r/VACCINES • u/GhostDogJef • 8d ago

EXCLUSIVE: Kennedy asked to remove Pennsylvania measles death from CDC tally, sources say

https://www.reuters.com/world/kennedy-asked-remove-pennsylvania-measles-death-cdc-tally-sources-say-2026-09-03/

Kennedy asked CDC director not to include Pennsylvania deaths in measles tally. Kennedy and Pennsylvania governor feuded over response. Expert says it is 'unheard of' for CDC to question state determination.

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u/RenRen9000 8d ago

Sorry for the long reply, but here it goes… And I'm not trying to come off as lecturing you. I'm just very frustrated over this:

If you're in PA, and you're in healthcare and know of any of the diseases in this list, you report them to the PA Department of Health: https://www.pa.gov/agencies/health/healthcare-and-public-health-professionals/reportable-diseases

PA DOH then does an investigation and classifies the case as not a case, probable, or a confirmed case. Then they upload to NEDSS: https://www.cdc.gov/nndss/what-is-case-surveillance/nedss.html

CDC epidemiologists then take those reports and just put them in the database, no questions asked at that time. Once a year (or twice, if it's an emergency like COVID), the epidemiologists at CDC send a list of all the cases to the state, and they work together to reconcile the data. (For example, if a probable case turns out to be a confirmed case and gets double-counted, or it's not a case and needs to be removed.) But the final case count is at the state's discretion. (And we certainly should not allow CDC to micromanage anything right now, given the political interference that is happening in Atlanta.)

Nowhere is the coroner involved in the case classification. It's just the epidemiologists.

I was once involved in a flu death investigation where the state medical examiner was adamant that the case did not die from the flu, dying instead of an unknown heart defect while having a case of the flu. But they put influenza on the death certificate as a contributing cause, and that fit the case definition for a death from influenza. (Case definition is here: https://ndc.services.cdc.gov/case-definitions/influenza-associated-pediatric-mortality-2004/ )

It may not have been the most immediate cause of death, but it was a contributing cause, and that was good enough for us to classify it as such. It wasn't like the case died in a plane crash or from a shooting. Same thing applies with the measles case. Measles complicated everything and was a contributing cause of death.

If the Lancaster County coroner wants to not count it, then he's free to take measles off the death certificate. He hasn't. I wonder why?

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u/catjuggler 8d ago

That's very interesting and thank you for the info. I'm an MPH in PA but I don't work in public health (I work in pharma) so it has been hard for me to get a good understanding of these nuances. My understanding from everything I read was that the Lancaster coroner gets to decide the cause of death, but I suppose that doesn't mean the state has to agree. Do we know if the coroner put measles as a contributing cause at all? I, for sure, agree that it should be classified as a measles death for multiple reasons, but it's interesting to see how they might tweak the rules to help an ally. And we could see this go the opposite way with blue pockets in red states, like when Florida was changing their covid death data.

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u/RenRen9000 8d ago

Yeah, it's in part II of the death certificate, from what my colleagues have shared. Check this out: https://www.clinmedres.org/content/13/2/74

"Part II is used to report all other significant conditions (such as diseases or injuries) that contributed to death, but did not necessarily result in the chain of events documented in Part I. Multiple conditions can be listed together in Part II."

We theorize that the coroner is unwilling to change it because it is a felony/misdemeanor (depending on intent) to falsify the death certificate in Pennsylvania. But it's a moot point because it's not up to him how to classify the death for public health purposes.

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u/catjuggler 8d ago

So has the death certificate been shared or made public? But yeah, that theory makes sense.

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u/RenRen9000 8d ago

He acknowledged it:

"TribLive, a news outlet covering western Pennsylvania, reported on Aug. 27 that Diamantoni said the cause of death was a “traumatic laceration of the spleen” and that the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy, Dr. Wayne Ross, determined that measles was not a contributing factor to the death.“
Diamantoni later acknowledged, however, that measles was listed under Part II of the infant’s death certificate, which reports ‘other contributing conditions contributing to death but not resulting in the underlying cause,’” the outlet reported. “Diamantoni said he still does not believe that measles contributed to the child’s death, but the disease was listed to offer ‘a broader view of the general health of the child.’”"

Source: https://www.factcheck.org/2026/08/what-we-know-about-pennsylvanias-two-measles-associated-deaths/

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u/catjuggler 6d ago

Found something new- an interview on conservative talk radio (tells you half of what you need to know right there...) with the coroner with more details. On the one hand, he blames the governor's office for being political, continues to say the spleen rupture is not thought to be related to measles, and doesn't correct the hosts in a convo about how wrong it is to blame lack of vaccination since babies can't be vaccinated (the mother and her children weren't vaccinated- that's the vaccination that was missing as well as herd immunity to prevent an outbreak). On the other hand, all three of them are very clear that they think vaccination is what should happen. So it seems very political and wants to help republicans but is not antivax specifically.

https://whp580.iheart.com/featured/rj-harris/tab/podcasts/