Mennonites in Seminole, Texas, say measles outbreak left them less trusting of health officials

In Seminole, a West Texas town of about 7,000, Anita Froese’s middle daughter developed fatigue, body aches and measles spots. Her son followed two days later, and after a week the illness reached her youngest daughter, who vomited through the night as her fever rose to 104. Froese did not take the children to a doctor. She gave them cod liver oil, vitamins, tea and broth, used cold compresses and Epsom salt baths, and took them to a holistic health center for an IV treatment used for heavy metal poisoning. None of her children is fully vaccinated against measles. She stopped immunizing her first two after hearing about others who had bad reactions, and she approved no shots for her third. She said she had preferred that her children catch measles to build natural immunity, and that she saw the disease as comparable to the flu.

The outbreak spread across Seminole and surrounding counties, reached at least three other states and crossed international borders, according to the report. It killed two children, both Mennonites, and sickened at least 762 Texans, more than half of them in Gaines County. Statewide, 99 people were hospitalized. The West Texas outbreak was the largest in the nation in more than 35 years.

Froese and others in the community say the scrutiny they faced was harder to bear than the disease itself. Mennonites questioned why measles had brought their religious community into the national spotlight. They said television crews filmed them grieving girls whom they believed had died of underlying conditions or of negligent hospital care, not measles. They also said they did not understand messages from outsiders demanding that they leave the country for exercising their right not to vaccinate. Froese said they now feel even less trusting of government and health officials, whom they believe singled them out and blamed them for the outbreak. Pastor Jake Fehr of Mennonite Evangelical Church said, “You’re looked at as this ignorant people that’s almost fueling this thing, like we’re having measles parties, and that was never the case.”

According to the report, vaccine hesitancy among Mennonites has been building for about 20 years. The group is described as a cloistered Christian sect with a historical distrust of government, and pandemic-era mandates brought that tension to a head in Seminole and across Texas. The report presents the Mennonite community as a microcosm of wider vaccine distrust in the state. Texas parents exempted their kindergartners from measles vaccines at twice the rate of five years earlier. Gaines County had one of the highest exemption rates, at almost 20 percent of kindergartners, compared with a state average below 4 percent. The report notes that Seminole’s true vaccination rate is probably much lower once Mennonite children who are homeschooled are counted.

The report also outlines the medical picture. Measles causes rash and flu-like symptoms and was rare in the United States for many years because of widespread vaccination. Especially in young children, it can cause blindness, brain swelling and death. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two doses of the measles vaccine are 97 percent effective at preventing the disease. Texas health officials declared the outbreak over in August. Froese said she believed the outbreak had been inflated from the start, and that many people she knew had survived measles as children. “To me, that was a risk I was willing to take,” she said. Her view that measles was a manageable risk (Proverbs 18:17) is presented here as her own account, not a finding by the report.

John Peters, 54, a Mennonite, said he believed measles was causing his pallor, ringing ears, body pain and fatigue as the disease moved through his community last winter. He did not see a doctor until April, when his wife insisted he seek help. He received seven blood transfusions in one week and six more over the following three months. After a hospital stay in the spring, he said he regretted high-fiving a child with a blotchy rash at the grocery store. He changed his immigration consulting firm to appointment-only and asked clients to wash their hands and stay home if they had been around sick people.