By the middle point of 20th-century American history, measles was widely considered a rite of passage for kids. You get it and you shake it off. You earn lifetime immunity. This was true of every generation just before mine.
For the previous century, measles had become ever less dangerous with sanitation and nutrition. By the time the vaccine came along, it was fully controlled and only very rarely led to hospitalization. The protocols were taught in every school and understood by all classes.
I was apparently part of the first generation to receive the inoculation. It was convenient, but not necessary simply because society had systems and traditions in place to manage it well. How much difference did the shot make in driving infection to zero? Some, surely, and this added to the prestige of vaccines.
That said, I did get chicken pox as a natural infection and recall well what it was like. That no longer happens except in a few communities. I was the last to experience this and I’m happy to share the experience.
My parents came to me excitedly and said we were going to a party. I found myself among a group of kids I did not know and we played and played for hours. Then we left. That was fun, I thought, but a bit confusing. The next day, I woke up with itchy red spots.
My parents cheered. Their plan had worked. I recalled feeling great confusion. Why were my parents celebrating my sickness? It seemed very odd. They had their reasons. They knew the science.
They explained to me how the immune system works and why it is best that I get this when I’m young rather than old. My immunity would be durable and be boosted later in life as my own kids caught the normal childhood infections, which in turn would protect me from the related infection of shingles.
There is this tendency now to treat these strategies as paleolithic as compared with syringes and fluids in the childhood vaccination schedule. Actually, we should look back on these days as the height of serious science. My parents knew exactly what they were doing and it taught me a valuable lesson as a kid. I learned about the high complexity of the immune system that needs exposure as training.
Eventually, of course, the chicken pox vaccine came along and many others as well, resulting in a vast mixture of combined shot after shot. Industry profited. Human health suffered. The Trump administration is trying to fix the problem. Industry doesn’t like that. It is calling in favors from politicians to stop the return to science.
This takes us to the wild drama now playing itself out in Pennsylvania. In April of this year, the media and the governor’s office started going on about a measles outbreak. It was centered in Lancaster and Lebanon counties – both with sizable Amish and Mennonite populations.
The framing here matters. The Amish and Mennonite communities routinely expose children, just as my parents did. It is not an “outbreak” but an application of sophisticated science.
The health of this community ranks among the highest. The most common health issues affecting children in the United States are nearly absent among the Amish, including autism, obesity, diabetes, ADHD, and so on.
Nonetheless, Pennsylvania set up 91 pop-up clinics around the infected community and jabbed kids with more than 4,000 doses using the MMR shot that many people connect to the rise of autism. Forty more clinics are planned.
In science, you have the control group and the tested group. The Amish are the control and keep revealing that there might be a better way. Eliminate the control and you eliminate the embarrassment. This is precisely what both Pfizer and Moderna did after their own tests of the COVID shot: they pushed it on the saline group following first results.
In Pennsylvania, opposition arose to this push for industrial inoculation, and understandably so. In the post-COVID era, trust in public health is depleted to near zero.
Here is where the current drama picked up. On Aug. 14, a newborn child died in Strasburg Township, Lancaster County. The cause of death was later given by the county coroner: lacerated/ruptured spleen, massive blood loss. The postmortem used the PCR test (which detects presence, not infection) and found measles in utero. Obviously, this baby could not otherwise have been vaccinated. It is pointless to call a baby unvaccinated for measles, just as it is ridiculous to observe the infant is illiterate.
A week later, the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced two “measles-associated” deaths in Lancaster County: unvaccinated residents, they said. They claimed these were the first measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania in 35 years. There were no other details given: nothing about the cause of death, nothing about ages, nothing about anything.
Governor Josh Shapiro announced two deaths caused by measles. Not merely associated or related, but caused. The media ran with the story, using the language of causation. He called the deaths preventable and tied them to lack of immunization. He highlighted his clinic campaign and told reporters that Secretary Kennedy had called to offer help with the outbreak to which he responded:
“I was very, very blunt with him, and I made very clear that his actions and the rhetoric that’s coming from this administration are having a negative impact on communities across America, particularly right here in Pennsylvania.”
It was at this point that the narrative fell apart. The CDC called. The governor’s office could give no more information. The Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons spoke out and said that the coroner’s office has zero deaths with measles listed as immediate cause; one person died with measles, not from it.
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