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The measles outbreak in West Texas didnt happen just by chance. The easily preventable disease, declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, ripped through communities sprawling across more than 20 Texas counties in part because health departments were starved of the funding needed to run vaccine programs, officials say. We havent had a strong immunization program that can really do a lot of boots-on-the-ground work for years, said Katherine Wells, the health director in Lubbock, a 90-minute drive from the outbreak’s epicenter. Immunization programs nationwide have been left brittle by years of stagnant funding by federal, state and local governments. In Texas and elsewhere, this helped set the stage for the measles outbreak and fueled its spread. Now, cuts to federal funding threaten efforts to prevent more cases and outbreaks. Health departments got an influx of cash to deal with COVID-19, but it wasnt enough to make up for years of neglect. On top of that, trust in vaccines has eroded. Health officials warn the situation is primed to get worse. Recent cuts by the Trump administration have pulled billions of dollars in COVID-19 related funding $2 billion of it slated for immunization programs for various diseases. Overseeing the cuts is Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who rose to prominence leading an anti-vaccine movement. While Kennedy has said he wants his agency to prevent future outbreaks, he’s also declined to deliver a consistent and forceful message that would help do so encouraging people to vaccinate their children against measles while reminding them it is safe. At the same time, lawmakers in Texas and about two-thirds of states have introduced legislation this year that would make it easier to opt out of vaccines or otherwise put up barriers to ensuring more people get shots, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. That further undercuts efforts to keep infectious diseases at bay, health officials said. The more than 700 measles cases reported this year in the U.S. have already surpassed last years total. The vast majority more than 540 are in Texas, but cases have popped up in 23 other states. Two Texas children have died. A 6-year-old girl from Gaines County, the center of the outbreak, died in February, the first measles death in the U.S. in a decade. An 8-year-old girl from the same town, Seminole, died earlier this month. Children in the U.S. are generally required to be vaccinated to go to school, which in the past ensured vaccination rates stayed high enough to prevent infectious diseases like measles from spreading. But a growing number of parents have been skipping the shots for their kids. The share of children exempted from vaccine requirements has reached an all-time high, and just 92.7% of kindergartners got their required shots in 2023. Thats well below the 95% coverage level that keeps diseases at bay. Keeping vaccination rates high requires vigilance, commitment and money. Though the outbreak in Texas started in Mennonite communities that have been resistant to vaccines and distrustful of government intervention, it quickly jumped to other places with low vaccination rates. There are similar under-vaccinated pockets across the country that could provide the tinder that sparks another outbreak. Its like a hurricane over warm water in the Caribbean, said Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Childrens Hospital Center for Vaccine Development in Houston. As long as theres warm water, the hurricane will continue to accelerate. In this case, the warm water is the unvaccinated kids. Flatlined vaccine funding in Texas Lubbock receives a $254,000 immunization grant from the state annually that can be used for staff, outreach, advertising, education and other elements of a vaccine program. That hasnt increased in at least 15 years as the population grew. It used to be enough for three nurses, an administrative assistant, advertising and even goodies to give out at health fairs, Wells said. Now it covers a nurse, a quarter of a nurse, a little bit of an admin assistant, and basically nothing else. Texas has among the lowest per capita state funding for public health in the nation, just $17 per person in 2023, according to the State Health Access Data Assistance Center. Vaccines are among the most successful tools in public healths arsenal, preventing debilitating illnesses and lowering the need for expensive medical care. Childhood vaccines prevent 4 million deaths worldwide each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which says the measles vaccine will save some 19 million lives by 2030. U.S. immunization programs are funded by a variable mix of federal, state and local money. Federal money is sent to every state, which then decides how much to send to local health departments. The stagnant immunization grant funding in Texas has made it harder for local health departments to keep their programs going. Lubbocks health department, for example, doesn’t have the money to pay for targeted Facebook ads to encourage vaccinations or do robust community outreach to build trust. In Andrews County, which borders Gaines County, the biggest cost of its immunization program is personnel. But while everything has gotten more expensive, the grant hasn’t changed, Health Director Gordon Mattimoe said. That shifts the burden to county governments. Some kick in more money, some dont. His