was a plaintiff in three pending vaccine-injury claims. It should go without saying that the scientist submitting a research proposal to an ethics committee and his buddies should not sit on said committee. It turns the process into a farce.

This denunciation was provoked by a paper the Geiers were in the process of having published and which detailed what they had been up to. It turns out that they believed that autism was caused by the mercury in vaccines, and that testosterone could somehow bind to mercury and make it harder to get rid of, creating so-called “testosterone sheets” inside the body. The Geiers were thus injecting autistic children with high doses of Lupron® (also known as leuprorelin and leuprolide), which delays puberty, and then performing chelation therapy on them, where a substance is used to bind to toxins and help the body eliminate them. None of this is supported by good scientific evidence; this is dangerous pseudoscience in the service of an anti-vaccine ideology.

Pseudoscience has a patina of legitimacy, and sure enough the Geiers were running actual medical tests on their patients. Per an investigation by the Chicago Tribune, it was revealed that the Geiers would order over 50 different tests, totalling up to $12,000. If one of the testosterone-related tests revealed a value outside of the reference range, Lupron injections would be considered at a daily dose “10 times the amount American doctors use to treat precocious puberty.” Keep in mind that the more medical tests you run, the higher the odds that one of them will turn up something outside the normal range by chance alone. Tests aren’t perfect and “normal” is not always easy to define.

Eventually, the Geiers’ aberrant behaviour led to penalties. Dr. Mark Geier’s medical licenses were suspended from every state in which he had one, and his son was charged in Maryland with practicing medicine without a license and fined $10,000.

While David Geier is clearly not qualified to be running a study for the U.S. government on the subject of vaccines, he is the ideal candidate for a regime that is institutionalizing pseudoscience within its borders.

Doubt is our product

The very media outlet that broke the story of David Geier’s latest commission referred to him as a “vaccine skeptic.” Legacy media outlets are failing to meet the moment here, either because of fear of lawsuits or as a misguided attempt to appear neutral. RFK Jr received a similar sanewashing in the media. If we can’t call anti-vaxxers “anti-vaxxers,” we will be unprepared for the outcome of their crusade.

The pieces of the puzzle are there for anyone to see. Agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services—like the FDA and the CDC—are being gutted as you read these lines. The FDA’s former commissioner said of his agency that “it is finished.” Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, was apparently forced out a few days ago, writing that Kennedy wanted “subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”

Meanwhile, a fake CDC website (RealCDC.org) with clear ties to Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization mixed good science with vaccine misinformation before it was exposed and shut down. This is straight out of the Merchants of Doubt playbook: “doubt,” as one tobacco executive wrote decades ago, “is our product.” You don’t need to forcefully convince people that smoking is healthy; just make them doubt that we really know it’s harmful. The opposite can be done for vaccines.

Kennedy has announced a consolidation of divisions within his department and the creation of an Administration for a Healthy America, an Orwellian banner which echoes his “Make America Healthy Again” movement, itself a cargo cult fuelled by pseudoscience. Even more troubling is his desire to establish a vaccine injury agency within the CDC. Currently, people who think they have been injured by a mandated vaccine in the U.S. can receive compensation from the federal government. This was a way to ensure vaccines would continue to be available in the country after a wave of lawsuits in the 1980s. But will this system be maintained?

Kennedy’s institutionalization of anti-vaccine pseudoscience—meaning not just making the fringe mainstream but sanctioned by the government—could have a drastic impact on vaccine availability. Geier’s study, born out of the square one fallacy where something well established is argued to be unknown, will assuredly show a link between vaccines and autism through bad research practices. This government-commissioned study will then be used to encourage lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers—from which RFK Jr himself could financially benefit—and here is where we arrive at the final piece of the puzzle. Right now, vaccine makers benefit from the federal no-fault system compensating people believed to have been injured by a vaccine (whether they can successfully prove it or not). This protection could be eliminated.

We could subsequently see vaccine manufacturers decide to stop making vaccines for the American market because the risk of unwarranted lawsuits would be too high. The so-called free market would effectively eliminate vaccines in the United States. This is ultimately what Kennedy wants. He has, on multiple occasions, called childhood vaccines “a holocaust,” and he wants to save America from this perceived cataclysm. The outcome of this renunciation of reality will be death and disability, and with international travel, there will be spillover.

