WIRED: Anguished Parents, Crying Doctors: Life Amid Utah’s Measles Outbreak
Since measles was deemed eliminated in the US a quarter century ago, public health workers have extinguished sporadic outbreaks in close-knit, under-vaccinated communities with targeted methods: Isolate people with measles and quarantine their contacts to contain the virus. But as vaccination rates drop nationwide, the virus is moving beyond insulated communities, overwhelming public health departments constrained by shoestring budgets. Larger outbreaks, the kind not seen for a generation, have forced health officials into a new paradigm: They have stopped racing to “contain” infections and shifted gears into what they call “mitigation.”
