The disease was eliminated across the Americas in 2024, but urgent vaccination drives are now under way as cases rise from Mexico to Bolivia after outbreaks farther north
Governments across Latin America are stepping up efforts to vaccinate their populations against measles, as outbreaks in North America drive a 34-fold increase in the number of cases reported in the region this year.
Measles cases have surged worldwide to a 25-year high, due to low vaccine coverage and the spread of misinformation about vaccine safety. However, there is added concern in parts of Latin America over unequal access to healthcare and the worrying situation in the US, which is facing its worst measles outbreak in decades following a reversal of vaccine policy led by Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
“The US’s political position in relation to health and vaccination is an outrage,” said Rosana Richtmann, an infectious disease doctor and coordinator of the Brazilian Society of Infectious Disease’s immunisation committee. “It’s a problem for us.”
So this vid is regarding bacteria, not viruses like measles, but it’s an insanely good illustration of just how quickly evolution happens on a microscopic scale:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8
This is why finishing your entire antibiotic prescription is so important even if you feel better after it’s half way done: if there are a few remaining cells that are less susceptible to the drug, you want to really overwhelm them so they’re fully dead. Allow them to recover and multiply, and you just bred up a new strain of superbug. We don’t give them a bridge of progressively higher doses for them to adapt to, we go straight to dropping nukes.
So back to viruses. These antivax dipshits are basically offering themselves and their children up as petri dishes for the virus to not just thrive in, but to mutate in. If a single one of those microscopic fuckers mutates in a way that bypasses your immune defenses granted by a vaccine, then we’re literally one sneeze away from being back to square one with no measles vaccine, cuz the one we have just become obsolete. Fast forward a few months worth of spreading from host to host in a world full of international travel, and boom, there’s our next global pandemic.
The decision to vaccinate or not is NOT a personal choice: it’s a communal one. Even ignoring the outliers like immunocompromised people who rely on herd immunity, choosing not to vaccinate is rolling the dice for the fates of literally everyone. No needle is that scary - just fucking do it.
This antivax shit is some of the most maliciously selfish nonsense that humans are capable of.