Eight people have been diagnosed since last month. None was immune to measles — meaning they either never got vaccinated or contracted measles before.
At least eight people have been diagnosed with measles in an outbreak that started last month in the Philadelphia area. The most recent two cases were confirmed on Monday.
The outbreak began after a child who'd recently spent time in another country was admitted to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) with an infection, which was subsequently identified as measles. The Philadelphia Department of Public Health considers the case to be "imported" but did not say from where.
The disease then spread to three other people at CHOP, two of whom were already hospitalized there for other reasons.
Two of those infected at the hospital were a parent and child. The child had not been vaccinated and the parent was offered medication usually given to unvaccinated people that can prevent infection after exposure to measles, but refused it, the Philadelphia Inquirer first reported.
Despite quarantine instructions, the child was sent to day care on Dec. 20 and 21, the health department said.
Being told by a medical professional to quarantine and wantonly ignoring it is a lot like your mechanic telling you not to drive a car and you doing it anyway.
I don’t see why the family shouldn’t be held to account for every single infection they started by sending their kid to day care.
Its tempting to rail against these parents but for the daycare part specifically let us not forget that people in America don't get free healthcare, and we dont get paid sick days. You take your kid to daycare not because you fucking want to, your American boss doesn't give a shit about your problems, he needs you in right now or you're looking for another way to feed your kids
The child had not been vaccinated and the parent was offered medication usually given to unvaccinated people that can prevent infection after exposure to measles, but refused it, the Philadelphia Inquirer first reported.
This parent strongly deserves a good railing against.
If the government truly wants to enforce a quarantine, they can. Remember when the Ebola scare was a thing? I know someone who was caught up in that; They were required to do thrice daily temperature checks, and the CDC would randomly call a landline they set up, around ten times a day. On those calls, they had to report any potential symptoms for every single person in the household. The CDC made it very clear that if they didn’t answer the phone, the feds were coming inside with hazmat gear to verify they hadn’t snuck out. It was basically house arrest without the ankle monitors.
They had to have a very awkward conversation with their boss about it, because they were working as a lowly retail worker at the time. It was basically “hey uhh… You’ve seen the Ebola stuff in the news right? Yeah, I won’t be able to come in for a little while, because the feds say I’ll be arrested if I leave my house.”
The part where the parent refused medication that can prevent infection is awful too. Can you imagine being so against medicine that you both risk your child's life and risk leaving your child without a parent?
At the very least CPS better be involved. I would definitely hope they take your child away if you'd risk your health, the child's health, and the health of other children like that.
The disease then spread to three other people at CHOP, two of whom were already hospitalized there for other reasons.
Two of those infected at the hospital were a parent and child. The child had not been vaccinated and the parent was offered medication usually given to unvaccinated people that can prevent infection after exposure to measles, but refused it, the Philadelphia Inquirer first reported.
Despite quarantine instructions, the child was sent to day care on Dec. 20 and 21, the health department said.v
It's shocking how far backwards we've gone with respect to basic science... When I was a kid, vaccines were a given. Nobody ever batted an eye.
Agreed. They should be charged. Adults and unborn fetuses have more rights than children do. A woman can miscarry and get charged with abuse of a corpse, if I drink and drive and kill someone I go to jail but if I choose not to vaccinate my child and the child dies I get a pass?
Even if no one dies, anyone financially harmed by their actions, be it the daycare or families of potentially exposed children should be able to sue this moron for their losses. Freedom of choice isn't freedom from consequence
There are legitimate medical conditions where you're not supposed to give the vaccine, some temporarily, some permanently. Given that the kid was a patient at CHoP, I'm inclined the give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm not excusing the parent for not getting the medication, nor for sending the kid to daycare, but I'm going to give the kid the benefit of the doubt on receiving the vaccine. [I suspect I'm wrong to do so, but am doing so nonetheless.]
Sending a child with a highly infectious disease that is as dangerous and potentially deadly as measles into a day care should be held accountable. This is reckless endangerment of other peoples' lives.
Hopefully DCFS can investigate them then. They are endangering not just the lives of their own child but others too. I would be livid if I was a parent and these idiots got my kid sick.
Agreed. It would be nice if people weren't so pressured to go to work for money that they could take care of children rather than feeling like you need to abandon them for a job. I'm not saying they did this. But over 3/4 of my sick days last year was to take of my kid. And when I had COVID, I was out and the statutes to pay me were gone.
Poor Americans. I just can't imagine having to deal with limited sick days. If I'm sick for more than six weeks in a row, I get a little less money, and then from my health insurance instead of my boss, but that's the only limit that is.
Ooof, they got the expensive disease. Measles ruins your immune system, which takes ages to rebuild. In a British study studying religious antivaxxers vs vaccinated children, there was a much higher cost incurred per child for years, lol. They got a lot sicker a lot more often and needed more prescriptions because of what measles did to them.
Measles is crazy infectious too, it's basically like the Flood pathogen from Halo. Getting it in your brain really bumps up chances of dying. Luckily the MMR vaccine gives you lifelong immunity, especially with two shots. So it's mostly just an anti-vaxxer penalty these days. Too bad we almost eliminated it if not for them.
