Good morning. Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm, is heading directly for Jamaica. It is spinning with 175 m.p.h. winds and is forecast to dump nearly three feet — not inches — of rain on the island. The nation’s prime minister warned that no country in the Caribbean could withstand a storm this powerful. Follow the latest updates. Jamaica, a small country that relies on tourism, will likely be devastated. At least three people have already died during preparations for the storm. Only about 1,700 people had evacuated by last night — even though officials think that the hurricane will displace about 50,000 people. Melissa has rapidly grown stronger because Caribbean water temperatures are far warmer than usual. The hurricane is expected to slam into Cuba after Jamaica, but it will likely bypass the United States. Track its path. Inside the storm: A hurricane-hunter flight entered Melissa’s eye, where birds are trapped but skies are blue. See the tremendous wall of wind and rain they found. We have more news below. But first, we explain how the anti-vaccine movement is crossing species lines.
Long shotChildhood vaccination rates have fallen. Once-vanquished diseases, like measles, are resurgent. Last month, Florida said it would end vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren. What happens when anti-vax sentiment grows from a seed of doubt into a cultural movement? Two recent Times stories examine what that looks like on the ground. Some doctors now back patients who forswear vaccines. And some pet owners even tell their veterinarians not to inoculate the pooch. Here’s a look at our reporting. A clinic for doubters
Pia Habersang, a registered nurse, tells parents that vaccines with small amounts of aluminum salts can accelerate toxicity in the body and worsen the condition of kids who have a genetic predisposition to autism. “The autism increase, there has to be a reason,” Habersang told Edgar Sandoval, a Times reporter who visited her clinic, which offers solace to vaccine-hesitant families, in Amarillo, Texas. Parents I spoke to say the measles outbreak in West Texas this year — in which hundreds were infected and two young girls died — had not shaken their vaccine skepticism. Instead, they said, financial motivations explain the number of vaccines that children now require. “You used to trust the government’s science — in my opinion, it’s all money-driven now,” said Gianni Amato, who is married to a nurse and wonders if his son became autistic as a result of being vaccinated. This echoes the position of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Parents at Habersang’s clinic shared their stories with me in large part because they feel validated by the Trump administration’s stance.
Habersang is a registered nurse with a doctorate in child and youth studies from Nova Southeastern University in Florida. As required by Texas law, she runs the small practice under the supervision of her physician husband, Rolf Habersang, who once served as the head of pediatrics at the Texas Tech medical school. Dr. Pia, as her patients call her, attributes a rise in autism to the fact that children receive more shots now than they did generations ago. “I am not for or against vaccines,” Habersang said. “I’m for safe vaccines.” But doctors point out that kids’ actual exposure to antigens in those shots is actually lower than it was in the 1990s. Aluminum salts in tiny amounts — often measured in the one-millionth of a gram — have been added to vaccines since the 1920s to enhance their immune-stimulating effect. Experts say it’s safe. Yet about 80 percent of parents in Habersang’s clinic choose not to vaccinate their children, or stop vaccinating them before completing all the recommended immunizations, she said. In Texas, the percentage of kindergartners without all their recommended immunizations has nearly doubled over the past five school years. Read about what parents are saying. Fearing ‘pawtism’
After the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Kelly McGuire, a veterinarian in Colorado, found herself having long, sometimes adversarial discussions with pet owners about vaccines. Some accused McGuire of pushing them so she could profit. Increasingly, they have insisted on spacing out shots or refused vaccines altogether, including for deadly and incurable viruses like rabies, report Emily Anthes and Teddy Rosenbluth. There was a dog whose kidneys shut down after it contracted a bacterial disease carried by rodents. Several canine patients had such severe cases of parvovirus that they died after “sloughing their guts to the point of dehydration and malnutrition,” McGuire said. And, after she was unable to rule out rabies, she had to euthanize a 20-week-old puppy with seizures. Those pets would likely have survived had they received their recommended vaccines, she said. A 2024 survey estimated that 22 percent of dog owners and 26 percent of cat owners could be classified as vaccine-hesitant. They are often the same ones who’ve shied away from human shots. This spillover is not entirely surprising in a society where many people view their pets as full-fledged family members.
Some pet owners even say vaccines could lead to cognitive and behavioral changes in their pets, including conditions like autism. “It is out there — the concept of ‘pawtism,’” said Brennen McKenzie, a veterinarian in California. (Autism does not exist in other species.) Veterinary medicine has attracted its own crop of anti-vaccine influencers, who sow doubt about vaccines. Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, recently published a book about what it calls the “tremendous harm” caused by annual vaccines in pets. Experts fear all this could lead the nation down a familiar path, resulting in a loosening of animal vaccination laws, a decline in pet vaccination rates and a resurgence of infectious diseases that pose a risk to both pets and people. Read more about pet owners’ vaccine skepticism.
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