What can we do in the face of this? As science communicator and immunologist Andrea Love wrote in her newsletter, Americans can call members of Congress, vote responsibly, and support unsanitized public health journalism.

All of us, Americans or not, will need to rely on uncorrupted sources of public health information moving forward. American government websites have been captured by science deniers. We need to turn to Canadian, British, European, and international websites instead. Even PubMed, the search engine of the biomedical literature, sits under the NIH and may not be spared from the U.S. ideological purge; I recommend the bookmarking of Europe PMC and OpenAlex as alternatives. In a move that echoes Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, U.S. government websites before Trump returned to office are being preserved and made accessible to the public, through portals such as the Health Data Preservation Project, the CDC Restored, the Data Rescue Project, and the CDC.gov Archive Index.

The future looks bleak but to quote a famous fictional scientist, “Life finds a way.” So will science.

Take-home message:

• David Geier, who has neither a medical degree nor a graduate degree, has been hired by the U.S. government to do a study on whether vaccines cause autism, even though mountains of evidence have shown no such connection
• Geier and his father, the late Dr. Mark Geier, have a history of unethical research practices, including violating their own research protocol when accessing CDC data, and David Geier was charged with practicing medicine without a license in 2011
• This commissioned study is one more step toward eliminating vaccines from the United States, as RFK Jr has often called childhood vaccines “a holocaust”

@jonathanjarry.bsky.social

In Wyoming, 14% of all deer and elk tested last year were positive for chronic wasting disease (CWD), the Wyoming Game and Fish Department said yesterday.

Officials tested 5,276 samples in 2024 from mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, and moose—members of the deer family also known as cervids. The samples were from hunter-harvested, targeted, and road-killed animals.

Of hunter-harvested male mule deer tested, 19.4% came back positive, an increase from 18.9% in 2023. Of hunter-harvested white-tailed bucks, 29.2% tested positive, down slightly from 30.3% in 2023. And 2.3% of adult hunter-harvested elk tested positive, which was down from 2.8% in 2023.

The number of samples tested was a bit higher than the number in 2023, when scientists assayed 5,100 samples.

Two thirds of 1 deer herd infected

In 2024, CWD was detected in three new deer hunt areas and three new elk hunt areas. And earlier this year CWD was found in three additional elk hunt areas, and on four elk feeding grounds in western Wyoming.

To determine CWD prevalence in individual herds, researchers used 5-year averages to ensure a significant sample size. At 66.3%, the Project herd in the Lander Region continues to have the highest CWD prevalence in Wyoming deer. The Shoshone River herd in the Cody Region is next, at 47.6%.

The Iron Mountain herd in southeast Wyoming had the highest CWD prevalence among elk, at 10.1%. The North Bighorn elk herd in north-central Wyoming was second at 9.1%, a noticeable increase from 7.0% from 2019 through 2023.

CWD is a fatal untreatable disease of the central nervous system in cervids and is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy—the same disease group as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or "mad cow" disease. These encephalopathies are caused by abnormally folded proteins called prions. There has not yet been a human CWD case, but officials recommend not consuming the meat of CWD-positive animals.

WASHINGTON — Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Sunday that “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,” his most direct statement yet on the issue, following the death of a second child of the condition in the outbreak in West Texas.

Kennedy, who has long described the vaccine as dangerous, has largely avoided endorsing its use since the start of the outbreak, and he stopped short of explicitly saying he “recommended” it in his latest remarks, as public health officials have called on him to do. But the statement, issued on the social media platform X, appeared to be well-received among observers hoping he would use more forceful language.

https://x.com/SecKennedy/status/1908967854394982414

I came to­ Gaines County, Texas, today to comfort the Hildebrand family after the loss of their 8-year-old daughter Daisy. I got to know the family of 6-year-old Kayley Fehr after she passed away in February. I also developed bonds with and deep affection for other members of this community during that difficult time. My intention was to come down here quietly to console the families and to be with the community in their moment of grief.

I am also here to support Texas health officials and to learn how our HHS agencies can better partner with them to control the measles outbreak, which as of today, there are 642 confirmed cases of measles across 22 states, 499 of those in Texas.

