☕️ MEASLES-RELATED ☙ Wednesday, August 26, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

A terrifying new disease too dangerous to ignore and not dangerous enough to declare an emergency about; the coroner never got the memo; USPS judge catches the government issues a stern non-warning.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Wednesday! Your roundup includes: how two Pennsylvania deaths went from “measles-related” to “measles deaths” in a single news cycle, and what quietly happened to the word in between; why the Lancaster County coroner says his office handled no measles deaths at all, and what he says he is investigating; how Governor Shapiro found time to travel to Lancaster, name patient zero, and blame a Cabinet secretary, but not to declare a state of emergency; what the numbers actually say about vaccine risk versus measles risk, and the argument nobody in power will engage; and why a federal judge found the government deliberately violated her injunction, wrote it down in devastating detail, and then ordered absolutely nothing about it.

🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍

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Here we go again! How stupid do they think we are? How stupid are they? It won’t work. Not this time. No points this round. Yesterday, CNN was one of the first to report, “Two unvaccinated people in Pennsylvania are first measles-related deaths in US this year.” Measles-related. That was the last time corporate media included “related.” By evening, the reporting had been salted with media misinformation, and, e.g., Reuters reported, “Pennsylvania reports first US measles deaths this year as outbreak grows.”

Yesterday, Pennsylvania’s always-alert governor, Josh Shapiro (D), personally traveled to Lancaster County and held a gala emergency press conference to announce and discuss at length a deadly outbreak of a terrifying and mysterious new disease that is baffling the scientific community and the medical establishment. The governor called for citizens not to panic— not yet. He is taking this uncontrolled epidemic very seriously. So his first official act was to reject HHS Secretary Kennedy’s offer of federal assistance from the CDC, which is totally not sketchy or suspicious in any way.

Shapiro called The Outbreak a “serious and ongoing problem.” He soberly informed the public the deaths were “completely preventable” —meaning more deaths can be prevented— and then failed to declare a state of emergency to do whatever it is that will allegedly prevent more deaths. He did not announce a new or more robust statewide dashboard or tracking system than the one that’s been in place for months. He did not disclose the state was busily building field hospitals to treat the epidemic’s desperate victims. He did not mandate masks, activate color codes, require directional supermarket arrows and six-foot distancing, or order the closure of Pennsylvania’s schools.

But never mind! Yes it is an emergency! Like climate change, racism, and federal ballot envelope standards.

Fortunately, the governor did do one thing. He revealed the origin of the outbreak! It’s no longer a mystery like covid, where the virus could have come from a demonic bat fluttering around a wet market or, maybe, the coronavirus research lab. Case closed! Thank goodness, Detective Shapiro cracked the case. Behold, the origin, patient zero: Robert F. “Pangolin” Kennedy, Jr.

Shapiro told reporters that “His” —meaning Kennedy’s— “actions and the rhetoric that’s coming from this administration are having a negative impact on communities.” Brace for impact. Since that was a little too much word-salad, Reuters made sure low-information readers got the point, and widened the locus of blame, reporting, “Trump and Kennedy’s statements and policies have sown confusion and distrust of vaccines, experts said, and have helped lead to the resurgence of a preventable disease that the U.S. had eradicated more than 20 years ago.”

Confusion sowers! Confusion caused the deadly outbreak, and Trump caused all the confusion. Reuters did not name its ‘experts.’ Nor did it explain how the CDC’s vaccine schedule change in January “helped lead the resurgence” of measles in Pennsylvania. Lancaster County continues to require K-12 students to get their measles jabs. Neither Pennsylvania’s mandates nor its available exemptions to school vaccines have changed one bit since January.

But one thing is clear: who we should blame for the avalanche of deaths that is poised just offstage, ready to fall on Lancaster County and anybody who gets in public health’s way. The Orange Man.

💉 The “news,” such as it is, was that Lancaster County’s hyperactive health department germ accountants have now recorded 185 measles cases so far this year— and now, suddenly, two months before midterms: two “measles-related” deaths. To illustrate just how terrifying that really is, according to the latest available figures (2023), the Lancaster County coroner recorded 318 preventable accidental deaths in 2023, including poisonings, drowning, fires, farming accidents, and 136 falls, 85 drug overdoses, and 60 car-crash deaths. But never mind those preventable deaths.

Officials at the presser did not, for some reason, disclose how many of the 185 measles cases required hospitalization, or how many were from tests performed on healthy kids (i.e., asymptomatic cases). The Lancaster Health Department did not say when the two “measles-related” deaths occurred. Yesterday? Last month? February?

Nor did they say that the two “measles-related” deaths were kids. They didn’t disclose the ages at all. Because privacy. (The fact that they were “unvaccinated” was apparently not private.) Pro tip: most people over 69 were never vaccinated for measles. Elderly folks are nearly all unvaccinated. The CDC considers them presumptively immune since they almost certainly have already had it.

