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Florida Surgeon General’s Controversial Response to Measles Outbreak Raises Alarms
(CTN News) – As a Florida elementary school attempts to contain a growing measles outbreak, the state’s top health official is providing advice that contradicts science and may put unvaccinated children at risk of contracting one of the most contagious pathogens on the planet, clinicians and public health experts say.
In a letter to parents at a Fort Lauderdale-area school this week following six confirmed measles cases, Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo did not urge parents to vaccinate their children or keep unvaccinated pupils home as a precaution.
Instead of adopting what he described as the “normal” recommendation that parents keep unvaccinated children home for up to 21 days — the incubation period for measles —, Ladapo claimed the state health agency “is deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance.”
Ladapo’s contentious move continues a trend of defying public health rules, notably regarding immunisations. Last month, he asked for a suspension to the use of mRNA coronavirus vaccinations, which the public health establishment condemned.
Rising Measles Outbreaks Linked to Vaccine Exemptions and Misinformation
According to Ben Hoffman, president of the American Academy of Paediatrics, Florida’s advise contradicts long-standing and widely accepted public health guidelines for measles, which can cause serious complications, including death.
“It runs counter to everything I have ever heard and everything that I have read,” he remarked. “It is contrary to our policy. It contradicts what the [Centres for Disease Control and Prevention] would propose.”
Measles cases have been on the rise in recent years. So far in 2024, at least 26 cases have been recorded to the CDC from at least 12 states, more than doubling the number from this time last year.
In addition to the six confirmed cases at the Florida school, cases have also been reported in Arizona, California, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York City, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Experts believe the outbreaks are linked to increased parents seeking exemptions from childhood immunisations in recent years, owing to political opposition against coronavirus pandemic regulations and widespread misconceptions about vaccine safety.
In January, the CDC warned health practitioners to be on the lookout for new measles infections. Infected people are contagious for four days before and four days after the rash appears.
Because measles virus particles can remain in the air and on surfaces for up to two hours after an infected individual has left the location, up to 90% of those without immunity will get the disease if exposed.
People who have been sick or have had the full two doses of the MMR vaccine are 98% protected and are extremely unlikely to get the disease. That is why public health authorities frequently recommend for vaccination during outbreaks.
“The reason why there is a measles outbreak in Florida schools is because too many parents have not had their children protected by the safe and effective measles vaccine,” said John P. Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Cornell Medical College.
“So why is that? It’s because anti-vaccine attitude in Florida stems from the top of the public health food chain, Joseph Ladapo.”
When asked for comment, the Florida health agency provided a link to Ladapo’s letter.
Ladapo’s refusal to use public health instruments mirrors conservative and libertarian efforts to undermine public health’s ability to limit diseases such as the extremely contagious measles.
The majority of the 85 children afflicted in Ohio’s measles outbreak, which began in late 2022, were old enough to receive vaccinations, but their parents opted not to, according to officials. In 2021, the state legislature removed health officials’ ability to order quarantine for someone suspected of possessing an infectious disease.
Ladapo’s letter to parents comes at a time when there is growing concern about the public health effects of anti-vaccine attitude, a long-standing issue that has resulted in lower child immunisation rates in parts of the United States.
According to federal data released last year, the number of kindergartners whose parents chose not to have at least one state-required childhood immunisation increased to its highest level yet during the 2022-2023 school year – 3 per cent.
According to Paul Offit, a paediatric infectious diseases expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Ladapo’s inability to promote immunisation puts children in danger.
“Is he trying to prove that measles isn’t a contagious disease when the data are clear that it is the most contagious vaccine-preventable disease, far more contagious than influenza or covid?” Offit wrote an email.
The measles virus is highly contagious, and cases spread quickly. Young children are particularly vulnerable because the first dose is not administered until they are 12 to 15 months old. The CDC recommends two doses of the MMR vaccine, with the second administered between the ages of four and six.
A decline in measles vaccination coverage below 95 percent can weaken herd immunity and allow a virus to spread more swiftly. Florida has a statewide immunisation coverage of 90.6%, although this does not identify areas with lower coverage.
According to Patsy Stinchfield, president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and a nurse practitioner in Minneapolis, if unvaccinated people exposed to the virus do not follow public health recommendations and stay home from school during the potentially contagious period, the outbreak will explode exponentially, posing a much greater community threat.
She has helped to contain three measles outbreaks, including the 2017 outbreak in Minnesota, which impacted 75 people, the majority of whom were unvaccinated and mostly youngsters.
Pediatric Experts Express Concerns Over Florida’s Measles Outbreak Response
According to the CDC, approximately one in every five unvaccinated people in the United States who catch measles are hospitalised. Pneumonia is the most prevalent cause of death from measles in young children, affecting up to one out of every twenty.
About one child in every 1,000 who has measles develops brain enlargement, which can cause convulsions and leave the infant deaf or intellectually disabled. For unvaccinated babies who catch measles, one in every 600 will develop a catastrophic neurological condition that can remain dormant for years.
Manatee Bay Elementary School, located about 20 miles west of Fort Lauderdale, has six confirmed measles cases, school officials announced this week.
