The fear and hope of Pennsylvania’s measles outbreak | Editorial
President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have put countless Americans in unnecessary danger. Vaccines still hold remarkable power to protect us.
Pennsylvania reached a total of more than 1,000 confirmed measles cases this week, the largest U.S. outbreak in the generation since the disease was all but eliminated from this country. Based on the illness’ fatality rate and the five measles-related deaths recorded in the state as of last week, up to five times as many Pennsylvanians may have been infected.
Sadly, this is likely a mere harbinger of what America faces in an era of unprecedented misinformation and political recklessness.
Measles is both highly preventable by vaccination and highly contagious among the unvaccinated: 99.6% of Pennsylvania’s confirmed infections have been of people who were not vaccinated.
With two of America’s superspreaders of anti-vaccine disinformation, President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., running the federal government and its health agencies, vaccination rates for measles and other diseases have continued to decline. The worst consequences will disproportionately befall vulnerable communities, such as the state’s highly unvaccinated Amish enclaves, and vulnerable people within them, such as the very young and immunocompromised people the disease has killed.
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Kennedy is doing for America what he did for Samoa, the Pacific island nation where he infamously fueled anti-vaccination sentiment during a visit in 2019, shortly before a measles contagion there killed 83 people. Two years later, he appeared in Lancaster County, the epicenter of the current outbreak, to also stoke unfounded suspicion of vaccines.
As health secretary, Kennedy has hardly failed to add some qualification or confusion to his every mention of the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella, which is widely administered, safe, and effective. A recent poll by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found that fewer than one in three Americans believe he supports the MMR shot. Further undermining confidence in the vaccine, Trump issued an executive order in August calling for it to be split into three shots that aren’t available in the United States while making false claims about the safety of the combined dose. The order also endorsed Kennedy’s attempt to reduce the number of school vaccinations recommended by the government, which was blocked by a federal judge.
Even without legal force, the administration’s anti-vaccination message is unmistakable and corrosive. With 95% vaccine coverage thought necessary to confer population-level protection, known as herd immunity, every additional doubt is dangerous.
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Measles outbreaks in Pennsylvania, Texas, South Carolina, Utah, and, most recently, New York — which led Gov. Kathy Hochul to declare a state of emergency this week — are the predictable result of the Trump administration’s campaign to discredit the vaccine. Tellingly, Kennedy has responded to Pennsylvania’s plight with even more of the misinformation that caused it, denying the role of the disease in the deaths.
Fortunately, even without the assistance of a responsible federal government, states such as Texas and South Carolina have contained their outbreaks, partly by taking advantage of the accompanying interest in vaccination to boost collective immunity. While the spread of measles to 39 Pennsylvania counties is alarming, Pennsylvania health officials say 53,000 doses of the MMR vaccine were administered to residents last month, roughly double the average, with state pop-up clinics and other facilities boosting the numbers.
The recommended two doses of the vaccine confer a lifetime of prevention for 97% of those who get them. Given the state of our federal health infrastructure, that is a considerable comfort.
