"Challenging." "Criticizing." "Questioning."
All the above words would have accurately categorized the attitude of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. towards the lack of transparency by Governor Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) following his claim that lack of vaccinations caused the death from measles of two residents of his state.
Instead, Politico chose once again to put its biases on display with its choice of describing Kennedy's reaction as "exploiting," as you can see in Thursday's story by health reporter Carmen Paun in "Shapiro won’t say who died of measles. RFK Jr. is exploiting it."
The death of two Pennsylvanians with measles has sparked a social media row between the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The dispute has also reprised a Covid 19-era debate: How much does it matter whether someone died from a disease or just died with a disease?
Pennsylvania health authorities strongly implied that the two died from measles in announcing their deaths Tuesday but also left some wiggle room in describing the deaths as “measles-associated.”
Shapiro then criticized Kennedy — a longtime vaccine skeptic — for his rhetoric around vaccines, which the governor said hasn’t helped stem the measles epidemic that has driven cases in the U.S. to a 35-year high. But Shapiro’s refusal to release further details about the deaths, citing patient privacy, has given Kennedy room to argue he is hiding something — or fabricating the deaths outright.
So even Politico concedes that Shapiro was the one who politicized the situation by criticizing Kennedy and even that the governor has refused to be transparent about releasing further details about the deaths. Yet, according to Politico RFK, Jr. is the one who is "exploiting" it as they described in their headline.
Even the liberal Atlantic magazine is revealing that Shapiro is on very weak ground with this situation as you can see in their Thursday story written by Benjamin Mazer, a physician specializing in pathology and laboratory medicine: "Pennsylvania’s Public-Health Officials May Be Wrong About a Measles Death."
Measles outbreaks around the country are already a disaster, but more bad news arrived on Tuesday. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro announced that two measles-associated deaths had occurred in Lancaster County. “These mark the first deaths related to measles within the Commonwealth in 35 years,” an accompanying statement declared. Both individuals were said to have been unvaccinated, but the state Health Department declined to release any other information about the cases, citing privacy concerns.
By yesterday morning, though, this story was in doubt. Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons posted on X that he had spoken with the county’s coroner, who said that he had not identified any deaths due to measles. One individual, Parsons wrote, “died WITH measles, but not from measles.” That evening, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offered a more conspiratorial angle: Perhaps the entire episode had been “fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers.”
And Lancaster County Commissioner Parsons referenced above shed a whole lot more light on the situation than the rather nontransparent governor.
Measles questions.
Let’s be clear- when the Governor comes into our county and holds a press conference with PA Department of Health and Penn Medicine Lancaster general Health and states there were two “measles-associated deaths” here, with the underlying assertion that the two…— Commissioner Josh Parsons (@CommissionerJP) August 26, 2026
Meanwhile Politico categorizes RFK, Jr's reaction to what increasingly looks like medical misinformation by Governor Shapiro as "exploiting." Sorry, Politico, but once again your biases are absurdly showing.
