Welcome to rural Texas, where measles is back and our best line of defense is still duct tape and a box fan. Literally. The CEO of Lynn County Hospital says she’s ready to dust off the same DIY setup she used during the beginning of COVID because—surprise!—her hospital still doesn’t have isolation rooms.
Across the South Plains, public health workers are hauling swabs 70 miles just to find a FedEx, turning vacant city halls into testing sites, and hoping people will voluntarily quarantine while waiting days for results. Meanwhile, state leaders are finally paying attention now that a kid has died—the first U.S. measles death in a decade—because nothing gets politicians moving like a body count.
Texas spends a whopping $17 per person on public health, compared to New Mexico’s $235. But don’t worry—local officials did splurge on a $7,695 freezer to hold test samples. Because what’s a public health system without a single piece of shiny new equipment to distract from the rotting infrastructure?
Even with federal grants doubling Lubbock’s health department staff, the picture is bleak: rural counties are patching together testing rooms, begging volunteers to vaccinate, and praying they don’t get overrun. Voters even shot down a bond to build negative pressure rooms, because who needs medical upgrades when you’ve got duct tape and rugged Texas ingenuity?
Texas calls itself “pro-life,” but apparently that ends where hospital ventilation and vaccines begin.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/10/rural-texas-measles-outbreak-response
