\n<\/p>\n
Anti-vaccine activists are trying to track down the families of two people, including at least one newborn, who died after contracting measles in Pennsylvania, as Governor Josh Shapiro tangles with Robert F Kennedy Jr over his \u201cinaccurate and misleading claims\u201d.<\/p>\n
Kennedy, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), suggested late on Wednesday that the deaths in the state may have been \u201cfabricated\u201d after a Republican coroner \u2013 an elected political office in Lancaster county \u2013 claimed one of the measles-associated deaths was unrelated to the virus, although the given cause would be consistent with measles.<\/p>\n
Brian Hooker at Children\u2019s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization that until recently was led by Kennedy, said in a recent video that the organization is \u201ctrying to get boots on the ground\u201d and \u201cdo outreach\u201d in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Kennedy is \u201can anti-vaccine activist in the role of the most powerful public health person in this country\u201d, said Paul Offit, an infectious diseases physician at Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia. \u201cIt\u2019s like the world\u2019s turned upside down.\u201d<\/p>\n
It would be helpful to know the deceased patients\u2019 ages and more information about their deaths, he added. \u201cBy not having that information, it allows fertile ground for the kind of conspiracy theory that RFK Jr puts out there, where he said in some posts that these weren\u2019t measles deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a Thursday post on X that it was \u201cworking to determine what actually occurred\u201d, including \u201cwhether the two reported deaths were caused by measles\u201d. The HHS did not respond to the Guardian\u2019s questions about whether Kennedy recommends the vaccine or whether the newly confirmed CDC director, Erica Schwartz, would make a statement about the outbreak and the need for vaccination.<\/p>\n
About 424 Pennsylvanians have confirmed measles cases, and 73 have been hospitalized. None of the sickened people are fully vaccinated. The two deaths were in unvaccinated patients in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, which is home to large Amish and Mennonite communities. While these communities do not have religious objections to vaccines, they eschew many parts of modern life, and thus are relatively disconnected from modern healthcare.<\/p>\n
Few other details have been released about the patients, fueling a firestorm of misinformation from anti-vaccine activists spreading conspiracy theories about vaccines, which are 97% effective at preventing measles.<\/p>\n
The anti-vaccine activists are attempting to figure out who died so they can reach the families, as they did in Texas when a six-year-old girl died last year, Hooker said. They filmed a misinformation-filled interview with the Mennonite parents in a rare media appearance after their daughter\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
Hooker also speculated that the Pennsylvania announcement was a political ploy in advance of the US midterm elections, claiming it was \u201ca strategic move\u201d to \u201cget measles deaths on the tip of everybody\u2019s tongue, to get in the forefront\u201d. The Trump administration has at times attempted to downplay its anti-vaccine moves because they are not popular with voters, according to internal polling.<\/p>\n
When Shapiro first announced the deaths, he pointed to the inaccurate claims from the highest levels of the US government, saying at a press conference: \u201cThere\u2019s real-life consequences to spreading misinformation.\u201d Kennedy responded on X with debunked myths about the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.<\/p>\n
Shapiro called those claims \u201cinaccurate and misleading\u201d in his own X post. When Kennedy offered to help after the announcement of the two deaths, Shapiro asked him to encourage vaccination and stop spreading misinformation, the governor said in the post. The health secretary responded by repeating vaccine misinformation and saying \u201cit would be better if we went back to \u2018natural measles\u2019,\u201d Shapiro wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecretary Kennedy has stoked confusion amongst parents and others \u2013 and the result has been less protection from measles and more cases,\u201d Shapiro added. In 2021, for instance, Kennedy gave a speech praising Amish parents in Lancaster county for not vaccinating their children. \u201cThe cure for measles is chicken soup and vitamin A,\u201d he said. There is no cure for measles, only supportive care.<\/p>\n
A few hours after Shapiro\u2019s response, Kennedy posted to X wondering whether the deaths had been \u201cfabricated\u201d and alleging that Pennsylvania was refusing to share information with the CDC.<\/p>\n
But Pennsylvania notified the CDC of the deaths early on Tuesday morning, before making the public announcement, Dr Debra Bogen, the state\u2019s secretary of health, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have thoroughly reviewed the case investigation information and sadly can confirm that there were two recent measles-associated deaths in Lancaster County,\u201d she said. The cases were also thoroughly investigated by the state\u2019s epidemiology team, and both individuals tested positive for measles, she added.<\/p>\n
One of the deaths was in a newborn who tested positive for measles, the department of health said on Facebook.<\/p>\n
Stephen Diamantoni, the coroner for Lancaster county, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that a test on the baby\u2019s lung tissue after death indicated a measles infection acquired before birth. He believes the baby died shortly after birth because of a lacerated spleen.<\/p>\n
Spleen issues are a known complication of measles infection. Having an enlarged spleen from measles \u201cwas not uncommon actually in the pre-vaccine era\u201d, Offit said. The scientific literature includes doctors\u2019 observations of enlarged spleens, which can lead to rupture.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have an enlarged spleen and you\u2019re infected with measles virus, the measles virus caused your enlarged spleen. If you then have a splenic rupture which kills you, you die from<\/em> measles,\u201d Offit said.<\/p>\n Anti-vaccine activists have been successful in driving down vaccination rates, Offit said. The ensuing outbreak \u201cisn\u2019t a good look\u201d for them, he said.<\/p>\n Children\u2019s Health Defense appeared to want to downplay its role and put out \u201cthe same kind of bad information\u201d after the children died in Texas, Offit said. \u201cIt\u2019s very easy to convince those parents \u2013 very easy \u2013 that this wasn\u2019t their fault, because otherwise, they would have to take on the responsibility or the notion that they could have prevented their child\u2019s death.\u201d<\/p>\n Hooker complained on Wednesday that the scant details released about the patients made it difficult to reach them. He also noted that his organization was unable to contact the family of a measles-positive adult who died in New Mexico last year, because the state did not release more public information.<\/p>\n \u201cThe more information that they release regarding these particular deaths, the more that we would be able to dig in and contact family members, get access to medical records and see exactly what happened,\u201d said Hooker.<\/p>\n Children\u2019s Health Defense has claimed that one of the child deaths in Texas last year was due to medical error, not measles, despite findings from officials on measles.<\/p>\n Measles deaths have become rare in the US because of vaccination, but between one and three people usually die with every 1,000 infections. The US is now experiencing its worst outbreak of measles in three decades.<\/p>\n It is unusual for measles to spread in summer months like this \u2013 and now children are heading back to school, potentially amplifying transmission, Offit said. \u201cYou\u2019re just going to see, I think, an explosion of measles.\u201d<\/p>\n Infants under the age of six months are too young to be vaccinated against measles, which is a large reason why it is important to vaccinate pregnant parents and others in the community, Offit said.<\/p>\n More than 35,000 Pennsylvanians got vaccinated against measles last month \u2013 an increase of 10,000 compared to typical months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Anti-vaccine activists are trying to track down the families of two people, including at least one newborn, who died after contracting measles in Pennsylvania, as Governor Josh Shapiro tangles with Robert F Kennedy Jr over his \u201cinaccurate and misleading claims\u201d. Kennedy, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), suggested late<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[314,25244,3192,290,150,789,9109,3415,2133],"class_list":{"0":"post-52003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-deaths","9":"tag-fabricated","10":"tag-measles","11":"tag-misinformation","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-rfk","14":"tag-spreads","15":"tag-suggests","16":"tag-vaccine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}