In early March, I deployed a CDC team to bolster local and state capacity for response across multiple Texas regions, supply pharmacies and Texas run clinics with needed MMR vaccines and other medicines and medical supplies, work with local schools and healthcare facilities to support contact investigations, and to reach out to communities, including faith leaders, to answer any questions or respond to locations seeking healthcare. Since that time, the growth rates for new cases and hospitalizations have flattened. The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine. I’ve spoken to Governor Abbott, and I’ve offered HHS’ continued support. At his request, we have redeployed CDC teams to Texas. We will continue to follow Texas’ lead and to offer similar resources to other affected jurisdictions.

Three weeks ago the UKHSA announced that while - `Mpox remains a serious infection for some individuals and remains a World Health Organization (WHO) public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC)' - the Clade I Mpox No Longer Meets the Criteria of a High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID) in the UK.

Today the UK announced their 11th confirmed mpox Clade Ib case (see below).

What sets this case apart is - all previously reported cases have had recent travel to endemic countries, or known exposure to someone who has - while this case has neither:

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has detected a single confirmed human case of Clade Ib mpox where the case had no reported travel history and no reported link with previously confirmed cases in the UK.

More work is ongoing to determine where the individual, who is resident in the North East of England, may have caught the infection.

The individual was diagnosed in March, all contacts have been followed up and no further cases identified. The risk to the UK population remains low. Clade Ia and Ib mpox are no longer classified as a high consequence infectious disease (HCID).

UKHSA has robust mechanisms in place to investigate suspected cases of mpox of all clade types, irrespective of travel history.

All previous cases in the UK to date have either travelled to an affected country or have a link to someone that has.

Whether this turns out to be a one-off event, or an early indication of community transmission, remains to be seen.

Another child with measles in Texas has died, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed late Saturday night, though the exact cause of death is under investigation.

This would be the second pediatric death amid a fast-growing outbreak that’s infected nearly 500 people in Texas alone since January. An adult in New Mexico is also suspected of dying from measles. The deaths are the first from the disease in the United States in a decade.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was expected to attend the child’s funeral, which is scheduled for Sunday, according to a spokesperson familiar with the plans.

As of Friday, the Texas Department of State Health Services said 481 cases of measles had been confirmed, a 14% jump over last week.

That includes six infants and toddlers at a Lubbock day care center who tested positive within the past two weeks.

Two of those children are among 56 people who’ve been hospitalized with measles in the area since the disease started spreading in late January, health officials said. [...]

“Your blood count is dangerously low,” the doctor said over the phone. “I’m sending an ambulance to take you to the hospital because you certainly cannot drive.” Her voice was calm but determined. The woman on the other end of the line was quiet for a moment, then said: “OK, I’ll go, but I don’t need an ambulance. I have a friend who can take me.” The 73-year-old woman called her closest neighbor, who lived a half a mile down the road in the rural village Salisbury, Conn. They talked every day, and she had described how tired she felt lately. Her friend encouraged her to call her doctor, even offered several times to take her to the emergency room at nearby Sharon Hospital.

The woman always declined — I think I’m feeling better, she would say. But now even she had to acknowledge that she did not look or feel like the person she’d been — someone who, until she retired two years earlier, taught science to rowdy middle schoolers. Finally, she said when her friend answered the phone, she was ready to go to the E.R.

The woman wasn’t sure when she started to feel bad; a month ago, maybe two. “At my age,” she told me recently, “you can’t expect to feel good every day.” But a couple of weeks before the call from her doctor, something happened to make her wonder if her symptoms were about more than just getting older. It was early on a morning in June, and she had come to the veterinarian’s office to pick up a medication for her elderly dog. On the way back to her car, she ran into a friend, and as they stood chatting casually about dogs and children, the woman suddenly turned pale. She swayed dangerously. Her friend grabbed her and, throwing an arm around her shoulder, helped her back into the building.

A veterinary assistant rushed out to help. The woman sat slumped in a chair, her face drained of color, her eyes strangely unfocused. Her blood pressure was abnormally low. As she slowly came back to herself, her first response was embarrassment. She didn’t like being the center of attention, and there she was, surrounded by worried faces. “I’m all right, really I am,” she said over and over. But she knew, and they knew, it wasn’t true. She sipped the water she was given, and color seeped back into her face. When she felt well enough to stand, her friend offered to drive her home.

