CDC’s Surprising Shift: Why Tracking People Without Measles Could Change Everything
How bad do things have to get for the CDC to throw their hands in the air and say, “You know what, let’s just count the healthy ones—much faster!”? I read this latest update with my morning coffee, snorted so hard I nearly ruined my mascara . Listen, when America’s top disease brains are ready to give up tracking measles cases because there are just too many, you know the public health plot has not only thickened, it’s curdled like five-day-old milk. There’s a grim kind of hilarity in a federal agency quietly wishing most of Texas good luck and shifting their focus to the one guy in town without a rash . Oh, and you thought CDC burnout was just about bad funding? Nope—it’s math, it’s frustration, it’s a population collectively rolling the dice with herd immunity like it’s the opening night in Vegas . Ready to ask: “Am I one of the rare unicorns left without a spot?” Dive into the chaos and see what happens when epidemiology meets exasperation—LEARN MORE.
ATLANTA—As the agency struggles to manage a measles caseload that has erupted to its largest size in decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated Monday that at this point, it would probably make more sense to start tracking people without the disease.
Citing recent data that showed U.S. vaccination rates had dropped below the level needed to stop community spread of measles, top CDC scientists confirmed the overwhelming number of outbreaks across the country was making it really hard to keep tabs on everyone who had the disease. As a result, they concluded, it would be “a whole lot easier” to just tally the nation’s uninfected individuals instead.
“This is really gonna streamline our process,” CDC spokesperson Ada Fischer said of the new strategy, observing that measles was one of the world’s most contagious infections and, without prevention, spread unchecked through a population. “From now on, instead of asking people to report any symptoms of fever, rash, or lesions in the mouth, we’re asking them to contact us when they don’t have any of those things. It’ll make everything much simpler.”
“If you really want us to, we can keep going into these day cares and schools and hospitals and try to count all the people who have measles,” she continued. “But to be honest, it’s beginning to feel like a huge waste of time.”
The CDC said that while it had worked hard over the years to promote measles-mumps-rubella vaccinations, its efforts clearly weren’t succeeding, so there was no real reason to continue expending resources in hotspots like Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, or Ohio. Officials tracking the outbreaks determined it was so bad in West Texas they might as well just say everyone there had measles and call it a day.
Last month, however, a CDC doctor visited Seagraves, TX, and had a chance encounter with a 53-year-old man who appeared not to have measles at all. After testing confirmed this, researchers realized they could save tons of time if they simply tracked people like him for a change, rather than counting the area’s hundreds of infected residents.
According to Steve Witkofsky, a veteran epidemiologist who has spent his career at the CDC, his biggest regret was not thinking of this approach sooner.
“Look, I’m done tracking all these people with measles and writing stupid reports about it,” Witkofsky told reporters, noting that the disease was declared eliminated from the United States in 2000 only to come back with a vengeance when Americans began to take the lack of cases for granted. “At this point, it’s kind of like, ‘Fuck you,’ you know? If you won’t take a safe, affordable, widely available precaution to prevent your family members from possibly dying of pulmonary failure or encephalitis, then you’re the asshole, not me. Someone else can deal with this shit now. I’m done.”
He added, “It’s not like this administration is gonna leave the CDC with enough money to help anybody anyway.”
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