Hypatia – I hope you don’t mind me asking you about this directly. You are in PA, and may be getting more complete information on the Great Measles Epidemic of 2026 than those of us in the sticks.
If you have had a few minutes away from the Data Center controversy, can you cast any light on what is really going on? From the outside, it looks like a Democrat activist effort to frighten the population – although how that would necessarily benefit the Democrats is not clear.
All I can tell you is I hadn’t heard of it till I looked it up in response to the above.
The reports say Lancaster County is a hotspot. Famously that’s the home of the Amish and Mennonite sects, but those sects do not have any religious stance prohibiting vaccination, and apparently are no more significantly un-vaccinated than the population at large. Sounds like you may have heard more about it than I, a Pennsylvanian!
But as to how it’d benefit the Dems:
RFK, Jr.
He’s supposed to be an “antivaxer”, although he has said he isn’t. But to the Dems it could just be another chorus of the “Trump is killing people!” chorale.
Actually, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund pays out an average of $125 to 150 million dollars to petitioners every year, so….its hard to say categorically that they’re an unmitigated good. (Although I, being a doctor’s daughter and a doctor’s wife, WOULD say so!)
Weird thing, is, it used to be the Left which was suspicious of the vaccines.
I’ll keep an eye out for more news about this, and report back++thanks.
Thanks for the info, Hypatia. Sounds like the Great Measles Epidemic is currently confined to newsrooms. Let’s hope it stays there! 
Here’s an intelligent discussion of what is really going on, from Dr. Robert Malone:
This is reminiscent of died with vs. died of covid. “Died in a motorcycle accident with covid” or “died of a gunshot wound with covid.” Many such cases.
I recall having had more than one conversation with a person who did not understand this distinction or its significance. One of these persons is a physician. Giving the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they didn’t want to understand the difference rather than being too stupid to get it. Either way, it doesn’t speak well of them: ideologically blinded or morons.
There’s another side of the measles story: the unseen. Measles may have killed two individuals in Pennsylvania, albeit people of unknown age or condition. According to Dr. Malone, the case fatality rate for measles is very low: ~0.01% The MMR vaccine also kills people. It’s not entirely clear how many because VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) underreports and, on the other hand, not every VAERS reported death is necessarily attributable to vaccine: died with vs. died of a vaccine. There seems to be little appetite for finding out how many are harmed by vaccines.
Jeff Childers had a pretty good explanation of this affair in his column today.
I just read a handwritten letter sent on behalf of “the Amish and Mennonites” to the State of New York, published in the New York Post, which states the objection that they do not want to “conform to the world”, and also, that some of them object to the use of fetal cells. They are going to migrate out of NY if the state won’t leave them alone, even though they are “loyal subjects “ of the state.
So it seems I was wrong about the religious aspect. My BMD who had many of them in his practice says that a lot of those patients were in fact un-vaccinated.
These unvaccinated Germanophone throwbacks to the 18th Century will probably head to Lancaster County, Pa! I’m picturing a convoy of black buggies on I-80.
(And just as inexorably, another case like Wisconsin v. Yoder, doggedly wending its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court! My Con Law Prof used to say we’d have very little case law on the Constitution if it weren’t for the Amish and the Jehovah’s Witnesses…)
What about Philadelphia? Measles outbreak will only make the city cleaner