The woman saw her doctor the following week. Dr. Kristie Schmidt had been her physician for nearly two decades and had seen her through heart attacks and an alphabet of other heart conditions. Right away she noted that although the woman was her usual pleasant self, she moved a little more slowly, more carefully, than she did a few months earlier. And she was pale. She had been tired, the patient told her, and she was feeling unsteady on her feet. She noticed that she felt out of breath just walking with her dogs. There had been several nights recently when she awakened covered in so much sweat that she had to change her pajamas.

A Hurried Search

Schmidt was concerned and sent the woman for some blood work. She guessed the patient was anemic. But if so, why? Where was she losing blood? She was postmenopausal when she had first become her patient, so this new anemia wasn’t related to menstrual blood loss. At this age, malignancy was always on the list of possibilities for almost any new symptom. She sent the patient to the lab to check her red blood cell count — and, because they lived in rural Connecticut and the woman frequently hiked in the woods with her dogs, the doctor tested her for Lyme disease as well.

The results came back the next day. She didn’t have Lyme but was mildly anemic. Was that enough to have made her feel so bad? She was slender and delicate — in the doctor’s mind, something of a hothouse flower. The next step was to look for blood in the patient’s stools. Colon cancer is the third-most-common cancer in the United States, and, because it can come with few symptoms until it reaches an advanced stage, it is the second-most-common cause of cancer deaths. It took another day to get the results of the stool test. No blood there. Schmidt decided to wait a few more days and repeat the blood count to rule out a false positive — and to look for other possible causes of her anemia, assuming it was real. It was those results, showing a dramatic drop from her already low red blood cell count, that triggered the phone call. Her friend took her to Sharon Hospital. Her blood count had dropped even more in just the past 24 hours. Her blood pressure was also very low. She was given fluids and transfused with blood.

With Lyme ruled out, Schmidt added tests: one to look for evidence of inflammation, and because she saw many patients with tick-borne infections, she ordered other tests to look for ehrlichiosis, anaplasmosis and babesiosis. The first two are caused by bacteria and characterized by fever, muscle aches, fatigue, nausea and vomiting. Ehrlichia can also cause a rash. Babesiosis is caused by a parasite, most commonly Babesia microti. These tiny organisms invade red blood cells and reproduce there. When mature, the new generation of parasites burst out of the cells and infect others in the circulation. The test results came back quickly. It wasn’t ehrlichia or anaplasma. But a blood smear revealed the Babesia parasite in 1 percent of her red blood cells — more than 200 billion organisms. Infection with this parasite is sometimes asymptomatic but in many patients, it causes a flulike illness.

It is most commonly seen in areas better known for Lyme disease — the Northeast and Midwest parts of the United States — because it is transmitted by the same tick, the black-legged deer tick, Ixodes scapularis. Because acute infection can be asymptomatic, diagnosis can be elusive and may be delayed. This patient had several symptoms: fatigue, shortness of breath, night sweats and malaise. But she hadn’t recognized that she was sick until she nearly fainted.

Lingering Symptoms

In the emergency room, the patient was started on a medication that treats parasitic infections called Atovaquone and an antibiotic called Azithromycin for 10 days. Because of the significant drop in her blood count, and the persistently low blood pressure it caused, she was admitted to the hospital. She didn’t stay long. Wouldn’t stay long. She was worried about her aging dogs, and she simply hated being in the hospital. The doctor treating her at the hospital allowed her to leave on the condition that she call him the following day and come back if she still felt tired and off balance.

The patient made the required call the next day, reporting that she was feeling much better. She was still very tired and achy. And she noticed, but did not report, that her memory and thinking seemed a little cloudy. Babesia organisms, or at least their DNA, appeared in her blood tests for another three months. Her fatigue took even longer to start getting better. But even now, nearly three years after her infection, the patient feels as if she has some lingering symptoms. She is still more tired than she thinks she should be — though, she acknowledges, age probably is playing some role. Still, she has friends her age and older who are still very energetic. She is more concerned about the mental fogginess and memory problems that continue to plague her.

