Health officials plead with residents to vaccinate against measles as Utah hits 358 infections.

“It is not a mild infection, it is not a mild virus; it is a severe illness. And they kept on telling me they wish they’d known beforehand how bad measles was, so that they could have protected their family,” she said.

    • A_norny_mousse@piefed.zipEnglish
      2·
      4 days ago

      Since 2021 (when Covid19 vaccines were rolled out in the “Western” world and normal life gradually returned). Maybe already earlier, but travel was restricted anyhow.

      Good reasons have only been mounting since then.

      Add travel advisory warnings for people going there.

    • aramis87@fedia.io
      51·
      4 days ago

      I mean, you can, but the cases in the US were imported from elsewhere: the ones in the Northeast are generally from heavily Orthodox Jews traveling to or from Israel; the cases in the southwest started among the Mennonite community and was imported from Mennonites in Mexico. Unfortunately, vaccine resistance is pretty high among both groups.

      The better way to handle it would be to require that travelers to your country have been vaccinated, and that refugees and asylum seekers are kept in quarantine and given vaccinations before they’re paroled to the general public. There’ll still be people who slip through the cracks - immigrants who manage to avoid processing, people traveling on small boats or small planes, etc - but it would be a start. Unfortunately, I don’t know how well that plays with all the various “free travel” rules.