Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro stood in front of a hospital called Women & Babies and announced two measles-associated deaths in Lancaster County — except the county coroner says no such deaths occurred, and at least one of the cases involved a newborn who died of a ruptured spleen during childbirth, not measles.
The episode is a flashback to 2020: a Democratic executive seizes on public health data, stages a dramatic press conference, withholds the underlying facts, and then dismisses questions as "conspiracy theories" when citizens demand specifics.
Shapiro announced Tuesday that two unvaccinated individuals had died in what he called "the first measles-associated deaths that our Commonwealth has seen in 35 years." He urged Pennsylvanians to get vaccinated, declaring: "This illness and death from measles is completely preventable." National media ran with the framing. The New York Times headline read: "Two Unvaccinated People Died From Measles in Pennsylvania, Officials Say."
But Lancaster County Coroner Dr. Stephen Diamantoni told local media he had zero measles deaths on record and was never contacted by Shapiro's office or the Pennsylvania Department of Health before the press conference. County Commissioner Joshua Parsons, who spoke with the coroner, told Fox News that one of the two cases was an infant who died during a home birth. The baby had measles but died of a ruptured spleen suffered during delivery — not from the disease. Infants are not eligible for measles vaccination until 12 to 15 months of age.
Details about the second death remain undisclosed. Shapiro has refused to release further information, telling a reporter: "I don't think it serves the interest of public health for me to get into a back and forth about conspiracy theories showing up online." The Pennsylvania Department of Health now insists it "consistently used the term 'measles-associated'" and never described the cause of death — a post-hoc walkback after the headlines had already been printed.
NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya pushed back hard, noting that babies cannot be vaccinated for measles until at least 15 months, making Shapiro's emphasis on the victims being "unvaccinated" a loaded framing. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went further, suggesting the measles deaths may have been "fabricated."
HotAir framed the episode as a deliberate rerun of COVID-era fear politics, arguing Shapiro withheld facts to generate headlines and stoke his own political profile. Fox News focused on the discrepancy between Shapiro's framing and the coroner's records, letting Parsons lay out the contradictions. Both outlets agree on the core facts: the coroner says no measles deaths occurred, and Shapiro's office has provided no evidence to the contrary.
The outbreak is real — 460 confirmed cases across 31 Pennsylvania counties, per Fox News. But inflating the body count to score political points is exactly the conduct that destroyed public trust in health authorities during COVID. Shapiro owes Pennsylvanians the full record, not a lecture about conspiracy theories.
