As PA measles cases skyrocket, Shapiro-RFK Jr. beef expands

Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. again traded online barbs this week, with the governor calling Kennedy “incompetent” and Kennedy blasting Shapiro for declining federal assistance for Pennsylvania’s measles outbreak as the state marked disturbing new milestones – including the largest measles death toll reported in America since the 1990s.

The state recently posted two additional measles-associated deaths – both in unvaccinated adults – bringing the total to four deaths. An additional four “breakthrough” cases were reported in vaccinated Pennsylvanians, reflecting lower-than-ideal vaccination rates that, in many places, have dipped below the 95% experts say confers herd immunity.

Meanwhile, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week found that 1 in 4 Americans now believes the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, known as MMR, is unsafe for children – a sharp decline from the 84% who expressed confidence in the vaccine in 2020.

“This disease was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000 – yet decades later, we are seeing it surge due to lower vaccination rates,” said Gov. Shapiro in a post on the social media site X this week.

Pennsylvania’s weekly total of new reported cases has reached triple digits ­in recent weeks – including an eye-popping 117 over a seven-day period, for a total of 719 since the outbreak began in Lancaster County in April – a number experts say is almost certainly a severe undercount. Cases have now been reported in 38 of the commonwealth’s 67 counties.

Earlier this week, Pennsylvania health officials said an 18-year-old from Mifflin County died from a rare neurological complication of the virus, and a 40-year-old Jefferson County woman also died from measles-related complications. Both deaths were confirmed by county coroners, in contrast to the controversy over whether the state’s first two reported measles-associated deaths, of Lancaster County infants in August, were in fact due to the virus.

But so far, Kennedy’s federal Centers for Disease Control has yet to record any deaths on its national measles dashboard, which still says that “The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) does not currently have any death records from 2026 that indicate measles is the underlying cause.”

That deliberate omission has drawn the ire of public health experts as well as the governor. In an X post, Shapiro called it “deeply concerning to learn that the Secretary personally intervened in an otherwise administrative process to direct the CDC to not report these Pennsylvania deaths, presumably because it doesn’t fit his phony narrative.”

Kennedy blasted back that “Governor Shapiro’s claim that I directed CDC to suppress Pennsylvania deaths is false. CDC is applying a consistent national standard rather than allowing politicians to decide which deaths appear in federal mortality statistics.”

The Pennsylvania Department of Health has stepped up a statewide effort to immunize as many residents as possible, partnering with local health providers and rolling out pop-up clinics that have administered nearly 5,000 MMR shots since April; the total number of MMR shots administered across the commonwealth in August – 46,000 – was nearly twice the average monthly total.

Still, the five-month-long outbreak has revealed the disjointed nature of outbreak response among government agencies. Shapiro told CNN on Wednesday that he would not accept federal support for the state’s outbreak response “until RFK does what is right, and stops reaching down into his administration and directing the CDC staff not to acknowledge the pain and suffering of these four families in Pennsylvania and acknowledge those deaths.”

Meanwhile, Lancaster County, which remains the outbreak’s epicenter, does not have its own county-level health department; only seven of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties do – Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs, and Allegheny and Erie counties – and four municipalities: York City, Allentown, Wilkes-Barre and Bethlehem. In the remaining municipalities, local public health efforts are coordinated by the state.

Shapiro has blamed his reluctance to partner with federal health officials on what he and public health officials view as alarming anti-vaccine messages coming from both Kennedy – an attorney with no medical degree best known for his decades of anti-vaccine activism – and President Donald Trump. 

In August, while signing an order to reduce the number of childhood vaccines, Trump mused that the MMR shot could be “quite lethal,” despite five decades of evidence affirming its safety. He has also repeatedly bolstered Kennedy’s longtime claim – debunked by decades of evidence – of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

At this week’s annual conference of the anti-vaccine organization he founded, Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy promised attendees that they had “a strong and steadfast friend at the White House” while warning of what he called the dangers of vaccines – a long-held position of his: A few years ago, the health czar told a Lancaster County audience that “the cure for measles is chicken soup and vitamin A.”

“This serious situation continues to be made worse by RFK Jr. playing games with public health and safety,” Shapiro posted this week on X, continuing an online debate about measles that began with a testy exchange in August, when he made similar comments about Kennedy; the health secretary responded by accusing the governor of “gaslighting” residents and “fabricating” measles deaths.

Kennedy responded to the governor’s latest accusations by saying Shapiro “has chosen to politicize this outbreak instead of implementing a unified public health response. He continues to point the finger at me and the federal government … while refusing the federal assistance that might help end the outbreak.”

David Dodd, CEO of the biotechnology company Geovax and a vaccine policy steering committee member for the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, said the increasingly high measles activity – 2025 saw America’s highest case total since the 1990s – renders the country’s official measles-free status meaningless. “The status is a signed piece of paper, but the fact that we’re having all these outbreaks means we’ve lost our status,” said Dodd, whose company researches vaccines against cancer, HIV and other diseases.

Meanwhile, the war of words between Shapiro and federal officials raged on. After a video circulated on X of President Trump calling the governor “incompetent,” Shapiro fired back from his own account: “Incompetence is letting measles, a disease that was declared eliminated in 2000, reemerge … Incompetence is denying the tragedy of four measles-associated deaths in Pennsylvania.

“Incompetence is standing right behind you, Mr. President,” he concluded, referring to Kennedy.