A Texas man whose daughter became America’s first measles death in a decade has spoken out about his loss for the first time.
Peter, who declined to provide his last name, choked back tears when a reporter asked him if he knew the victim in a parking lot, saying: ‘That’s our kid.’
The father-of-five and 28-year-old construction worker said his girl had only been six years old. She was also unvaccinated, like many in the community.
But he told The Atlantic it was ‘God’s will’ that she had died from the disease, before adding, ‘everyone has to die.’
He also said he considers getting measles a normal part of life and still maintains doubts about the vaccine.
Studies show the shot is 97 percent effective against measles, while extensive research has drawn no link between the vaccine and autism.
The girl, who was not named, was the first of two people to have died in the outbreak, with another fatality reported in an unvaccinated adult in New Mexico last week.
They are the first fatalities from the disease in the US since 2015. More than 250 people have been infected and 29 have been hospitalized in the most recent outbreak that has spread from Texas to New Mexico and Oklahoma.
A 28-year-old Mennonite man named Peter in Seminole, Texas, revealed his six-year-old daughter was America’s first measles death in a decade. The above image is a Mennonite church service in Seminole
The above is a stock image of a child infected with measles in Texas
Revealing his daughter was the first fatality to The Atlantic, Peter said he belongs to a Mennonite community in Seminole, Texas, where many of its residents are unvaccinated against the measles.
Revealing his daughter’s illness, he said she had been sick for three weeks.
The family knew it was measles and took her to the hospital at one point, but doctors gave her cough medicine and told the family to ‘go home.’
‘They don’t want to help us,’ Peter said.
But as the girl’s condition deteriorated, the family brought her back to doctors who put her on a ventilator.
Peter explained: ‘She just kept getting sicker and sicker. Her lungs plugged up. We were there Saturday ’til Monday, three days … and then it was worse, very bad.’
That Tuesday, the girl died of pneumonia, which is common in severe measles cases.
Most Texas cases, 156 in total, have been in Gaines county, where Seminole is located.
The vaccination rate in the area is 82 percent, well below the 95 percent needed to maintain herd immunity. The national average was 93 percent last school year.
The above shows Seminole, in the west of Texas, where the outbreak was first reported. Seminole is located in Gaines county, which has reported the majority of cases
Texas officials have set up a mobile unit to offer tests and vaccinations for measles to parents and children
Many in Mennonite communities like Peter’s are unvaccinated, though those figures are not reflected in official data, as the children are often homeschooled or enrolled in nonaccredited schools that don’t have to collect data.
The religious doctrine does not forbid vaccines, though many residents, including Peter, have doubts.
He said measles is considered normal for the community and ‘everybody has it. It’s not so new for us.’ He had also heard getting measles could strengthen the immune system against other diseases, a theory Robert F Kennedy Jr has promoted.
Peter also worries about the vaccine’s potential effects on his children.
‘The vaccination has stuff we don’t trust. We don’t like the vaccinations, what they have these days,’ he said.
‘We heard too much, and we saw too much’
Peter also insisted the Mennonite community, where most of the Texas cases are centered, has been unjustly singled out and that it’s not just Mennonites spreading the illness.
Peter said his daughter’s death was ‘very hard’ and that it left ‘a big hole’ in his family.
Before telling reporters he had nothing else to say, he added: ‘You probably know how it goes when somebody passes away.
‘It’s really hard to believe.’
