According to the state of Pennsylvania, four “total confirmed measles-associated deaths” have resulted from an ongoing outbreak of the incredibly infectious disease. These are the first deaths from measles in the state in 35 years. Measles has spread to nearly 800 Pennsylvanians this year, making the state the epicenter of the national outbreak. Ninety-nine percent of those infected in the state are unvaccinated, as were all four of the deceased.
There have been over 3,400 documented cases of measles and over 300 hospitalizations across the country since the beginning of 2026. The numbers are more than in 2025, which was a banner year for measles. But instead of trying to quell the spread, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump and other vaccine-skeptical ideologues in charge of our federal public health system have sought to distance the four Pennsylvania deaths from measles. As of Tuesday afternoon, the official national death count from the disease was zero.
In response to a news conference in August by Gov. Josh Shapiro about the first two deaths, Kennedy posted a bizarre and paranoid screed on X, where he claimed that the governor’s “performance was a replay of the Democrats’ COVID playbook: fearmongering, misinformation, finger-pointing, and the weaponization of infectious disease fears for political gain.”
I’m not quite sure what if anything a politician gains from announcing two tragic and likely preventable deaths. But there have been two more deaths since then. On Sept. 16, Pennsylvania’s health secretary, Dr. Debra L. Bogen, wrote to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Erica Schwartz, to express her displeasure. “The C.D.C.’s choice not to publicly recognize the deaths undermines our response,” Bogen said.
Quibbling with state health officials is a novel tactic in the Trump administration’s anti-vaccine arsenal. Perhaps realizing that it’s difficult to fully block Americans from attaining the basic set of childhood vaccines, and that those vaccines remain popular, the administration has settled on partisan attacks, general chaos and conflicting messaging to continue undermining the public’s trust in one of the most effective disease-preventing tools we have.
Dr. Debra Houry and Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, two former C.D.C. officials, explained in an opinion piece for Stat News in early September that when there were measles-related deaths in Texas in 2025, there was no such pushback from the federal government. Texas determined that these deaths were from measles, and the C.D.C. added them to its dashboard, even though at the time, Kennedy underplayed the risks of the virus. “It is unclear what was different other than the state being ‘blue’ and its governor’s criticism of the administration,” wrote Houry and Daskalakis, who quit their C.D.C. jobs last year in protest over political interference.
What appears to be a new strategy to undercount deaths comes after Kennedy fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which makes recommendations about vaccines, last year. He replaced some of those experts with his vaccine-skeptical cronies. Kennedy continues to make the same false or misleading statements about the risks of common childhood vaccines that he has been making for decades.
Last week, Kennedy was the keynote speaker at the anti-vaccine Children’s Health Defense conference in Washington. He founded the organization, and though he spoke for over an hour, he did not mention the current measles outbreak once. According to The Washington Post, the speaker who preceded Kennedy, the MAHA Institute president, Mark Gorton, said he wanted to end the government’s vaccine program. He added, “The time has come to stop caveating every introduction with, ‘I’m not an anti-vaxxer,’ but … vaccines are a nightmare.”
Trump issued an executive order last month recommending that the single measles, mumps and rubella vaccine be split into three separate shots, even though there is no evidence that the combined shot is riskier, and no other country offers the shots separately anymore. The executive order also pared the recommended list of diseases to vaccinate against down from 17 to 11, though it does not cite new evidence to explain this suggestion.
When he signed the executive order, Trump claimed, incorrectly, that the combined MMR shot was “quite lethal.” Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and an actual doctor, had to go on “Face the Nation” to clean up after Trump’s mess. “The MMR vaccine is not a lethal vaccine, and it is offered in other countries,” Oz said. The White House is reportedly now working on an executive order that would give the president even more control over scientific grant funding at the National Institutes of Health, which is a terrifying prospect.
If we had a normal federal government, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be maximally cooperating with states and laying the groundwork to prevent future outbreaks. Accurate reporting of deaths is one way to properly sound the alarm about the consequences of not being vaccinated.
That’s what happened in the aftermath of the last major measles outbreak in Pennsylvania, in 1990. Dr. William Roper, who was head of the C.D.C. from 1990 to 1993, wrote in 2007 about his tenure at the agency.
He described the 1993 passage of the Vaccines for Children program, which provided free vaccines to uninsured and underinsured children, as a triumph. He strongly endorsed vaccination, writing that “the lifesaving and health-preserving impact of immunizations exceeds almost all other public health interventions.” Now, the C.D.C. appears to be slow-rolling the delivery of the latest Covid-19 vaccine to the states, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal.
It is perhaps cliché to point out how abnormal, how tragically dysfunctional Trump’s leadership is. This has been clear for almost a decade now, and more and more Americans are finally waking up to it; Trump’s approval ratings are at a record low. But somehow, Kennedy’s favorability rating is still above water.
According to a Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll of 2,100 registered voters from late August, 43 percent of voters have a net favorable view of Kennedy and 39 percent have a net unfavorable view — which makes him more popular than nearly any other politician the poll asked about. Kennedy remains somewhat popular because he’s been so successful at communicating his misinformation on social media over the years. The original 2024 bargain he made in endorsing Trump has paid off handsomely with a cabinet position, and the president’s ongoing support for Kennedy’s bad science means right-wing media have readily taken up the anti-vaccine cause.
The spread of disease will be a lasting stain, even after both of these men are out of office.
End Notes
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On Saturday night I saw Sleater-Kinney and Liz Phair perform at Prospect Park as part of what they’ve dubbed The Flannel and The Fury tour. These acts are both in my top-ten all time and I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun. Also the concert ended at 9:45 so I was in my jams by 10:30 — a perfect evening for an elder millennial mom. There are still three shows left in the tour and if you can get to any of these locations you absolutely should. I’m jealous of everybody in Portland, Maine tonight!
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The post Kennedy Keeps Finding New Ways to Undermine Trust in Vaccines appeared first on New York Times.