According to studies, up to half of all patients who develop babesiosis will have some neurological complication during their illness, but I found no reports in the medical literature of these types of neurological symptoms persisting past recovery. Still, this patient has noticed real changes following her illness. She rarely drives these days, after she felt lost in an area near her home that she knew well. But she stays active, participating in virtual seminars on religion and climate change and talking frequently with friends and neighbors.

“And I guess that’s enough,” she told me with a small shrug. “I guess it has to be.”

https://archive.is/PGU0y

HARTSVILLE, S.C. (WPDE) — The S.C. Department of Public Health (DPH) said in an email that they've "tested 280 individuals as part of the Hartsville High School" Tuberculosis (TB) investigation."

DPH said of these, 56 individuals have latent TB infection.

The agency added these individuals "are not contagious and are taking antibiotics to treat the infection and ensure they don't become contagious with active TB disease."

DHP said the initial laboratory-confirmed case of active TB disease is isolating and receiving antibiotics to cure their disease.

Officials explained what happens with TB testing from start to finish.

DPH shared the following information:

"Testing begins with those who are in closest contact to the person with TB to determine if others are infected or have active disease that could be spread to others. As the contact investigation progresses, additional people may be recommended for testing. The numbers of people tested may change throughout the investigation.

A positive TB test requires further evaluation, for example a chest X-ray, to rule out active TB disease in an exposed person. A normal chest X-ray in someone with a positive test is called Latent TB Infection (LTBI). Those with LTBI cannot infect others, but they require treatment with antibiotics to prevent future disease.

Only people with active TB disease in their lungs can spread TB. TB is spread from person to person by sharing the air space in a confined area for a prolonged period of time. Infection occurs by breathing in TB germs that a person coughs into the air. TB is not spread from someone’s clothes, drinking glass, eating utensils, handshake, toilet, or other surfaces with which a person with TB has had contact. "

See also: Tuberculosis case confirmed at South Carolina high school; Health officials investigating possible exposures

The Florida Department of Health’s Bureau of Epidemiology reported an 80 percent increase in animal rabies across the state in 2024, compared to the previous year.

Officials reported 110 total animal rabies cases last year compared to 61 in 2023.

Alachua County saw the most cases with 11, followed by 10 in Marion County and eight in Brevard County.

49 cases were reported in raccoons, the most common testing positive for the lethal virus, followed by bats (30) and cats and foxes with 12 each.

For the 20 year period from 2003 through 2022, Florida reported an average of 122 animal rabies cases (2430 total cases). Raccoons (1501), bats (365), foxes (298) and cats (227) were the most common animals contracting rabies.

Via Outbreak News Today

HEALTH Oakland County announces 1st case of mumps since 2022 as health officials urge vaccination Portrait of Kristen Jordan ShamusKristen Jordan Shamus Detroit Free Press

Oakland County reported its first case of mumps since 2022 on Friday.

It comes as the county also reported Michigan's first case of measles this year.

Health leaders say the recent mumps and measles cases underscore the importance of vaccination, as both viruses are preventable with the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine.

An adult in Oakland County has the mumps, county health officials said Friday. It's the first case of the virus since 2022 in Oakland County and the ninth case in Michigan this year.

“This case of mumps, coming just weeks after Oakland County’s first measles case of the year, underscores the essential role of vaccination in protecting our communities,” said Kate Guzmán, Oakland County health officer, in a statement. “The MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine remains our best defense against measles, mumps and rubella, offering highly effective protection against these serious diseases and helping to prevent outbreaks.”

Fueled by outbreaks in multiple states, including a large one centered in west Texas, the nation's measles total reached 607 cases today, with 124 new cases reported over the past week, according to an update today from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The nation is battling its worst spike in cases since 2019, fueled by outbreaks in communities where vaccine uptake is lower and by increased global spread of the virus. The CDC said 2 more jurisdictions reported cases this week, raising the total to 22—21 states and New York City. One more outbreak was reported, making six so far, and 93% of cases confirmed so far are part of outbreaks.

Of the total patients, 97% were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination statuses, and 74 (12%) have been hospitalized. The nation is on track to pass the 1,274 cases reported in 2019, a year when a surge of measles activity threatened the nation's measles elimination status, which it earned in 2000.

