“In 10 years, there have been three measles deaths in America,\u201d Kennedy said during Saturday\u2019s town hall even on Fox News, after being asked if the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine<\/a> should be mandatory, given two recent measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania. <\/p>\n \u201cThere are now about 1.2 million deaths every year from food-induced illness. The media and certain demagogic politicians are constantly trying to scare us about infectious disease,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Kennedy referred to the deaths in Pennsylvania, announced by public health officials on Tuesday<\/a>, as \u201cso-called measles deaths\u201d and alleged \u201cthe governor has not been able to point to any child who died from measles in Lancaster County.\u201d <\/p>\n Public health officials quickly took issue with Kennedy\u2019s comments, noting that the low prevalence of measles deaths<\/a> was a direct result of widespread vaccination.<\/p>\n \u201cMeasles deaths are rare in America for one reason: MMR coverage has been near-universal for decades,\u201d Dr. Jake Scott, a clinical professor of infectious diseases at Stanford University, wrote<\/a> on X. \u201cBefore the vaccine, this country lost 400-500 people to measles every year, with 48,000 hospitalizations. He\u2019s citing the vaccine\u2019s own achievement as evidence we never needed it. <\/p>\n Throughout the week, Kennedy has been locked in a war of words with Pennsylvania officials over whether the state had seen a spate of new measles-related deaths.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, the state health department said<\/a> it had \u201cconfirmed\u201d two measles-related deaths among people who were unvaccinated against the disease, the state\u2019s first such deaths in 35 years.<\/p>\n Later that day, Governor Josh Shapiro said at a press conference he had pressed Kennedy in a phone call over his long history of vaccine skepticism, which included a 2021 visit to Lancaster County where he reportedly<\/a> made light of his own childhood case of measles.<\/p>\n \u201cI was very, very blunt with him,\u201d Shapiro, seen as a 2028 Democratic presidential contender, said<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201c[I] made very clear that his actions and the rhetoric that\u2019s coming from this administration are having a negative impact on communities across America, particularly right here in Pennsylvania,\u201d Shapiro said.<\/p>\n Kennedy responded, claiming<\/a> on social media that Shapiro\u2019s administration may have \u201cfabricated\u201d the cases for political gain, though the state said it reported the cases to the CDC on Tuesday. <\/p>\n Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons has accused state officials of withholding information<\/a> from the public and potentially announcing the cases prematurely. <\/p>\n Under the Trump administration, measles cases have surged to their highest level since 1991, and three unvaccinated people died from measles last year, the first reported measles deaths in the U.S. since 2015.<\/p>\n During his town hall, Kennedy insisted the MMR vaccine was safe and blamed the outbreak on declining vaccination rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when \u201ca lot of people across the globe lost faith in the public health system.\u201d<\/p>\n Prior to his time in office, Kennedy was a prominent anti-vaccine activist, and he has made various misleading and false statements about the MMR vaccine since being appointed, including that vaccines aren\u2019t \u201csafety tested<\/a>\u201d and that immunity from the vaccine wanes quickly. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":754362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-754361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/754362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Health](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2026-08-24T215824Z_1279344927_RC2UPLA71WEO_RTRMADP_3_USA-HEALTH-RFK-MERCK-CO.JPG\")
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr tried to downplay the ongoing measles spike and accused Pennsylvania officials of potentially fabricating a pair of recent measles-related deaths during a Fox News town hall August 29 (Reuters)<\/p>\n![\"Pennsylvania](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Measles_Deaths_658_7.jpg\")
Pennsylvania health officials announced two measles-related deaths this week, the state\u2019s first in 35 years (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)<\/p>\n