I actually had measles as a kid. My parents hadn't gotten me vaccinated when they were supposed to not out of any antivaxx nonsense but regular old neglect.
Lemme tell you. Whoever catches it? Highly unlikely they'll be antivaxx after that. Measles is probably the worst thing that ever happened to me and it's the reason I was the first in line every time I was eligible for a covid vaccine. Me and the old ladies who remembered polio needed absolutely zero convincing.
Nobody wants disease-ridden anti-vaxxers, especially when they are shedding highly communicable diseases. Even arresting tuberculosis patients who defy court ordered treatment grosses police officers out, who have to deal with them.
Nah, these selfish assholes have always been there. They're just more visible with cameras and phones everywhere, and outrage-based news seeks these kinds of stories out.
Yeah it sucks the family ignored the quarantine orders, I agree. Maybe they should be held liable for that.
What concerns me more, and what we should be talking about, is that the kid shows up at the hospital and two other patients contact the disease. At the hospital.
Being at a hospital should not be a threat to ones health. This along with other hospital borne illness and the insane amount of preventable deaths from medical negligence should concern all of us.
Measles is incredibly infectious, it's why we eradicated it in the first place. Plus there are rules to follow in a hospital waiting room specifically designed to avoid that.
But it relies on people actually following rules, and we can assume someone that didn't vaccinate or follow quarantine procedure is not a big fan of following "meaningless" rules. And meaningless to them is any rule they don't understand. Unfortunately they actively try to understand as little as possible so no one can accuse them of being the very scariest word to them right now, "woke".
It's likely that this was probably an ER visit. That means they still would've had to wait in the ER waiting room in order of importance.
The ER staff make educated guesses of how important it is someone gets seen right now based on reported symptoms, reported recent travels, temperature, etc.. Then people get seen in order from (for lack of a better phrase) most likely to die right now to least likely. Sometimes, the ER waiting room staff get it wrong, sometimes the patient isn't entirely honest, and sometimes symptoms unexpectedly worsen or change while the patient is in the waiting room.
Another scenario: if this wasn't an ER visit but instead a scheduled hospital visit, they likely still would've had to wait. They could probably fill out the required forms online, but they probably still would've had to wait until a doctor was actually available to see them, which could take a while. Doctors are almost never on time for appointments, mainly because they can only roughly estimate how long each appointment will actually take, and that's arguably more true for hospitals than it is for your normal neighborhood doctor.
All that to say that, unfortunately, hospital waiting rooms typically aren't very avoidable.
It sounds like it wasn't obvious the first child had measles when they were admitted. The initial symptoms don't include the rash. Measles is uncommon here, and it's ludicrously infectious, well above flu or most other similar-appearing diseases.
Hospitals, and people who are trying to save lives, should not be held responsible for the negligence of the ignorant few.
They spend a lot of time, money, and training on preventing Hospital Acquired ID, but they can only prevent so much. Sometimes it's due to negligence, but they can't restrain a child in a waiting room, they can't stop 100℅ of spread. Without knowing the facts of the case (which they are surely reviewing), please don't jump to blame.
I wouldn't blame the hospitals themselves so much as the tradition of waiting room triage.
We shouldn't be concentrating a bunch of potentially-contaigous inpatients together at all, but remodeling the infrastructure to design around a more sterile intake process would be expensive.
Contrary to popular belief, the hospital is not a completely sanitary place.
Rather, it's a place they try their absolute hardest to keep as sanitary as possible because they don't want the healthy people (doctors, nurses, visitors, etc.) to get sick and because they don't want the sick people (patients) to get even more sick.
Germs can unfortunately slip through the cracks even if every procedure is followed to the letter. There are times where they break procedure either on purpose or by accident (and doctors and hospitals can be put on the hook, legally, for those times), but this doesn't seem to be one of those times given what we know right now.
Covid is like 1.2- 1.4 people per infected person. It left 1,000,000 Americans dead, which is about 416 Pearl Harbors or 333 9/11s.
The Spanish flu of 1918 killed multiple millions and, if memory serves, had an R naught of 2-3.
Basically, our underfunded hospitals stand no chance against something so unbelievably infectious. Thank God we have a vaccine for it.
It is true. You can still hear people on the news saying that we should have just ingnored the original strain of Covid and overrun the hospitals. Who gives a shit if a bunch of old people and immune compromised people died?
However, if you have a jackass working for you, you have to tell them to stay home and not take down the entire department.
Getting an MMR vaccine or two will save you loads of sick time. Sick time policies are shitty, yes. But this is a two shot series that is good for life. There's very little excuse, especially if they can afford daycare.
I know this isn't the point, but I'll never get over that something as big and expensive as world class hospital could be built and they named it "chop". No one said anything?
There’s a lot that could be better about my home country, such as the weather, but I am thankful for mandatory vaccinations. I know many of my stupid relatives who wouldn’t have gotten their vaccine if it wasn’t mandated.
Some things shouldn’t be left to the “wisdom of the masses”.