Given all the usual red flags of public health misconduct, I will bet Michelle’s you-know-what that the two “victims” were both nursing home patients. But once again, never mind.

💉 Reporters pressed the health officials to explain what, exactly, the murky term “measles-related” means? I am not making this up, but the officials initially refused to clarify the term. Only under continued pressure did they finally concede that “measles-related” means: “laboratory or epidemiologic evidence of measles is present, but the official cause of death is under investigation.”

Um. So … what exactly are we even talking about here? Unofficial causes of death? People who died with measles? Sigh. Here we go again. But alas, the virus was already out of the barn. ABC tweet, yesterday:

When contacted for comment, Lancaster County’s coroner denied that his office had handled any measles deaths. Whoops. He did say he was investigating one infant who’d tested positive for measles but died from a ruptured spleen. Um, I have a few questions. Does that count as “measles-related”? We can only guess. Why did they test the infant for measles? He did not say. Was the test conducted post-mortem? If so, why?

The coroner conspicuously did not say the infant had any measles symptoms. Unless measles has mutated and developed new covid-variant-like superpowers, it cannot rupture an infant’s spleen. Splenic ruptures in infants are usually caused by blunt trauma. (Don’t make me spell it out.) Finally, infants don’t get MMR vaccines. So… what’s the point in calling an infant unvaccinated? That’s like calling a fish “moist.”

Local media seemed equally confused. Lancaster Online, yesterday:

“Don’t add clarity” is a neat euphemism for completely rebuts. But clarity is missing across the board. For example, consider this absolutely false headline from Butler, PA’s WBUT 97.3, yesterday:

Sloppy. Nobody said “children.” But the media misinformation is metastasizing. Reporters are as excited as a new puppy.

💉 We’ve established that the Governor did not declare a state of emergency or order any emergency mitigation measures, like contact-tracing or testing the local poo. Shapiro’s actual plan, if you can call it that, is to dust off and roll out some (one?) vaccine trucks, “increase public messaging” (i.e., nudging and fear-based public health ads), and train local doctors and nurses to identify the disease and conduct more surveillance— meaning more testing and more aggressive case-finding. We must root out this scourge of disease by inflating the dashboard.

Before I continue, let’s pause and recognize this is a disease that almost everyone got and that American moms and dads used to deliberately infect their children with at measles parties. Just saying. Also, there were 193 measles vaccine deaths reported in VAERS since 1995— an average of about 6.2per year. The famous Harvard/Pilgrim study estimated VAERS captures only around 1% of severe adverse events. So, even generously assuming 10% were reported, that comes to an average of 62 measles vaccine deaths per year.

Dear critics: I understand you will screech that VAERS reports “can be entered by anyone” —under penalty of perjury, with an astounding amount of backup data, mind you— but I categorically reject your argument. The FDA was given billions to make a reliable injury tracking system, and they made VAERS. It is your system. You own it. You don’t get to milk us for the money to build the damned thing, then airily dismiss what your own system tracks.

Not only that, but your CDC commissioned the Harvard/Pilgrim study, which found that fewer than 1% of serious adverse events were reported in VAERS. Your study’s authors complained that, when they began noticing the under-reporting, CDC’s staff “were no longer available” and “no longer responsive to our multiple requests to proceed with testing and evaluation.” So eat a bag of Doritos.

💉 In all of 2026, until now, there have been zero deaths from measles. Despite the headlines, it remains unclear whether we even have two, but more on that in a minute. The point is: 62 estimated vaccine deaths versus zero disease deaths. (CDC continues to report zero measles deaths for 2026, even after Governor Shapiro’s dramatic announcement. So.)

Oh, fine, I will just say it. I believe this ‘measles outbreak’ is Covid 2.0-lite, rolled out two months before the critical midterms (when Governor Shapiro will be on the ballot, just saying), because the covid go-around was so successful in achieving regime change. Democrats hope it will work again.

But sure, let’s take this “deadly measles outbreak” with all the unseriousness it deserves, since public health experts are very concerned.

TV doctor Marc Siegel told Fox, “This isn’t about personal choice, it’s about community protection.” Don’t kill grandma. He stated as a fact that we need 95% vaccination rates, because we “need to protect the immunocompromised and pregnant.” The current vaxx rate hovers around 93%, a deadly 2% gap. We must close the gap, if it saves one life.

Don’t worry your pretty little head about all the other much more common causes of death. Thinking will only confuse you.

