{"id":295210,"date":"2026-09-27T21:26:49","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T21:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/295210\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T21:26:49","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T21:26:49","slug":"pennsylvanias-measles-outbreak-is-now-the-single-worst-of-the-last-35-years-and-still-climbing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/295210\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania\u2019s Measles Outbreak Is Now the Single Worst of the Last 35 Years, and Still Climbing"},"content":{"rendered":"

A maybe relevant little milestone was quietly added to the government’s official account of our ongoing measles outbreak<\/a> this Friday: The CDC, and the federal government by proxy, acknowledged for the first time that a U.S. resident had been killed by measles in 2026.<\/p>\n

That’s mostly significant because according to both science and reality, four or more U.S. residents have actually already died thanks to the incredibly contagious virus this year, but the CDC under the guidance of new director Dr. Erica Schwartz<\/a> instead chose to politicize this fact and insist that there was not sufficient proof that the first measles deaths in the state of Pennsylvania<\/a> in late August were directly due to the virus. In doing so, they effectively revived the COVID-era MAGA fallback of claiming that COVID deaths should not be counted because they were unrelated deaths that merely occurred “with” COVID, rather than “due to” COVID, as if this makes those people less dead. This same reticence with officially recording measles deaths has now caused the CDC to directly refute data from Pennsylvania’s own health officials on grounds ranging from “technicality” to sheer pedantry, and also caused the CDC to delay updating its measles data<\/a> in late August, apparently under Schwartz’s orders.<\/p>\n

This is, naturally, deeply disappointing for a new CDC head who only weeks earlier stood at a podium in front of U.S. senators<\/a> and swore up and down that her CDC would function as an independent, science-driven entity focused on communicable disease, and would not be influenced by conspiracy theories peddled by the likes of Donald Trump or HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Or perhaps more accurately, she insisted that the likes of Trump would never ask the CDC to do something “unsupported by science and good public health practice,” so clearly there would never be an issue. And only a few weeks later, the CDC was already spending its time denying measles deaths as they happen around us, because acknowledging them would call into question why the organization and the federal government more widely haven’t done a better job of promoting the effective MMR vaccine we used to effectively eradicate the same virus by the 2000s, before dipping vaccination rates allowed it to come back. You know, the vaccine that Trump referred to not long ago as “lethal.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Now at least the CDC is acknowledging that one of the four known measles deaths in Pennsylvania in 2026 did indeed occur; how generous of them to throw those who believe in science a bone. Beyond that noteworthy acknowledgement, however, the federal government and CDC are still largely trying to draw attention away from the scope of the measles outbreak as it continues to expand past 2025’s grim, historic tally \u2026 particularly in Pennsylvania, which has become the new ground zero for the worst outbreak we’ve seen in more than three decades, surpassing Texas’ total from last year. With 55 new cases confirmed since Wednesday,<\/a> Pennsylvania’s outbreak still seems to be gaining strength rather than waning, bringing it to at least 890 known cases across 39 different counties. That has included 173 people hospitalized thanks to the disease, and the four known measles deaths. In reality, it should always be observed that these numbers are likely dramatic undercounts, particularly given the way the disease has been concentrated among the state’s rural Amish and Mennonite communities, whose members may not seek modern medical treatment and have their cases officially added to public records. Even babies are being born already infected with measles in the state.<\/p>\n

As such, Pennsylvania has demonstrated even more dramatically than the rest of the country that infections in this measles wave are almost entirely infections of CHOICE, happening among people who have gone out of their way to make themselves viable hosts for the virus. Of the 890 documented measles cases in Pennsylvania in 2026, only FOUR OF THEM total have occurred in people who were fully vaccinated with the MMR vaccine. The other, remaining 886 cases, according to the CDC’s own data, are among people who were unvaccinated, with the majority being otherwise healthy people between 18 and 49. That’s the grand tragedy of this ongoing outbreak: It doesn’t need to be happening, and we know precisely how we can stop it, because it’s the same way we already eliminated the disease in the U.S. for more than 20 years following the late 1990s. Measles is back because we’ve chosen to allow it to be back, and the deaths have come along with it, regardless of whether the CDC or the government chooses to acknowledge reality on the subject.<\/p>\n

“Measles is a nasty virus and highly, highly contagious \u2014 the most contagious virus we know \u2014 and it’s so sad that it continues to occur and afflict even a single child in the United States because it’s a completely preventable disease,” said Dr. William Schaffner,<\/a> professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, to ABC News.<\/p>\n

As ever, it’s up to you whether you care to become a measles statistic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A maybe relevant little milestone was quietly added to the government’s official account of our ongoing measles outbreak…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12429,122124,6100,34,4913,28,30,29,38044],"class_list":["post-295210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-cdc","tag-contagious-virus","tag-covid","tag-donald-trump","tag-measles","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-state-of-pennsylvania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295210","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=295210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}