from the getting-worse dept

The measles outbreaks in America, and specifically in Pennsylvania, are getting worse instead of getting better. And, while RFK Jr. has and will continue to attempt to lay blame for this total failure of federal leadership at the feet of state officials, anyone with a few brain cells to rub together knows that’s bullshit. While Kennedy spins conspiracy theories, at one point doubting publicly that the deaths reported by Pennsylvania officials had even occurred and reportedly intervening to keep public reporting of those deaths behind a curtain, even a public CDC site about the current measles crisis, one which we know is both out of date and which contains inaccurate counts and information, outlines the government’s failure. While we set records for measles in 2025, 2026 has the CDC reporting more cases, more hospitalizations, with only deaths lagging behind because of the game-playing around reporting them.

And then there’s this.

There have been 40 new outbreaks** reported in 2026, and 95% of confirmed cases (3,478 of 3,659) are outbreak-associated (2,094 from outbreaks starting in 2026 and 1,384 from outbreaks that started in 2025).

Forty (!!!) new outbreaks throughout the country. Outbreaks of a disease that was declared eradicated at the turn of the century. That is a failure of breath-taking proportion. And make no mistake, this all got really, really bad once Kennedy took office.

And, now, despite Kennedy’s attempts to hide his failures from the public, we unfortunately have learned that a 5th person in Pennsylvania has died as a result of contracting measles.

A fifth, unvaccinated person has died of measles in Pennsylvania, the state’s health department announced Wednesday. The department identified the deceased as a resident of Lancaster County, which is the epicenter of a raging outbreak that began in late April. The updated case count as of Wednesday is 943 across 39 counties, including 119 cases reported in just the last seven days. At least 176 people have been hospitalized.

Meanwhile, health officials in Pennsylvania are racing to vaccinate residents amid the deadly outbreak. The health department reports that state nurses have administered more than 8,500 doses of measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine this year, including more than 5,500 doses given at pop-up clinics in outbreak areas.

Those same officials face headwinds, some of them created by Kennedy himself. Of course, there are many bad actors out there trying to claim that all of this news is an attack on the Amish population. They claim that it’s an infringement on their religious liberty. That’s not true; we’ve been over this before and there is no religious prohibition in the Amish community against getting vaccinated for measles. None, zero, it’s not a thing.

Instead, the real headwinds come from Kennedy’s decades pushing anti-vaxxer nonsense, as well as his collection of sycophants. Sycophants which, to be clear, are not on one side of the aisle or another. There are plenty of granola-crunching liberals who have sworn off vaccines as well. In fact, I would argue that the group that mostly pushed the anti-vaxxer nonsense in its early days was left-leaning, largely Hollywood celebrities. What hath thou wrought, Jenny McCarthy?

But the main point is that none of this is getting better. In fact, it’s all getting worse, because that’s what happens when you allow a highly infectious disease to spread after pumping the country full of vaccine misinformation. These deaths are on the heads of those who told and circulated these lies.

And I hope those deaths are heavy upon their shoulders.

Filed Under: anti-vaxxers, cdc, measles, pennsylvania, rfk jr., vaccines