Vaccine Expert Warns US’s 4 Reported Measles Deaths Are Likely a Vast Undercount

2026 is already the deadliest year for measles in the United States since the virus was declared eliminated in 2000. Four people died over the last month in Pennsylvania amid an ongoing outbreak in the state, which had not seen a measles-related death in at least 35 years. All four victims, including two infants, were unvaccinated (children do not receive their first dose of the measles vaccine until they have reached a year old). The deaths come as President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continue to defund public vaccination programs and push debunked claims that vaccines cause autism.

Pediatrician and vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit warns that the four reported measles deaths — which were reported by Pennsylvania health officials but have not yet been acknowledged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — are likely a vast undercount. He estimates that there could be “closer to 4,000” cases in the Pennsylvania outbreak. “I don’t think people realize how contagious this virus is,” Offit says. “You don’t have to have direct contact with somebody who has measles. You just have to be within their airspace within two hours of them being there.”

We also speak to Offit about the COVID-19 virus, which he says is now affecting the United States “like flu” by causing “hundreds of thousands of people to be hospitalized and tens of thousands to die, just like influenza does, every year.” Yearly flu and COVID-19 vaccinations, he explains, are “effective at keeping people out of the hospital, effective at keeping them out of the intensive care unit, and effective at keeping them out of the morgue.”

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Anjali Kamat.

ANJALI KAMAT: In Pennsylvania, health officials have reported four measles deaths just over the last month, making 2026 the deadliest year for measles in the United States since the virus was declared eliminated in 2000. Pennsylvania had not had a measles-related death in at least 35 years. The deaths include an 18-year-old teen and a 40-year-old woman, both of whom were unvaccinated, as well as a 6-week-old baby and a newborn who died shortly after birth. The Pennsylvania Department of Health is reporting 792 measles cases across 39 counties, but that’s believed by experts to be an undercount.

AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave the keynote address at a conference organized by the anti-vaccine activist organization Children’s Health Defense, which Kennedy led for nearly a decade.

HHS SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: Let me be clear: You have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House. We’ve accomplished in 19 months which — things that would have seemed unthinkable two years ago.

ANJALI KAMAT: On Friday, President Trump said he would be demanding the drug companies split up vaccines into five shots with six-month intervals, and claimed it would reduce the autism rate. He didn’t specify which vaccine he was referring to, but the administration has already been seeking to break up the MMR vaccine — that’s measles, mumps and rubella — into three separate shots.

AMY GOODMAN: For more on the measles outbreak and deaths and the government response, we’re joined by Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center, physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Offit is also co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC. His books include Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure, as well as the book Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All. He’s got a column on Substack. It’s Beyond the Noise. One of his recent pieces is headlined ”RFK Jr: Secretary of Measlesland.” Dr. Offit is joining us from Philadelphia.

Thank you for being with us. Let’s talk about what you call Measlesland and RFK’s responsibility. I mean, the shocking number of deaths in Pennsylvania alone, four in the last 30 days, including a teenager. Can you talk about the significance of this? First time in what? Since it’s been eradicated, in a quarter of a century.

DR. PAUL OFFIT: That’s right. We eradicated measles from this country in the year 2000. Now in our state alone, we’ve had four deaths just in the last month. Remember that this virus has a mortality rate of one in a thousand. So, when you see four deaths, you can assume that we are vastly underestimating the number of cases. Even though the Department of Health reports roughly 800 cases, I think you can assume it’s probably closer to 4,000.

I think Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as secretary of health and human services, is doing everything he can to play this kind of “see no evil” approach and not let people know what’s really happening. If you look on the CDC’s website right now, under measles, 2026 deaths, it lists zero. So, zero deaths even though we know that four deaths occurred in the state of Pennsylvania. He doesn’t want us to know the damage he’s done being such a successful anti-vaccine activist over the last 20 years.

ANJALI KAMAT: Dr. Offit, how can that be? How can the CDC not report these deaths?

DR. PAUL OFFIT: Because I think that RFK Jr. is telling Erica Schwartz, the director of the CDC, not to report them. I think you’re just seeing a politicization of the science. I think that he’s doing everything he can to decrease surveillance, to decrease monitoring, and to just try and ignore it. He knows that if he’s a successful anti-vaccine activist, you’re going to see what you’re seeing, not only increase in measles deaths, increase in flu deaths in children, increase in whooping cough deaths in children. He knows that, and he just wants us to be blind to it, so he can continue his war against vaccines, which he believes is a war against chronic diseases, even though it’s not.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Offit, what about President Trump calling for the breaking up of these vaccines, like MMR? What exactly does that mean?

DR. PAUL OFFIT: I think it’s just a lot of hand-waving. You know, both companies that make the combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine in this country, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, have issued statements that they have no interest in separating that combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine into three separate vaccines, because that would mean instead of having a two-dose vaccine, at 12 to 15 months of age and then at 4 to 6 years of age, we would have a six-dose vaccine. So, it would spread out and separate those vaccines, making it less likely children would complete the series, and therefore more likely that children would be in harm’s way. The companies, to their credit, have both said that they have no plans to do that. And I don’t think the president of the United States can make them do that.

ANJALI KAMAT: And, Dr. Offit, we’re entering cold and flu season. Kids are back in school. How does what’s happening today compare to the measles outbreak in Philadelphia in 1990-’91?

