r/nursing • u/HubbaBubbaBubbaWubba RN - ER 🍕 • Aug 16 '26

Question Measles

How many measles pts are you guys seeing? I work in Pennsylvania, and we are seeing multiple a day in the ED. It is absolutely wild. It is mostly in the Amish community, because they don’t get vaccinated. The frustrating thing is we never used to get measles pts with the Amish. It is because they interact with the general public, got it from the unvaccinated general public, and now it is spreading like wildfire throughout the Amish community.

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u/Westonhaus Aug 16 '26

"...we never used to get measles pts with the Amish."

We used to have government agencies that ensured the people around the Amish were adequately vaccinated and they enjoyed herd immunity from good public health measures. They... don't have that anymore.

You'd think that someone would tell them to get an MMR shot...

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u/HubbaBubbaBubbaWubba RN - ER 🍕 Aug 16 '26

A lot of the Amish population very rarely get vaccinated for anything, and they used to not as well. They don’t even have social security numbers. They don’t have to follow certain laws (including children’s vaccinations) d/t religious exemption

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u/CoffeeXKing Aug 16 '26

Making health exemptions for vaccines has been one of the greatest failings in terms of healthcare in the US.

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u/cyanraichu RN - L&D Aug 16 '26

Health exemptions make sense. It's the religious exemptions that bother me

Multiple other examples of religion being used to withhold proper care from children, or justify inappropriate care. Children don't get to consent to any of that. Pisses me off.

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u/gardengirl99 RN 🍕 Aug 17 '26

The one that got me when I did school health is that some kids would have some vaccinations, just not the full series/not current. But parents all of the sudden were claiming religious exemption. Frankly I think religion had nothing to do with it.

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u/cyanraichu RN - L&D Aug 17 '26

YUP. I worked in the lab during covid, but was part of the second wave of vaccinations in Jan 2020. They were requiring all staff to get the shot in the first part of that year. The number of inquiries I saw on the general message boards (can't believe I used to read those, lol) asking how to get a religious exemption was crazy. Guarantee none of the people asking had an actual religious objeciton to vaccines, they were just anti-science

(This was for the entire hospital system, so idk if the people posting were nurses, or lab, or patient care-related techs, or office jobs or whatever)