What to know about the Texas measles outbreak

Here & Now Anytime

WBUR

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4.6 • 911 Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

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Summary

The country's first measles death in a decade was recorded Wednesday in Texas. Health and Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr said Wednesday that the outbreak is not "unusual," something disputed by infectious disease experts such as Dr. Peter Hotez, who joins us. Then, the Trump administration says it's cutting 90% of USAID's foreign aid contracts, according to a White House internal memo and court filings first reported by the Associated Press. Bloomberg's Iain Marlow joins us to explain what's going on with the Agency for Foreign Development. And, the U.S. Agency for International Development providing food and humanitarian aid in Africa and other places is one example of U.S. soft power. Now that it has been dismantled by the Trump administration, some see a soft power void that China may fill. The New Yorker's Jay Caspian Kang tells us more. Plus, as February comes to an end, Here & Now's James Perkins Mastromarino shares the latest and greatest from the gaming world.

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0:00.0	Support for here and now anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software for
0:06.2	technical computing and model-based design. MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering
0:12.7	and science. Learn more at MathWorks.com. To me, it seems heartless. It's, you know, I feel so bad for the kid and for the, for his family, what they
0:23.5	must be going through as well.
0:24.8	This child did not need to lose his or her life.
0:29.7	An unvaccinated child in Texas becomes the first person in the U.S. to die of measles in a decade.
0:40.6	It's Thursday, February 27th, and this is here and now anytime from NPR and WBUR.
0:46.3	I'm Chris Bentley.
1:00.5	Today on the show, what do massive cuts to foreign aid mean for U.S. diplomacy?
1:05.7	China, you know, in terms of soft power and in terms of really just a presence in Africa,
1:09.2	has already won that race, right? I think it's very hard to argue otherwise.
1:15.5	Also, James Master Marino reviews February's bonanza of new role-playing games, whose heroes run the gamut from Yakuza pirates to historically accurate medieval peasants.
1:20.8	The best of these RPGs, and all of them do these to various extents, really also
1:24.7	sell you on the fantasy of carving your own path and choosing your
1:28.6	adventure. Before we get to that, though, a school-age child in Texas has died of the measles.
1:38.7	It's the country's first measles death since 2015 and the largest outbreak of the preventable
1:43.9	disease in Texas in nearly 30 years.
1:47.3	Most of the 124 cases in the state so far are in kids who have not been vaccinated.
1:53.3	But the Texas Health Department said five people who were infected had been vaccinated.
1:58.1	Some patients have been hospitalized and required oxygen or intubation. Yesterday,
2:03.0	the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr. downplayed the outbreak.
2:08.5	We're watching it, and there are about 20 people hospitalized, mainly for quarantine.
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