from the inevitable dept
I want to start this whole thing off with a disclaimer. Nothing in this post should be misconstrued as gloating, as being pleased, or as having a connotation that is anything beyond sadness and the need for change. Nobody is happy to have the obvious confirmed when it comes to a child’s death. There is still a very real family in very real pain as a result of a life that ended far, far too short. All that matters here is ensuring that pain isn’t replicated elsewhere as a result of the many mistakes that led to this death.
That being said, it is with the soberest thoughts that we learned that one of the two recent deaths of children in Pennsylvania was in fact due to measles, as confirmed by the local coroner there. When these deaths were announced by state government officials a few weeks ago, the response from HHS Secretary RFK Jr. was, predictably, to dive into conspiracy theories in stead of confronting the reality of what his decades of anti-vaxxer nonsense has produced. He claimed that there had been no confirmation that the deaths were caused by measles. He pointed out that one of the children has a cause of death listed from a ruptured spleen, not bothering to acknowledge that is a potential effect of having measles at birth. He suggested obliquely that some deaths may have simply been made up by state government officials.
All he had to do was wait and he wouldn’t have made a fool of himself.
Stephen Diamantoni, a Republican elected coroner in 2007, told Lancaster Online that the baby died at home. “I believe it was the 18th of August,” he said.
He also noted that the baby had a genetic condition called Amish lethal microcephaly, in which babies are born with unusually small heads and underdeveloped brains. The condition is caused by a mutation in the SLC25A19 gene, which codes for a protein involved with energy-producing enzymes in the mitochondria and is thought to be important for brain development. About 1 in 500 babies in the Old Order Amish population of Pennsylvania is born with the condition. Infants with the disorder only survive for about six months.
Diamontoni confirmed to Lancaster Online that while microcephaly was present, measles was the cause of death.
And here is where you’re going to hear the anti-vaxxers start their spin game. Some may claim that the coroner is wrong and the presence of microcephaly means that’s what killed the child. Some may dismiss the death entirely due to the likely early death this child would have suffered as a result of the same, which is an absolutely evil thing to suggest.
And I have no doubt that others will point out that none of this is RFK Jr.’s fault, because both children were members of the Amish community and they don’t let their children get vaccinated due to their religion. And, just so we’re all clear about this, that isn’t true. There is no religious prohibition in the Amish community against being vaccinated for measles. The Amish are wildly under vaccinated, to be certain. But Amish settlements typically have something like a 10%-30% vaccination rate for measles.
This information all came out last week. Amazingly, the CDC’s measles tracking site still has an asterisk next to the number of reported deaths from measles in 2026 at the time of this writing. The most recent reporting is that those deaths are being obfuscated at Kennedy’s direct request, wrapped in a bullshit excuse that local coroners haven’t confirmed the cause of death to be measles yet. Well, that excuse is gone, yet the website hasn’t been updated.
But what really needs to be gone is the scourge that is Kennedy’s tenure at HHS. For that to happen, Congress must act. Sadly, not enough of them seem to want to.
Filed Under: cdc, hhs, measles, pennsylvania, rfk jr., stephen dimantoni