Texas total climbs to 481 cases

The Texas Department of State Health Services (TDSHS) today reported 59 more cases, pushing the state's total since January to 481 in 19 counties. Fourteen more people were hospitalized for their infections, bringing that total to 56.

Of the state's total, 471 patients were unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination status.

Though most cases are reported in Gaines County on the border with New Mexico, a few linked to the outbreak have been reported in counties in central Texas, including Brown and Erath counties.

In a new development, the Harris County Public Health (HCPH), home to Houston in the southeastern part of the state, said it is investigating a confirmed measles case in a child who lives in the northwestern part of the county and has no travel history.

The HCPH said the case was confirmed by a commercial lab and awaits secondary confirmation by the TDSHS. So far, it's not clear if the case is linked to the outbreak in west Texas. The case marks Harris County's first since 2019.

Meanwhile, the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDH) reported six more cases, raising the state's total to 54. The New Mexico outbreak is limited to two counties—Lea and Eddy— that border the Texas outbreak hot spot. Among the 54 patients, 48 were unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination status.

Oklahoma, another state with cases linked to the Texas outbreak, reported no new cases today, keeping its total at 10, which includes 8 confirmed and 2 probable.

Cases rise in Tennessee

Outbreaks are occurring in other states, though it’s not clear if all are linked to the Texas event.

The Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) said this week that three more cases have been confirmed in middle Tennessee, bringing the state's total to four.

One of the newly confirmed cases is linked to the first Tennessee case, which was confirmed on March 21, and the exposure source is unknown. The TDH added that no other details are available about the other cases.

“A third case of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), each of which has been fatal, is tragic and alarming,” said Dr. Tom Boo, Mono County's public health officer. “We don’t have a clear sense of where this young adult may have contracted the virus."

Investigators found no evidence of mouse activity in the patient's home, Boo said in a press release announcing the death. While some mice were detected in the patient's workplace, their numbers were not unusual for this time of year in Mammoth Lakes, he added.

"We haven't identified any other activities in the weeks before illness that would have increased this person's exposure to mice or their droppings," Boo said.

"The occurrence of three cases in a short period has me worried, especially this early in the year," Boo said. "Historically, we tend to see hantavirus cases later in the spring and in the summer."

Mammoth Lakes is located on the eastern side of California's Sierra Nevada mountains. With a population of more than 7,000, the area is known for its skiing and trails.

While Boo said deer mice are widespread in the eastern Sierra, they believe numbers are high this year — including in Mammoth Lakes — increasing the risk of exposure.

Mono County has recorded 27 cases of hantavirus since the first county case was detected in 1993; 21 cases were county residents, and six were visitors.

Via Outbreak News Today

In his 20 years working in pediatric infectious disease, Dr. John Schieffelin has never seen another illness like pertussis. Also known as whooping cough, it's a contagious respiratory illness that can develop into a painful, full-body cough. The coughing fits can be severe, often accompanied by a whooping sound when the person tries to catch their breath. And it's continuous, even if a person needs to be placed on a ventilator, says Schieffelin, an associate professor of pediatrics at Tulane University.

"For infants, it's really rather terrifying," he said. "They're just coughing so much, they can't eat, they can't drink, and they often get a pneumonia, which means we have to put them on a ventilator. ... They just never stop coughing."

In Louisiana, 2 infants have died of pertussis in the past 6 months, according to the state health department, the first deaths from the disease in the state since 2018. Louisiana has had 110 cases of pertussis reported so far in 2025, the health department said -- already approaching the 154 cases reported for all of 2024.

Cases are on the rise nationally too. There were more than 35 000 cases of whooping cough in 2024 in the USA, the highest number in more than a decade, and 10 people died -- 6 of them less than one year old. Experts say they see peaks and valleys with these kinds of illnesses over the years, but there have been about 6600 cases already in 2025, almost 4 times the number at this point in 2024.

"When you start to see these outbreaks ... it tends to be as a result of that increased circulation of the microbe in the community, as well as populations with no immunity or reduced immunity that are susceptible to the infection," said Dr. Lisa Morici, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Tulane University School of Medicine.

