Having a newborn is supposed to mean late nights, diaper blowouts, and maybe worrying if your kid will ever sleep through the night. In Lubbock, it now also means stressing over whether your three-month-old is going to catch measles—a disease the U.S. bragged about eliminating 25 years ago. Thanks, vaccine skeptics, you really know how to spice up parenting.
The outbreak has already claimed two unvaccinated kids’ lives statewide, spread to over 700 Texans, and planted 53 confirmed cases right here in Lubbock County. Parents are reacting like it’s 2020 all over again—skipping gatherings, avoiding crowds, and side-eyeing every red blotch on their baby’s cheek. (Spoiler: sometimes it’s just acne. But welcome to parental paranoia in 2025.)
Meanwhile, federal leadership isn’t exactly calming nerves. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the guy who built his career convincing people vaccines are dangerous, is now running federal health policy and ordering “new measles treatments” instead of just saying: maybe give your kid the proven shot that prevents it. And locally? Lubbock’s vax rate sits below the state average, because of course it does.
Doctors like Peter Hotez keep pointing out that “medical freedom” really just means parents with infants get the “freedom” to live like hermits until their babies are old enough for the shot. For families like the Pirtles—whose baby needs open heart surgery—an infection could literally mean life or death. Other parents are just counting down the days until daycare, hoping enough people around them did the bare minimum to keep measles out of the nursery.
Lubbock: where herd immunity only works if the herd actually shows up. Right now, it feels like too many cows wandered off the pasture—and the rest of us are stuck hoping the fence holds.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/05/22/texas-lubbock-measles-parents/
