“Lancaster County infant confirmed to have died from measles in Pennsylvania”, 4 September 2026 (Photo via The Hill — the original report)
As it ran on the front
I spent forty minutes on the phone this morning trying to get my water bill sent to the right department. Not fixed — just sent to the right department. I called the number on the bill, which took me to a menu, which took me to a person, who transferred me to billing, who transferred me to service, who transferred me back to the first person, who said that account questions actually go through a separate office in a different building, and could I hold. I held, on and off, most of the morning. That's the whole errand: not "is my bill wrong," just "who is supposed to look at it."
Which reminded me, actually, of a number I'd meant to write down for Harrisburg, because I've been trying to answer the same question about a different office, and I haven't gotten much further there either.…
…(cont) Here's what I've got. I wrote some of this down and I want to read it back rather than trust my memory. On August 25th, the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced the state's first measles deaths in 35 years — two people, both unvaccinated, both in Lancaster County. The health secretary, Dr. Debra Bogen, said that. Two days later, on the 27th, a different account surfaced: one of those two deaths, it turned out, belonged to a newborn infant, and the cause was in question — a coroner's office floated a lacerated spleen instead of measles. So inside 48 hours the record went from "two measles deaths" to "we're not sure this one was measles." Then, on September 1st, the CDC said it would not include either Pennsylvania death in its weekly national count, pending its own review.
And somewhere around then, the federal health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said the measles deaths reported by the state may have been fabricated. I'm reading that word back because I want to have it right. Not "miscounted." Not "still under review." Fabricated.
I think about that the way I think about my own glovebox, which currently has two registration cards in it for the same car — one current, one that expired eight months ago. I don't throw the old one out, because I can't be sure which office is going to ask for which one. The state, from where I sit, seems to run on the same principle. Nobody's necessarily lying. There's often a second card in the drawer, and which one's real depends on who's asking and when.
So here's where it stands as of today. The Lancaster County coroner has now ruled that a six-week-old infant died from measles. The infant was born with a rare genetic condition, Amish lethal microcephaly, which can cause respiratory infections — the ruling accounts for that and still says measles. I don't know if this is the same infant the coroner's office was discussing back in August, the one with the spleen question. The record doesn't say, and I'm not going to guess. What the record does say is that this is a separate ruling, with its own date, and it comes out to measles too.
I called the water company back, by the way. Got the right desk on the third try. They didn't tell me my bill was fabricated. They just kept routing it to the wrong floor.
Oh — one more thing, before I let you go. The secretary's word was "may have been fabricated," about the deaths the state reported. Plural. There is now a coroner's ruling, with a name on it — Stephen Diamantoni — attached to at least one of them. Does that ruling answer the question the secretary raised, or does it just get forwarded, like my water bill, to the next department down the hall?
🍺
“They float "fabricated" so you stop trusting the count, then the count turns out to have a name and a coroner's signature on it. That's the play — call the truth a rumor, and the man in charge of stopping the disease gets to ask whether the corpses are real instead of explaining why there are any. A six-week-old is dead either way; only one of those two men has to answer for it.”
“Look, the secretary was raising a legitimate question about data integrity — did I say "fabricated"? That's — that was skepticism, healthy skepticism, that's what leadership looks like, asking hard questions. Though I guess now there's a coroner's ruling, with a name on it, so that skepticism's been... resolved. Resolved's a good word. Let's go with resolved.”
The US declared measles eliminated in 2000. The last two years carry more cases than the rest of the century combined - the worst count since 1991 The Hill / CDC measles data, July 2026
A 6-week-old infant’s death in Pennsylvania was caused by measles, the Lancaster County coroner confirmed Friday. County coroner Stephen Diamantoni said the child, who died last month, was born with Amish lethal microcephaly, a rare genetic condition that can cause respiratory infections. Pennsylvania health officials last week announced…
The US declared measles eliminated in 2000. The last two years carry more cases than the rest of the century combined - the worst count since 1991 The Hill / CDC measles data, July 2026
The ruling casts doubt on statements from the federal health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who speculated that measles deaths reported by the state may have been “fabricated.”