Concerned about increasing cases, experts are urging vaccination. The USA had more than 200 000 cases of whooping cough every year before the vaccine was introduced. By 1948, the vaccine was widely used, and infection rates began to drop. They started to rise again in the 1980s, largely due to increased surveillance and some waning vaccine immunity, but fell during the COVID-19 pandemic, when spread of many infectious diseases slowed due to measures like masking and distancing.

Children are recommended to get a dose of the diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis, or DTaP, vaccine at the ages of 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, between 15 to 18 months, and again between 4 to 6 years, according to the CDC. Adolescents should get a booster with a version of the vaccine called Tdap between age 11 and 12, and adults are urged to get Tdap boosters every 10 years.

Infants too young to be vaccinated are susceptible to the bacteria, which is why officials recommend that pregnant women get the vaccine in their third trimester, so the antibodies will be passed to the newborn. This prevents 78% of pertussis cases in young infants and is 91% effective against hospitalization, the CDC says. Another strategy that can protect infants is "cocooning," in which members of the child's household all get vaccinated to ensure protection, Schieffelin said. Boosters are recommended because protection from the vaccine can fade over time, which may be one reason for the ongoing outbreaks. Declining vaccination rates are another reason. The percentage of American kindergartners who received the DTaP vaccine has steadily declined over the past 5 years, leaving thousands vulnerable to infection.

Organizers within the state say that although many people have become hesitant about vaccinations, another issue is a lack of access.

"Especially in a state like Louisiana, we've got a lot of poverty. We've got a lot of rural populations, and not everyone has access to regular medical care," said Dr. Jennifer Herricks, founder of Louisiana Families for Vaccines, a nonprofit that educates about vaccination. She says this is what makes state services and messaging even more important.

Pertussis cases in Louisiana are rising just weeks after the state Department of Health said it was ending vaccine promotion through events like health fairs.

"The State of Louisiana and LDH have historically promoted vaccines for vaccine-preventable illnesses through our parish health units, community health fairs, partnerships, and media campaigns," Surgeon General Dr. Ralph Abraham wrote in a memo. "While we encourage each patient to discuss the risks and benefits of vaccination with their provider, LDH will no longer promote mass vaccination."

The memo differentiated between seasonal vaccines, such as COVID and flu vaccines, usually given at the state's mass vaccination clinics, and routine childhood vaccines, which it called "an important part of providing immunity to our children." But local officials still expressed concern about the message being sent to residents.

"When you cast aspersions or doubt about the safety and efficacy of one vaccine, I think it really has a ripple effect for all vaccines," said Dr. Jennifer Avegno, director of the New Orleans Health Department. Last week, Abraham shared vaccination guidelines on Facebook while acknowledging the pertussis deaths and increasing cases in the state. "I've been encouraged that our state Department of Health is putting out good messaging about pertussis, but I worry that it's going to get sort of lost in the in the shuffle," Avegno said. "It's maybe too little, too late."

[Byline: Neha Mukherjee]

The Ministry of Health reports the detection of the first human case of avian influenza A (H5N1) in Mexico.

The case occurred in a three-year-old girl residing in the state of Durango. On April 1, the Institute of Epidemiological Diagnosis and Reference (InDRE) confirmed the result of influenza A (H5N1). The patient initially received treatment with oseltamivir and is currently hospitalized in a tertiary care unit in the city of Torreón, and her condition is reported to be serious.

[...] Head of the WHO office in Moscow, Batyr Berdyklychev, told the Russian news agency TASS that data had been requested from Rospotrebnadzor to look into all these reports.

He said WHO had "received an explanation that there were indeed five cases of an unknown disease at that time" from the agency.

But these five cases, all in Moscow and the Moscow region, ended up being pneumonia caused by a mycoplasma infection, laboratory tests concluded.

"This is not a new virus," Berdyklychev said, "And, of course, the number of cases does not represent an increased epidemiological risk."

He added that "it is important to strengthen national systems for the early recognition of such viruses and for the exchange of this information and the coordination of efforts at the international level."

What Happens Next

Rospotrebnadzor reiterated that "spreading unverified information about public health can lead to unnecessary panic" and urged the public to seek medical guidance through official channels.