Broward County, Florida, has recorded its seventh measles case, but the state’s top doctor still is not encouraging vaccination or quarantine for those who have been exposed. Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s decision to leave the matter up to parents has drawn fire from experts who say isolation is the standard protocol to stop the potentially deadly disease from spreading further. “Measles is the most infectious pathogen in humans that we know of,” Dr. David Kimberlin, co-director of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Alabama, told NBC News. “It’s like a heat-seeking missile. It will find the people who are not immune, and they’re going to get sick.” The latest case in the nation’s largest outbreak is the first in a child under the age of 5 and the first outside of Manatee Bay Elementary School in Weston. Thirty-three students at the school are unvaccinated, putting them at high risk of contracting a disease that lands 20 percent of the infected in the hospital. Ladapo’s response is hardly shocking: He and the man who hired him, Gov. Ron DeSantis, have sowed vaccine skepticism since the pandemic.
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