The Health Secretary Suggested Two Measles Deaths Were Faked
Two unvaccinated Pennsylvania residents, one of them a newborn, died in measles-associated cases the state reported on Aug. 25, 2026 — the first U.S. measles deaths of the year and the state’s first in 35 years. Within days, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. used his social-media account to suggest the deaths “may even have been altogether fabricated,” and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention left them out of its national count.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health announced on Aug. 25 that two unvaccinated residents of Lancaster County had died in cases it classified as measles-associated. They were the first measles-related deaths reported in the United States in 2026 and the first in Pennsylvania in 35 years, according to CNN, which reported that one of the two was an infant. The deaths came as a measles outbreak spread through the state and the country recorded its worst year for the disease in decades.
What followed played out largely on social media. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. secretary of health and human services, questioned whether the deaths had happened at all. In a post on X, Kennedy said the deaths “may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers,” according to NBC News, referring to Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro. Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, has repeatedly cast doubt on the state’s account of the two deaths.
A federal agency pulls back the count
The dispute soon reached the CDC’s official data. The agency declined to include the two Pennsylvania deaths in its weekly national measles tally, a decision the Washington Post reported was directed by the agency’s new director. In a footnote to its updated figures, the CDC said that “available information does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles,” as reported by CNN.
Bloomberg reported on Aug. 27 that federal health officials had pointed to discrepancies around the Pennsylvania cases. The exclusion of the deaths from the national count, first reported over the Labor Day weekend, turned a state health announcement into a public standoff between the federal government and Pennsylvania officials.
The state stands by its investigation
Pennsylvania officials rejected the suggestion that the deaths were invented. The state’s health secretary, Dr. Debra Bogen, said her department’s epidemiology team had “thoroughly investigated and verified” that both people who died had tested positive for measles, CBS News reported. The department has said it classifies a death as measles-associated when there is laboratory or epidemiological evidence of measles, even when a coroner is still determining the immediate cause of death.
Governor Shapiro described a phone call with Kennedy as “blunt” and warned of the effect of the federal messaging. “There’s real-life consequences to scaring people and not relying on actual doctors, actual medical professionals, to provide unbiased information to parents so that we can make reasonable decisions for our kids,” Shapiro said, according to CBS News.
The picture is genuinely contested in one respect. The Lancaster County coroner, Dr. Stephen Diamantoni, said his office had no record of any measles death, but that it had examined a newborn who tested positive for measles whose cause of death was recorded as a ruptured spleen, NBC News reported. That distinction — between dying of measles and dying while infected with it — is at the center of the disagreement over how the deaths should be counted.
A record year, and a crisis of trust
The clash is unfolding against the worst U.S. measles year in more than a generation. By late July, the country had logged 2,318 measles cases, already surpassing the 2,289 recorded in all of 2025 and the highest total in 35 years, CNN reported, citing CDC data showing that the large majority of those infected were unvaccinated. Public-health researchers have tied the resurgence to a long decline in childhood vaccination, driven in part by false claims about vaccines spreading online.
Against that backdrop, the message from the country’s top health official was not a correction of misinformation but an amplification of doubt — a suggestion, delivered to millions on a social platform, that reported deaths were a political fabrication. Researchers who study health misinformation warn that when authoritative accounts cast doubt on documented harm, the effect is to erode the shared facts on which vaccination decisions rest. In a record outbreak of a preventable disease, that erosion is the story as much as any single post.