What’s the rigorous scientific evidence for the claim that measles has killed anyone this year, much less two people in Pennsylvania who weren’t vaccinated against the virus? For the benefit of taking the first-ever mRNA flu vaccine and the latest mRNA COVID-19 vaccines?The public will have difficulty finding such evidence, amid the public health establishment’s sky-is-falling mantra about record-low COVID vaccination rates, a small but steady decline in flu vaccination since the first year of COVID vaccines and a slight reduction in measles vaccination for kindergartners.
Skepticism is building that reelection-seeking Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and state public health officials have provided even minimal evidence to conclude that lack of measles vaccination played a role in the death of a newborn and another resident for whom the state has provided no information, including age or medical conditions.
By using the phrase “measles-associated,” officials can conflate death caused by measles with death while testing positive for the measles virus, as they did with COVID deaths for years into the pandemic.
Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons, a Republican, challenged Shapiro’s claim that the law prevented the release of at least demographic information about the deceased. Coroner Stephen Diamantoni said Monday he’s not sure whether the death the state refuses to identify is the same one he’s now investigating, in addition to the newborn.
Diamantoni defended his conclusion that the baby died from “traumatic laceration of the spleen” to The Atlantic, which visited the Amish family who believes he’s talking about their newborn.
“I’ve had several discussions with our forensic pathologist, and he feels adamantly that this was not a measles death and that it was a traumatic rupture of his spleen,” he said.
Diamantoni told Lancaster Online “there was no swelling or enlargement whatsoever” – as would be expected from measles – and “massive blood loss” from the laceration.
Shapiro and the media “misled the public & did a grave disservice to the mother” of the newborn by concluding the death was measles-related, maternal-fetal medicine physician Adam Urato said. (The Atlantic said the mother recovered from a “severe case of measles.”)
Urato speculated that “if this was a difficult breech delivery, for example, & it was very hard to get the baby out, and multiple maneuvers were needed, & they found a laceration on the spleen – that would be reason” to rule out that measles was even “a contributing factor.” (It’s reportedly listed as “contributing” on the death certificate.)
Urato previously said reporting about the Food and Drug Administration having offered him full-time work and that he’s “close” with the agency’s former drug evaluation chief, Tracy Beth Hoeg, whose firing this spring has never been explained, was incorrect.
Writing separately in The Atlantic, pathologist Benjamin Mazer warned that Shapiro and officials “may indeed have committed a catastrophic communication blunder” by either overstating evidence or “politicizing the deaths of citizens” by selectively releasing information.
“Think of the consequences” if officials hid “genuine uncertainty” about the role of measles in the baby’s death, he said.
“A grieving parent would hear her governor announce that the tragedy was in some way her fault. And anti-vaccine activists would have the opportunity to pounce on the mistake to continue downplaying the lethality of infections,” Mazer continued.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explained why it’s not yet counting the two Pennsylvania deaths as measles fatalities, saying “available information” doesn’t establish whether they died from or with measles. It hasn’t confirmed a single measles death this year.
“This is not the first time that a purposeful release of limited, misleading, and/or false information by health authorities is used to fear monger [sic] and cast blame and judgement on those who decline one or more vaccine products,” vaccine injury lawyer Aaron Siri wrote, noting his firm’s review of Texas children’s deaths incorrectly attributed to measles, in his view.
Shapiro dismissed “online conspiracy theories” rather than provide evidence for his claims. His Department of Health recently proposed a radical expansion of the governor’s powers around “communicable and noncommunicable diseases,” criticized by state and local Republican elected officials and compared to COVID lockdown policies by The Daily Wire.