DR. PAUL OFFIT: Right. So, I’m still suffering post-traumatic stress disorder from that outbreak. We had — in a period of only a few months in 1990-1991, we had 1,400 cases of measles in our city alone, along with nine deaths.

And I think what worries me the most about what’s going on now is, I mean, I’m old enough to have had measles. I’m a child of the 1950s, when there were 3 to 4 million cases of measles a year, 48,000 hospitalizations and 500 deaths. But that’s a winter-spring disease. Now we’re heading into winter, where children are now back in school, sharing their viruses, and this virus is typically a winter-spring disease. I really fear this is going to get much worse.

I just hope that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, and Erica Schwartz, the head of the CDC, lets us know what’s going on, but, more importantly, do what they should be doing, which is get out there every day and bring clinics into those areas that are high risk, meaning low vaccine rates, and do everything you can to prevent what I think is a coming disaster.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of disasters, we’re hearing increasingly, like at Eloy Detention Center in Arizona, about a number of people who have measles, maybe up to eight. It may be more. What about measles in confined facilities?

DR. PAUL OFFIT: Well, exactly. So, I don’t think people realize just how contagious this virus is. There’s something called a contagiousness index, meaning how many people would you infect during a day, assuming you’re contagious and everybody you come in contact with is susceptible. For viruses like influenza or SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID, or respiratory syncytial virus, the contagiousness index is two to four. For measles, it’s 15 to 18. You don’t have to have direct contact with somebody who has measles. You just have to be within their airspace within two hours of them being there. If somebody comes into our emergency department with measles, and they go back into a treatment room, and then they leave that treatment room, no one can walk into that room for two hours. That’s how contagious this virus is.

ANJALI KAMAT: And how are — you know, to bring it back to Pennsylvania, how are officials in Pennsylvania and Governor Shapiro dealing with this crisis?

DR. PAUL OFFIT: So, Debra Bogen, Dr. Debra Bogen, is the head of the Department of Health here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. She’s doing everything she can with her group to try and identify high-risk areas and to get this vaccine out there, to deal with sort of influencers in the community, to be willing to go into children’s homes to vaccinate them, because she sees what this is, which is a growing epidemic. And she’s doing everything she can, really without the help — not only without the help of our secretary of health and human services, but really working against the secretary of health and human services. He is the worst possible person to be in that position at this time.

ANJALI KAMAT: And on X, actually, RFK Jr. accused the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, of fabricating the measles deaths. He later seemed to attribute the state’s measles outbreak partly to the governor for, quote, “refusing to cooperate” with the CDC.

DR. PAUL OFFIT: Right. So, I think you can believe pretty much nothing of what this man says. Obviously, those deaths weren’t fabricated. The one child who died within a day or so of being born, the mother had measles, the baby had measles, and the baby died of an enlarged spleen which ruptured, which measles can do. You know that the 6-month-old or the several-month-old child had a severe measles pneumonia. You knew that the 40-year-old had a severe measles pneumonia. You knew that the 18-year-old had something called acute demyelinating encephalomyelitis caused by measles. So you know all that. So, he’s — the governor is fabricating nothing. It’s RFK Jr. who just doesn’t want you to know how successful he’s been at his anti-vaccine activities.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Offit, before we go, I wanted to ask you about COVID. I mean, just in my own building, we have people, whole families, who are getting COVID. And I wanted to ask you about what we know. Is COVID increasing? And what about the new vaccine?

DR. PAUL OFFIT: So, I think COVID is becoming flu, which is to say, I think you’re going to see every year COVID will cause roughly — will cause hundreds of thousands of people to be hospitalized and tens of thousands to die, just like influenza does every year. I think that the vaccine, which is trying to keep up with a virus that continues to mutate, is effective at keeping people out of the hospital, effective at keeping them out of the intensive care unit, and effective at keeping them out of the morgue. As true of all vaccines like this, which prevent short-incubation-period mucosal infections like flu, COVID, RSV, it’s not going to be as good at preventing mild disease or moderate disease, but that’s not the goal. The goal is to tame the virus so that you’re not seriously affected.

AMY GOODMAN: And can people as easily get the vaccine as during the pandemic? What should parents know in going to their pediatrician?

DR. PAUL OFFIT: They should be able to, but what RFK Jr. recently did is he said that he’s not going to use the Vaccine for Children’s Program, which pays for about 50% of all vaccines for children who are either uninsured or underinsured. It seems like he’s going to hold back on the money for that vaccine, which is just unconscionable. There already are children who are dying of COVID, and he would be willing to do that. I just can’t believe we continue to stand back and let this man do what he’s doing.

AMY GOODMAN: What could — what could be done? We have 10 seconds.

DR. PAUL OFFIT: Well, at some point, it would be nice if people in power stood up for children in this country, instead of fearing for their jobs if they contradict President Trump or contradict RFK Jr.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center, physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. We’ll link to your recent piece, ”RFK Jr: Secretary of Measlesland.”

And that does it for our show. I’ll be in Westport, Connecticut, tonight for the screening of Steal This Story, Please!, about Democracy Now!, with the director, Tia Lessin, and then we’re on to London, Hackney Picturehouse, on Friday, September 25th. On [Monday], we’ll be in Lewes. On [Sunday], we’ll be also in London. Check our website. Then to Copenhagen, the Grand Theater, and finally to Berlin, Germany. I’m Amy Goodman, with Anjali Kamat. Check our website at democracynow.org.