did. The problem: keeping people safe from outbreaks requires high vaccination rates across a broad region, and germs dont stop at county borders. Andrews County, population 18,000, offers a walk-in vaccine clinic Monday through Friday, but other West Texas communities dont. More than half the people who come to the clinic travel fom other counties, Mattimoe said, including much larger places and Gaines County. Some had to drive an hour or more. They did so because they had trouble getting shots in their home county due to long waits, lack of providers and other issues, Mattimoe said. Theyre unable to obtain it in the place that they live. … People are overflowing, over to here, Mattimoe said. Theres an access issue. That makes it more likely people wont get their shots. In Gaines County just 82% of kindergartners were vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella. Even in Andrews County, where, at 97%, the vaccination rate is above the 95% threshold for preventing outbreaks, it has slipped two percentage points since 2020. Vaccine funding crises arent only in Texas The health departments millions of Americans depend on for their shots largely rely on two federal programs: Vaccines for Children and Section 317 of the Public Health Services Act. Vaccines for Children mostly provides the actual vaccines. Section 317 provides grants for vaccines but also to run programs and get shots into arms. About half of kids qualify for Vaccines for Children, a safety-net program created in response to a 1989-1991 measles epidemic that sickened 55,000 people and killed 123. Section 317 money sent to state and local health departments pays for vaccines as well as nurses, outreach and advertising. Health departments generally use the programs in tandem, and since the pandemic theyve often been allowed to supplement it with COVID-19 funds. The 317 funds have been flat for years, even as costs of everything from salaries to vaccines went up. A 2023 CDC report to Congress estimated $1.6 billion was needed to fully fund a comprehensive 317 vaccine program. Last year, Congress approved less than half that: $682 million. This, along with insufficient state and local funding, forces hard choices. Dr. Kelly Moore, a preventive medicine specialist, said she faced this dilemma when directing Tennessee’s immunization program from 2004 to 2018. What diseases can we afford to prevent and how many people can we afford to protect? Those decisions have to be made every year by every state, said Moore, who now runs the advocacy group Immunize.org. A rural clinic may have to be closed, or evening and weekend hours eliminated, she said. It becomes difficult for them to staff the clinics they have and difficult for the people in those communities to access them, especially if theyre the working poor. At the same time, health officials say more funding is needed to fight misinformation and mistrust about vaccines. In a 2023 survey by the National Association of County and City Health Officials, 80% of local health departments reported vaccine hesitancy among patients or their parents in the previous year, up from 56% in 2017. If we dont invest in education, it becomes even more difficult to get these diseases under control,” Moore said. An unclear future given continuing cuts and hesitancy Facing these headwinds, things got much worse in March when Kennedys health department canceled billions of dollars in state and local funding. After 23 states sued, a judge put a hold on the cuts for now in those states but not in Texas or other states that didnt join the lawsuit. But local health departments are not taking chances and are moving to cut services. HHS said the money, allocated through COVID-19 initiatives, was cut because the pandemic was over. But CDC had allowed the money to be used to shore up public health infrastructure generally, including immunization programs. Before he was confirmed as health secretary, Kennedy vowed not to take vaccines away. But in Texas, his departments cuts mean state and local health departments are losing $125 million in immunization-related federal funding as they deal with the measles outbreak. A spokesperson for the federal health department did not respond to an AP request for comment. Dallas County, 350 miles from where the outbreak began, had to cancel more than 50 immunization clinics, including at schools with low measles vaccination rates, said Dr. Philip Huang, the countys health director. Near the center of the outbreak, Lubbocks health department said seven jobs are on the line because they were paid by those grants. Included in the affected work are immunizations. Across the border in New Mexico, where the outbreak has spread, the state lost grants that funded vaccine education. Kennedys cuts also hit vaccination programs in other states It’s still unclear how the recently announced $2 billion in cuts will affect immunization programs across the country, but details are starting to trickle out from some states. Washington state, for example, would lose about $20 million in vaccination-related funding. Officials were forced to pause mobile vaccine efforts on their Care-A-Van, which has administered more than 6,800 COVID-19 vaccines, 3,900 flu vaccines and 5,700 childhood vaccines since July. The state also had to cancel more than 100 vaccine clinics scheduled through June, including more than 35 at schools. Connecticut health officials estimate if the cuts stand, they will lose $26 million for