By Sharon Zhang<\/p>\n
This article was originally published by Truthout<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want anyone in America concerned inappropriately\u201d about the surging disease, the health official said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Mehmet Oz downplayed the GOP-fueled surge in measles infections after Pennsylvania officials announced that a newborn baby died with complications related to the disease this week.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, the Pennsylvania Department of Health revealed<\/a> that one of the two measles-related deaths in Lancaster County this week was of a newborn baby. Both individuals were<\/a> unvaccinated, and their deaths marked the first recorded deaths related to measles this year in the U.S.<\/p>\n Measles cases have risen<\/a> to over 2,700 so far this year, the highest level in decades. The disease had been declared<\/a> eliminated in the U.S. in 2000 due mostly to the effective measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination program. Disinformation about vaccines spread by the Trump administration and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is driving the rise in measles cases, according to experts<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump administration official Mehmet Oz claimed, however, that the fears of measles are overblown.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want anyone in America concerned inappropriately\u201d about the disease, said Oz<\/a> on Fox News. \u201cWe don\u2019t know exactly what happened in Pennsylvania yet. We don\u2019t know if the children died from measles or they had another condition that was already attacking them and they happened to get measles at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n Oz said that this is a common practice when attributing deaths related to COVID-19 during the pandemic \u2014 when many people died from\u00a0pneumonia<\/a>\u00a0infections that were worsened by and often outright brought on by COVID infections.<\/p>\n This is a highly misleading comment. In announcing<\/a> the deaths, Pennsylvania officials specified that the deaths were \u201cassociated\u201d with measles. The county coroner found<\/a> that the baby died from laceration of the spleen \u2014 which Children\u2019s Hospital of Pennsylvania pediatrician and vaccine safety expert Paul Offit said can be a side effect of a measles infection. Offit told the Philadelphia Inquirer that measles can cause the spleen to be enlarged, and that birth can cause the spleen to rupture.\u00a0<\/p>\n The coroner, Stephen Diamantoni, said that the pathologist who conducted the autopsy \u201cdid not feel it was related to measles.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Offit said that the coroner should give another explanation for the spleen rupture if it weren\u2019t caused by measles, and further said he has had conversations with state health officials that made it clear that the \u201cpatients would not have died were it not for measles.\u201d He added that attributing deaths to something other than measles is a common tactic of anti-vaccine advocates like those in the Trump administration.<\/p>\n After the deaths, Kennedy claimed<\/a>, without evidence, that Pennsylvania officials announced the deaths for political reasons. He even went as far to say that \u201cdeaths may even have been altogether fabricated by one of [Gov. Josh Shapiro\u2019s] hopeful staffers.\u201d<\/p>\n Pennsylvania Health Secretary Debra Bogen said that Kennedy\u2019s statements are untrue<\/a>, and that the deaths were announced after thorough investigation to verify that both patients were infected with measles \u2014 a highly contagious and dangerous illness that had an 11 percent<\/a> hospitalization rate in 2025, and a 7 percent rate in the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of measles patients this year, 93 percent<\/a> are unvaccinated or their vaccination status is unknown. Most of these cases have been among children, who are the worst affected<\/a> by the disease.<\/p>\n The measles outbreak may soon get worse. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to recommend that<\/a> the MMR vaccine be split into three separate shots, citing an old, thoroughly debunked claim<\/a> that the vaccine causes autism. Health experts say that this may reduce uptake of vaccinations against measles, as new vaccines would have to be developed, and splitting them up may further discourage families from trusting the shot.<\/p>\n Amid this move, The New York Times resurfaced<\/a> a claim made by Kennedy in remarks to a large crowd in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 2021. At that event, he joked that his childhood measles infection allowed him to \u201cstay home and watch TV the whole week.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe cure for measles is chicken soup and vitamin A,\u201d he said, in a complete lie.<\/p>\n This article<\/a> was originally published by Truthout<\/a> and is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)<\/a>. Please maintain all links and credits in accordance with our republishing guidelines<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sharon Zhang This article was originally published by Truthout \u201cI don\u2019t want anyone in America concerned inappropriately\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-273708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}