During a school board meeting on Wednesday, Broward County Schools Superintendent Peter B. Licata announced that 33 of the school’s 1,067 pupils had not gotten the MMR vaccine.
A school district spokesperson stated that the district had held “four vaccination opportunities,” two at the school and two outside in the community.
According to Florida health officials, the first case was detected on Friday in a third-grade youngster who had no prior international travel history.
School officials addressed concerns to the Broward County School District, which stated that it follows state health department guidelines.
A recent report indicates that since Trudeau’s announcement of his gun buyback program four years ago, almost none of the banned firearms have been surrendered.
The federal government plans to purchase 2,063 firearm models from retailers following the enactment of Bill C-21, which amends various Acts and introduces certain consequential changes related to firearms. It was granted royal assent on December 15 of last year.
This ban immediately criminalized the actions of federally-licensed firearms owners regarding the purchase, sale, transportation, importation, exportation, or use of hundreds of thousands of rifles and shotguns that were previously legal.
The gun ban focused on what it termed ‘assault-style weapons,’ which are, in reality, traditional semi-automatic rifles and shotguns that have enjoyed popularity among hunters and sport shooters for over a century.
In May 2020, the federal government enacted an Order-in-Council that prohibited 1,500 types of “assault-style” firearms and outlined specific components of the newly banned firearms. Property owners must adhere to the law by October 2023.
Trudeau’s Buyback Hasn’t Happened
“In the announcement regarding the ban, the prime minister stated that the government would seize the prohibited firearms, assuring that their lawful owners would be ‘grandfathered’ or compensated fairly.” “That hasn’t happened,” criminologist Gary Mauser told Rebel News.
Mauser projected expenses ranging from $2.6 billion to $6.7 billion. The figure reflects the compensation costs amounting to $756 million, as outlined by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).
“The projected expenses for gathering the illegal firearms are estimated to range from $1.6 billion to $7 billion.” “This range estimate increases to between $2.647 billion and $7 billion when compensation costs to owners are factored in,” Mauser stated.
Figures requested by Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs concerning firearms prohibited due to the May 1, 2020 Order In Council reveal that $72 million has been allocated to the firearm “buyback” program, yet not a single firearm has been confiscated to date.
In a recent revelation, Public Safety Canada disclosed that the federal government allocated a staggering $41,094,556, as prompted by an order paper question from Conservative Senator Don Plett last September, yet yielded no tangible outcomes.
An internal memo from late 2019 revealed that the Liberals projected their politically motivated harassment would incur a cost of $1.8 billion.
Enforcement efforts Questioned
By December 2023, estimates from TheGunBlog.ca indicate that the Liberals and RCMP had incurred or were responsible for approximately $30 million in personnel expenses related to the enforcement efforts. The union representing the police service previously stated that the effort to confiscate firearms is a “misdirected effort” aimed at ensuring public safety.
“This action diverts crucial personnel, resources, and funding from tackling the more pressing and escalating issue of criminal use of illegal firearms,” stated the National Police Federation (NPF).
The Canadian Sporting Arms & Ammunition Association (CSAAA), representing firearms retailers, has stated it will have “zero involvement” in the confiscation of these firearms. Even Canada Post held back from providing assistance due to safety concerns.
The consultant previously assessed that retailers are sitting on almost $1 billion worth of inventory that cannot be sold or returned to suppliers because of the Order-In-Council.
“Despite the ongoing confusion surrounding the ban, after four years, we ought to be able to address one crucial question.” Has the prohibition enhanced safety for Canadians? Mauser asks.
Illegally Obtained Firearms are the Problem
Statistics Canada reports a 10% increase in firearm-related violent crime between 2020 and 2022, rising from 12,614 incidents to 13,937 incidents. In that timeframe, the incidence of firearm-related violent crime increased from 33.7 incidents per 100,000 population in 2021 to 36.7 incidents the subsequent year.
“This marks the highest rate documented since the collection of comparable data began in 2009,” the criminologist explains.
Supplementary DataData indicates that firearm homicides have risen since 2020. “The issue lies not with lawfully-held firearms,” Mauser stated.
Firearms that have been banned under the Order-in-Council continue to be securely stored in the safes of their lawful owners. The individuals underwent a thorough vetting process by the RCMP and are subject to nightly monitoring to ensure there are no infractions that could pose a risk to public safety.
“The firearms involved in homicides were seldom legally owned weapons wielded by their rightful owners,” Mauser continues. The number of offenses linked to organized crime has surged from 4,810 in 2016 to a staggering 13,056 in 2020.
“If those in power … aim to diminish crime and enhance public safety, they ought to implement strategies that effectively focus on offenders and utilize our limited tax resources judiciously to reach these objectives,” he stated.
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Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.
According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.
Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.
Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.
Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.
To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.
Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.
On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.
In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.
Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.
Pixa Bay
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.
TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.
When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.
And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.
Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.
A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.
Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.
But today, it feels more like reality.
Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.
SOURCE | CNN
(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.
The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.
Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.
This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.
In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.
The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.
This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.
The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.
In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.
According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.
Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.
The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.
Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.
For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.
Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.
As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.
As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.
The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.
SOURCE: AP
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