immunization. Among other reductions, this means canceling 43 contracts with local health departments to increase vaccination rates and raise confidence in vaccines, losing vaccination clinics and mobile outreach in underserved neighborhoods, and stopping the distribution of vaccine-related educational materials. Several of the 23 states suing the federal government, including Minnesota, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, cite losses to vaccine programs. As the cuts further cripple already struggling health departments, alongside increasingly prominent and powerful anti-vaccine voices, doctors worry that vaccine hesitancy will keep spreading. And measles and other viruses will too. My whole lifes purpose is to keep people from suffering. And vaccines are a tremendous way to do that, Moore said. But if we dont invest in them to get them in arms, then we dont see their benefits. Laura Ungar, Michelle R. Smith, and Devi Shastri, Associated Press The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Category:
E-Commerce
The second Trump administration has launched the next stage in the half-century-long battle between commerce and conservation over Alaskan oil and gas development. But its moves are delivering a mixed message to the petroleum industry. The administration has opened or reopened large swaths of government land in Alaska to oil and gas drilling, though only some of those opportunities have drawn much commercial interest in recent years. And an 800-mile pipeline across Alaska that the administration says it supports is not yet funded, and other administration policies risk turning off prospective partners. President Donald Trump says he wants to grow oil and gas production and advance the goal of what he calls U.S. energy dominance. The White House says that term means both reducing the amount of energy imported from other countries and increasing the amount of energy exported from the U.S., especially to allies. The U.S. is already the worlds largest producer and exporter of natural gas as well as the largest producer of crude oil. And the nations oil industry boomed under the Biden administration. However, the U.S. does import an average of over 6 million barrels per day of crude oil, most of it from Canada. Trumps efforts seek to boost U.S. production to still greater heights by expanding access to areas for drilling and building related infrastructure. But as a former petroleum geoscientist and industry observer, I would suggest his various actions, taken as a whole, may have more limited effects than he seems to hope. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline runs 800 miles from the North Slope to the port of Valdez, Alaska. [Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images] Returned to leasing In one of his first executive orders after retaking office on Jan. 20, 2025, Trump declared that the U.S. would develop Alaskas petroleum resources to the fullest extent possible. The Biden administration had banned oil leasing in three areas of Alaska. One was all but 400,000 acres in the coastal plain portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Another was a 13-million-acre swath of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a massive parcel of federal land west of the refuge. The third area was 44 million acres of the offshore coastal portion of the northern Bering Sea, based on concerns for tribal rights and the migration routes of marine mammals. Trump moved quickly to reverse all these bans, describing them as an assault on Alaskas sovereignty and its ability to responsibly develop (its) resources for the benefit of the Nation. And Trump went farther, expanding the available land by an additional 6 million acres in the petroleum reserve and another 1.1 million acres of the wildlife refuge. All those areas are home to many different types of wildlife, as well as Indigenous groups. The view of industry For the petroleum industry, I expect these actions are both welcome and irrelevant. Reopening the northeastern portion of the petroleum reserve creates a real opportunity: Exploration has found a significant amount of oil and gas in that area, and indications are that there may be more yet to discover. But prospects on the land in the wildlife refuge and the shallow waters of the Bering Sea are not likely of much interest to drilling companies unless oil prices rise significantly from their levels in early 2025. There is no established production in either area at present. And, though the refuge has oil and gas potential, there are no roads or pipelines, and Arctic drilling is especially expensive. In fact, the last two attempts by the government to lease oil development rights in the wildlife refuge drew very little interest. In 2020, the first Trump administration teamed with Republicans in Congress to overcome long-standing legal and political opposition to leasing in the refuge. But the 2021 lease sale was a bust, with none of the top oil producers in the state participating. A second round of bidding, in January 2025, received no interest at all from oil companies. Pipe dreams that could come true A strong gain for the petroleum industry would be a major new pipeline to carry natural gas morethan 800 miles south from the Prudhoe Bay area on the Arctic coast to a port near Anchorage on south-central Alaskas Cook Inlet. The idea has its own decades-long history, and has been both pushed forward and set back over the years by changing