Four deaths in four weeks, and they still say it wasn't measlesPennsylvania’s Measles Outbreak Is Enormous

Four people died of measles in Pennsylvania in four weeks, and the first response online was not how to prevent it but that it did not count.

Do the arithmetic first

A 40-year-old woman died. She was unvaccinated and had asthma and COPD, and she was on supplemental oxygen — but she cooked for her family and cleaned the house, and the virus killed her in about a week. The coroner put it plainly: without measles, she would probably still be alive.

Then two infants, both far too young to have been vaccinated. One died with a ruptured spleen, but his mother was severely ill with measles when she gave birth, and the baby was not breathing when he was born.

Who is speaking up for measles

The health secretary, Kennedy, spent decades as an anti-vaccine activist. In office he wrote that the deaths might be altogether fabricated, then acknowledged a coroner's finding. He says vaccination is the most effective way to prevent measles, and in the same breath told a grieving father you do not know what is in the vaccine anymore.

What he advocates harder for is measles itself, which he has falsely credited with protecting against cancer and heart disease. He once told a Pennsylvania country fair that the cure for measles is chicken soup and vitamin A. There is no cure for measles.

693 is a floor

The state lists 693 cases, 99 of them in the past week. Measles kills roughly one to three of every 1,000 children it infects, so the real number of infections is far higher.

Many of the sick, particularly in Amish communities, are never tested. The parents of the infant who died with a ruptured spleen said all 13 of their living children caught the virus and none was ever swabbed.

The last time the United States saw four measles deaths in one calendar year was 1992. In 2000 it declared measles eliminated. Kindergarten vaccination rates have slid since the pandemic, and some places fell well below the 95 percent herd immunity needs.

The virus takes no side. It only looks for the unvaccinated.