The Mason City, Iowa Globe Gazette is reporting that an unspecified number of children at a Blair, Nebraska day care have been placed in quarantine.
More below Jenny McCarthy's book sales going up in orange smoke.
BLAIR, Neb. | An unspecified number of children attending an eastern Nebraska child care facility near the Iowa border are under a 21-day quarantine for exposure to the measles.
A child with the measles may have exposed others at a Blair, Nebraska, child care facility from Jan. 20-23. Health officials are also warning patrons at a Blair sports bar that they, too, may have been exposed when the child was present, the Fremont Tribune reported.
The time periods include a two-hour window after the child left when the measles virus still could have infected people.
The city of Blair is on U.S. Highway 30 just across the Missouri River from Iowa. That's about 13 miles west of Missouri Valley, Iowa. [Blair is just north of Omaha.]
(Rest of article at the Globe Gazette)
Many of the children served by the day care in question are under the age of one (unable to get vaccines for measles).
So we're getting underway here Nebraska. Fortunately, Blair is on the other side of the state from the Panhandle. Two previously suspect cases in Lincoln have now been ruled out.
Wyoming's Health Department reports there have been no cases in Wyoming, so for now we are safe over here on the Left Side of Nebraska. Iowa is reporting that it also has no confirmed cases of measles.
The article notes the child in question believed to have exposed the children in the day care facility and the sports bar was vaccinated for the measles. It is known however that immunizations do not always "take," thus part of herd immunity is to protect those where an immunisation failed.
In the meantime, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina has made the USA an international laughingstock, complete with video. He claims government regulations on businesses to require employees to wash their hands after using the toilet are "excessive government overreach."
How about those jobs you guys promised on your side of the aisle? He would write a new "not government overreach" law requiring businesses to place a placard saying the business does not require its employees to wash their hands.
Oh yeah, jobs for placard manufacturers for your new "not government overreach" placards to replace the "government overreach" ones.
Senator Tillis also believes the "free market" (read libertarian jungle anarchy) will exploit self-regulate on these issues and thus the consumer will be safe in knowing that for-profit businesses are looking out for our well-being.
From the BBC (the rest and the video at the link above):
A US senator has suggested that restaurants should not have to make their employees wash their hands after toilet visits.
Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, made the comments on Monday during a speech criticising business regulations.
"Let them decide" such issues, the newly elected lawmaker said.
His argument was that restaurants which did not require workers to wash their hands would quickly go out of business.
"But I think it's good to illustrate the point, that that's the sort of mentality we need to have to reduce the regulatory burden on this country," Mr Tillis said.
He suggested that restaurants that did not require hand washing would have to alert customers with prominently displayed signs - itself a regulation.
When he was later questioned about his comments,
he doubled down.
If I ever meet you, Senator Tillis, forgive me if I refuse to shake your hand. And if you represent your party, I seriously question shaking anyone's hand in the GOP.
Another anti-intellectual and anti-science know-nothing. Many diseases (including cholera, dysentery, and polio) are transmitted by the faecal-oral route (that is, not washing your hands before handling food).
On a personal note, my wife had an appointment today with her physician about her new diabetes diagnosis. (Her diabetes is now under control, yay.)
Since we are planning a trip to Canada, Switzerland, Germany, and Poland in conjunction with a convention in Germany this summer, and because she is the Village Public Library Director, she enquired about her immunity to measles. (She neither wishes to get it, nor give it. She was immunized as a child.)
The doc is setting up an antibody titer test. (This test looks for antibodies for specific diseases, in this case measles, mumps, and rubella.)
While the doc could just give her the vaccination (as CHAMPUS/Tricare covers 100% of a vaccination's cost), the local hospital (local is relative: sixty miles away) is concerned about giving the vaccine to children and adults who have not been immunised first. (There is a limited supply here, and triage applies.) If the titer test shows she is no longer immune, then she will get the shot at that time. (I am not sure that CHAMPUS will pay for the titer test, but if there is a shortage of vaccine in the area, I would rather cough up the bucks for the test; it is not expensive.)
At the start of 2013, I came down with mumps (for the second time in my life, after exposed by an apparent anti-vaccine parent's child who came Christmas carolling to my house). I did not get the immunisations for measles, as I had both varieties as a toddler (along with whooping cough).
I also came down with scarlet fever for the second time in 2010, and I have also had chickenpox twice. (On the last, I was out sick from my Navy job for three weeks. I was quarantined for three weeks over the scarlet fever in 2010.)
This seems to indicate that I might have a bit of a problem with maintaining immunity from diseases; as such, I will enquire at my next Veterans Administration appointment about the same with respect to the titer test.
I am not opposed to vaccines. My wife's mother was struck by polio as an adult and spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair, until she died from post-polio syndrome.
My mother was struck by polio as a teenager, and was fortunate that the local doctor in our town of 192 in Michigan had heard of the Sister [Nurse] Kenny Method when it was still quite controversial, and applied it to my mother's treatment. She made a full recovery and was able to join the US Navy. She now suffers from post-polio syndrome, however.
The last case of polio in the wild recorded in the USA occurred when I was three years old, sixteen miles from my home.
Mississippi and West Virginia have no exceptions to vaccinations unless there is a medical indication against them. Unsurprisingly, those states have not suffered from measles in previous outbreaks.
Some noise is cranking up on the right, such as Maine Governor Paul LePage, that "illegal immigrants" are bringing measles into the country. (Never mind that we already know it came from a Filipino tourist at Disneyland, and the first thing immigrants do when they cross the border is make their way to Disneyland, then Maine.)
Thanks, Jenny McCarthy, Playboy model and vaccine expert. I note you are claiming now you never said that vaccines cause autism. Thanks, Representative Michelle Bachmann, for claiming the same thing. Thanks Senator Dr. Rand Paul and Governor Chris Christie, for pandering for the Typhoid Mary vote. Thanks, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, for your fraudulent MMR study to try to make money for a lawsuit. Thanks Natural News for peddling woo.
Thanks to all those fruit loops out there on both the left and right who studied at the University of Google and think that "natural living" or prayer or some such tommyrot will prevent diseases. (Last time I checked, natural living was what contributed to epidemics; apparently dying from a real disease is preferable than putative non-existent toxins in vaccines.)
If you haven't been vaccinated for measles, stay away from my house until you get it.
"Life would be a lot simpler without experts" - TV Series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Episode 23.
5:54 AM MT: By the way, you know where the philosophical objection carve out to vaccine laws came from? Answer: Rick Perry. The same Rick Perry who pushed for the HPV vaccine. Seems his base objected for government overreach, so he pushed for the philosophical exemption (my woo trumps your science) in 2003.
Prior to that, states did have religious exemptions. Note that even the Amish are getting vaccinated: they recognise sense when they see it.