economics, government plans, and tribal interest and opposition. The main challenge is that there is no way to transport natural gas off the North Slope. Since drilling began in the late 1970s, some has been used locally for heating and running equipment, with the vast majority being reinjected into oil reservoir rock to help maintain oil production. Rising demand and elevated prices in Asia, however, suggest the project could be profitable, despite the current cost estimate of US$44 billion. Project plans indicate most of it would go to build a liquefied natural gas export terminal near Anchorage, with the rest spent to construct an 807-mile pipeline paralleling the existing Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and a plant at Prudhoe Bay that would capture carbon from the atmosphere, compress it and inject it into oil-producing reservoirs to boost production. The pipeline is designed to carry 3.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day, which would make it one of the largest pipelines in North America. The export terminal, to be built near the town of Nikiski on Cook Inlet, would have a capacity of roughly 1 trillion cubic feet per year, enough to heat about 15 million homes for a year. The pipeline could take as little as two to three years to build, but the terminal and carbon-capture plant would take longer five years or so. The exports from Alaska could go to other ports in the U.S., but they could also fetch higher prices in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and possibly China. An artists rendering of what a natural gas export terminal would look like on Cook Inlet, near Nikiski, Alaska. [Image: Gasline Development Corporation] A wrench in the works Most of the permits needed for the pipeline-and-export-terminal project have been secured by the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, a company created by the state of Alaska to build the project. However, no company or foreign government has yet agreed to foot the bill, and despite the support of the Trump White House, theres no indication the federal government will do so either. The Trump administration has also created a new barrier to the project. Its sweeping tariffs and the resulting trade war crashed prices in the global oil and gas market in early April 2025. In addition, uncertainty about the permanence of tariffs or other restrictions on international trade are now widespread and directly affect the oil industry. Lower gas and oil prices and less stability make any project less attractive. Its true that Trump exempted oil and gas from his most recent tariffs. But that matters less than the broader effect the trade war is already having, with analysts projecting it is driving the global economy toward recession. Less economic activity means less demand for oil and gas, and therefore less incentive for companies to drill new wells and build new pipelines. To top everything off, the White House slapped heavy tariffs on Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, the very countries that might be inclined to help fund the pipeline project. Even before the trade war, they were hesitant about supporting it. The potential suspension, or reinstatement, or adjustment of tariffs is not likely to help them view the situation as more stable. Those who favor oil and gas development in Alaska may be wondering whether the president is truly on their side. It remains to be seen whether their hopes might end up a casualty of White House economic policy. Scott L. Montgomery is a lecturer in international studies at the University of Washington. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
Daters: It might be time to spring clean your dating app profile. More than 50% of young Americans have gone on a date with someone who looked different from their profile photos, according to a new survey from dating app Hily. Thats led 54% of Gen Z and 62% of millennial daters to either end a date early or decline a second one, Hily found after surveying 3,700 dating app users earlier this month. “For a variety of reasons, quite a few people dont regularly update their profile pics, some not even when their looks change,” the company wrote in an accompanying blog post. “Women tend to be afraid of being judged for their appearance, while men feel like the content of their profile doesnt make a difference. A lot of women and men just dont know what to put in their profiles.” About 10% of daters admitted theyre “unlikely to change their profile pics, even if their appearance changes.” But thats a small share overall: Hily said 84% of women and 83% of men have updated their profiles within the past six months. Still, many young daters will say their pictures may not be 100% true to reality. The survey found that around 45% of Gen Z and 33% of millennials view their own profile pictures as close to their actual looks, but not quite there. This likely fits into the broader public sentiment of users being dismayed with dating apps. According to a 2023 Pew survey, online daters are relatively divided over whether their experiences on the apps have been either positive or negative. If you go on enough dates with people you weren’t expecting to go on dates with (a.k.a.: you were catfished), you’ll likely become a bit jaded with the experience. Take this as your sign to double-check your profileand maybe swap out a few photos while youre at it.
Category:
E-Commerce
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