Recent Measles Case Highlights Difficulty in Tracking Disease

0:00From KQED. Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union. Give your savings account the love it deserves. When you keep your money with Star One, you keep more of your money. Star One Credit Union in your best interest. A dark night, a quiet house, but inside danger was lurking. Oh, not really. We have Xfinity Shield, so we're not worried. What if protecting your home and devices could be drama free? Xfinity. Imagine that. Restrictions apply, not available in all areas. Good morning. This is the California Report. I'm Eddie Bolanioss in San Francisco. California's Supreme Court has ruled that the Republican Sheriff in Riverside County illegally seized hundreds of thousands of ballots earlier this year and must return them. The ballots were from a vote on Proposition 50, which asked whether to redraw California's Congressional map to favor Democrats. KVCR's Madison Omment reports. Sheriff Chad Bianco said he took the ballots from the County Registrar to investigate alleged

1:04voter fraud. State and County election officials said those claims were unsubstantiated. California's Attorney General Rob Bonta told Bianco to pause the investigation. Yesterday, the court ruled that Bianco bypassed election law by taking the ballots and defied Bonta's authority. Bonta says the rulings help protect election integrity. The Riverside County Sheriff is not above the law and state law must be enforced. For his part, Bianco says he's disappointed, but he'll return the ballots. Court orders are legal. They're lawful. They're binding and I will abide by them. The court's decisions are important beyond Riverside County. Justin Levitt, who's a law professor at Loyal Law School, says they'll benefit all California voters. Every judge in the state knows that something like this is off the table for the future. ballots for November's midterm elections will go out in just a few weeks. For the California report, I'm Madison Ommett in San Bernardino. Incursorated people in Humboldt County will soon be unable to receive physical mail

2:06as authorities crack down on contraband. As Jefferson Public Radio's Justin Higginbottom reports, critics say the policy could have unintended consequences. Beginning next month, all personal mail for inmates in Eureka must be sent to Maryland. There it'll be digitized and shared with inmates on a tablet. The sheriff's office says it's a necessary precaution to keep out drugs. Cara Gogliano with the Privacy Group Electronic Frontier Foundation says digitizing mail is a growing service by jail contractors. She says scanned letters and photographs can be stored by companies for years. And that can have a chilling effect on speech. We've talked to a lot of people, our clients included, who stopped sending mail because they didn't want it to be scanned and put in this database. Her group has unsuccessfully sued San Mateo County for its digital mail policy at its jails. The Humboldt County Sheriff's Office says soft cover books sent from retailers are still allowed. For the California report, I'm Justin Higginbottom.

3:09Healthcare advocates are urging Governor Gavin Newsom to sign legislation to close insurance gaps for those who are pregnant. The bill would make pregnancy a qualifying life event, allowing someone to enroll in or make changes to their health insurance outside of the standard enrollment period. Charmaine Morales is president of the United Nurses Association of California. Early prenatal care and timely screenings can detect complications and risk before they threaten the health of a mother or her baby. An access to a trusted healthcare provider can mean the difference between a healthy baby and serious medical challenges. At the moment, it's the birth of a child that would trigger a special enrollment window. Other circumstances include losing job-based coverage, marriage, or relocation. Insurance companies oppose the bill, arguing the legislation would set a precedent for favoring certain medical conditions and destabilizing the market. The governor has until the end of the month to sign the bill.

4:09A person was hospitalized with measles earlier this month after traveling extensively through California on Amtrak trains and buses. Now public health officials across the state are trying to find other passengers who were exposed. KQED's health correspondent April Domboski reports from the Amtrak station in Embrieville. Jake Crawford has family in Anaheim and Oakland, and he's been riding the train back and forth a lot lately. Special with a gas prices. When he heard on the news that a person traveling the same route as his was sick with measles, he was frustrated. He's like, oh, man, I gotta be aware of something we were done with. You know, it's back on the radar. The US considered measles eradicated in 2000. But as vaccination rates have fallen in recent years, measles outbreaks have returned, most recently in Utah and Pennsylvania. With so many other diseases and need of attention from cancer to HIV, Crawford says it

5:11doesn't make sense to spend public health resources chasing measles. To now battle something that we already got rid of is just assing I just don't. Crawford is vaccinated, but he knows there's still a slim chance he can get infected. The measles virus can hang in the air of a train car for up to two hours after a sick person has coughed, sneezed, or breathed in it. Among those who are not vaccinated. It infects 9 out of 10 people who are exposed. And then all of a sudden, boom, you have these very large outbreaks that we've seen in other parts of the country, you know, so far not yet in California. Dr. Nicholas Moss is the health officer in Alameda County when his department learns of a measles case staff act quickly and quietly to contain the spread. But in this case, we just have no way to know who's on those trains. Local vaccination rates are high, but Moss wonders if the US is returning to a 1957 pre-vaccine era with measles sweeping through communities infecting everyone who's not immune.

6:16I didn't see measles when I was in training. He's never been at the bedside of a child horribly sick with lung or brain complications from measles. But people working in hospitals today are going to see it and families may unfortunately get to see it. And, you know, at some point people are going to realize that there's real benefit to not getting measles. Moss says until immunity levels get higher, alerts of new measles exposures may be the new reality. For the California Report, I'm April Dombaski in Emoryville. And that is the California Report for Friday, September 25th, where a production of KQED News. Our engineers are Danny Bringer, Brendan Willard, Christopher Beale, Brian Douglas, Steve Best Regado, and Jim Bennett. Our producers are Billy Cruz and Keith Mizzagucci. Our senior editor is Angela Carral. Our managing editor is Ted Goldberg, and our editor in chief is Ethan Tobin-Lindsay.

7:17I'm Avi Boleignos. Thank you for listening and have a great day. Support for the California Report comes from Monterey Bay Aquarium, inspiring conservation of the ocean through amazing live exhibits and global action. More info at Monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects. The James Irvine Foundation, committed to a California where all low-income workers have the power to advance economically. Learn more at Irvine.org and Eric and Wendy Schmidt whose philanthropy works to create a healthy, resilient, secure world for all on the web at the Schmidt.org.