Pennsylvania health officials brace themselves as measles outbreak expected to spread
Most counties don’t have their own health agencies, and some specific population groups have low vaccination rates
Pennsylvania is bracing for a wave of measles cases, with some public health officials concerned that it’s “only a matter of time” until the disease spreads beyond the outbreak’s epicenter.
Last week the state reported its fifth measles-associated death amid 943 confirmed cases across 39 counties. The outbreak comes amid concerns that public health in the US has been hit by increasing vaccine skepticism, especially due to the power and influence of controversial health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Contributing to the challenge is that Pennsylvania is one of the few US states where its counties mostly lack their own health department, with only seven of its 67 counties having their own.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/04/pennsylvania-health-officials-measles-outbreakOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
19 replies
It's like a flashing neon sign that says "We're morons". Nobody does stupid like americans.
"Some specific population groups have low vaccination rates." Oooo! I know which groups. I know!
Amish and Mennonite populations have had a lot of vaccine hesitancy for a long time.
Unfortunately, vaccines are a victim of their own success and people born into a situation in which certain diseases are virtually nonexistent because of those vaccines can craft or fall for a bullshit narrative about how it's always been like that, and the vaccines were not even necessary "because mah immune system". 🙄
My father nearly died of polio as a kid. This was before the vax. My mother was slightly younger and remembered getting the vax because it was a big deal. It's super cool how lunatics are undoing all the progress we made protecting children from diseases. Let's have more suffering, isn't that great? Ffs.
Not really, this is an Amish/Mennonite chronic problem. They would not listen to RFK either way.
Yes but -
he looks way more worn down leathery than that.
Well, killing off stupid people is kinda making the country better.
How do you know if the kids are stupid before they die? Intelligence isn't exactly proven to be genetic.
It's partly genetic and partly how they're educated by their parents. So pretty good chance they'll be stipid. Nothing we can do about it anyway but laugh or cry, and I'd prefer to laugh.
I’d prefer less dead children.
cars and guns should be your target to ban. They are the two biggest killers of children.
The Dutch had mass, often violet, protests in the 1970's because cars were killing kids. They changed their entire society because they wanted less dead kids, Most other nations think dead kids is a fair trade. Something in us is broken
Okay, but if you look all the way up at OPs post the discussion is about a measles outbreak.
It would be kind of an odd non-sequitur for me to randomly shoehorn my thoughts about cars and guns in America into a conversation about a measles outbreak and anti-vaxxers…
Sitting here reading this wondering what kind of shithead thinks cats are killing children. Is it the "cats steal your breath" bullshit again?
Then I read on. Oh "cars" not "cats".
We have to get a control group for the experiment of breaking up the MMR vaccine somehow.
I guess you’ll have to forgive me for thinking jokes about dead children through adult negligence and malfeasance isn’t funny.
Send in KennyDee (otherwise known as Dr. WormBrain) - he'll eat the infected ones and shit out clean disease free poop with his "no wipe behind".