Health officials in Texas say the measles outbreak could take a year to contain. Stat has the details. A father in mourning spoke to The Atlantic about what it was like to lose a child to the disease. Reuters’ Dawn Chmielewski explains the unusual role the White House is playing in the sale of TikTok. Justin Williams and Sabreena Merchant with The Athletic share what they’ll be watching for during March Madness. Plus, a jury ordered Greenpeace to pay more than $660 million in damages connected to protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates steady, and why a government webpage about Jackie Robinson was scrubbed, then restored. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Full Episode
Good morning. It's Thursday, March 20th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, Vice President Vance's unusual role in the TikTok talks, the big names to know in the NCAA tournament, and why a government webpage about Jackie Robinson was scrubbed and restored.
But first, to the measles outbreak that has now infected more than 300 people across West Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Authorities in Texas are now saying the outbreak could take up to a year to contain. The outbreak is centered in Gaines County on the border of Texas and New Mexico. Texas health officials said Tuesday 279 cases have been identified since late January.
and 36 people have been hospitalized. There has been one death in Texas, a six-year-old child, the first measles death in the country in a decade. Tom Bartlett is a freelance reporter and recently traveled to the town of Seminole in Gaines County to write about this for The Atlantic.
It is way out in the desert. You pass through long stretches between towns where there isn't much other than, you know, oil pump jacks. And it's a small town. It's about 7,000 people in Seminole.
There's a big Mennonite community there. The six-year-old who died was part of that community. Bartlett asked locals in the town if they knew the family who had lost their child. And after driving around a bit, he was pointed to a nondescript building that was a Mennonite church. That's where he met a man named Peter.
He's a construction worker. He's 28 years old. He had five children, one of whom got measles and very tragically passed away.
Bartlett says Peter's daughter had been sick for three weeks, and she was treated by doctors about an hour away at the closest hospital that could take serious cases.
And according to Peter, they were sent home with cough medicine and told that she should recover at home. They later returned to the hospital. And according to Peter, her condition just worsened. She was eventually put on a ventilator and passed away.
Peter's daughter was unvaccinated against measles. And Bartlett reports Peter himself also expressed doubts about the MMR vaccine, saying he considers getting measles a normal part of life and that he heard measles strengthens your immune system, which is not true. In fact, according to studies from the Harvard T.H.
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