💉 This measles story, covered intensely by every major platform, is roiling the country, which is just what was intended. Here’s the dramatic Wall Street Journal headline, published this morning:

The Journal blamed “falling vaccination rates” for the uptick in measles “cases,” without inquiring whether we might be finding more cases because of hypervigilant increased testing and reporting. They create a moral panic over measles and then act surprised when doctors start reporting a few more cases.

It is also worth mentioning that the media’s parlor trick of swapping “measles-related” for “First Measles Deaths” is just another example of the corporate media using “correlation” as “causation” when it wants. You’d better not try it. They are incorrigible liars. But set that aside.

Even assuming that the media’s unproven causal connection between “hesitation” and “cases” is true, it’s irrelevant. Nobody ever expected that their kids or anyone else would be immune to measles without a vaccine. That is a frightful strawman argument.

The truth is that we are willingly trading away the risks of vaccine injury for the certainty of measles risk.

That is the essence of the debate, a fundamental disagreement that nobody is grappling with. Some parents are willing to go back to the pre-vaccine status quo, when their kids routinely got measles, recovered, and enjoyed lifetime immunity. They don’t want the jabs. For about one million good reasons.

But, without saying it, Democrats are sweeping the real argument off the table. We can argue about their motives —I’d wager it’s because they know they’ll lose the debate and want to win midterms by blaming Republicans for a virus— but Democrats are flatly refusing to discuss the preference issue. Their frame is that personal preferences for a known risk of more measles, while avoiding the unknown risks of jabs, are illegitimate preferences— unworthy of any serious engagement.

Instead, they lean into amorphous “case counts” and “measles-related” deaths— without actually declaring a state of emergency or even color-coding their counties by relative levels of germaphobia. But … why no state of emergency this time? After all, just two covid deaths and 76 cases were enough for even remote states to start the emergency bandwagon six years ago. The same Wall Street Journal, March 2020:

There’s no declaration of emergency this time because nobody really expects any major measles outbreak this time. Instead, it’s just the same exhausted, utilitarian, “community safety” argument, repackaged for 2026, recycled from 2020-2024, with a splash of spicy sauce, and they expect us to listen this time.

For an unremarkable illness that has a barely measurable fatality rate.

It’s not going to work. We’ve already seen this movie ten times. We’ve expressed our preferences and that is that. The most personally annoying thing is that they made me spend most of the morning rounding up this stupid measles story.

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One more quick update before I head to work. Yesterday, while reporting about the Supreme Court’s emergency order allowing the USPS ballot envelope standard to move forward, I offered some options about how Indian-American Judge Talwani —whose injunction had just been reversed— might react. She found an option I hadn’t thought of. Axios reported, “Trump administration violated court order on mail-voting rules, judge says.”

Alert readers may recall that there were two Talwani injunctions, only one of which was before the Supreme Court. SCOTUS overturned the one it had, which left in place Talwani’s separate injunction from a case filed by the League of Women Voters. (I’ll leave it up to you to decide why women voters oppose the ballot envelope standard.)

Judge Talwani faces several new motions in both cases. The League of Women Voters filed an emergency motion to enforce their injunction, arguing that the USPS should have been barred from even publishing the final rule. The League wanted Judge Talwani to vacate the final rule and declare it was of “no force or effect” as to the November midterm elections.

She didn’t. She let the final rule stand. But first, she excoriated the government’s lawyers for intentionally misunderstanding her injunction order: “Defendants cannot contend that they misunderstood the scope of the court’s order.” The judge said the government “ignored the court’s explicit directive not to ‘initiate or complete’ rulemaking.”

But after all that, after finding the government’s lawyers deliberately violated her injunction, the judge found a silver lining. She won’t order any punishment or set aside the final ballot envelope rule, but “Defendants’ violation of the court’s order may ultimately inure to Plaintiffs’ benefit.” Now the League has a final rule to litigate against! (Even if the judge expressly ordered that it not be completed.) “Now that a Final Rule has issued despite the pendency of the injunction,” Talwani wrote, “the issuance of a Final Rule is no longer hypothetical.” Look on the bright side.

Not only that, but the League had asked for an order barring any “implementation or preparatory steps that would change the status quo,” and wanted weekly compliance updates from the government. Talwani declined both.

The League’s lawyers must be spitting nails and tearing their hair out.

So she concluded with one of the strangest orders I have ever seen above a judge’s signature. She literally ordered “no remedy,” other than complaining about the violation.

You can see how I missed this unlikely possibility among the judge’s several options. She is taking the position that the lone remaining injunction remains in place. She could have, but did not, strike down the final rule. Nor, after accusing the government of misunderstanding the scope of the existing injunction, did she punish them or even clarify what it means the government can and cannot do.

My best guess —and I am only guessing— is that Judge Talwani knew her last injunction is on thin ice before the Supremes, and wanted to avoid stirring the pot. After all, the Supreme Court just found that her first injunction inflicted an “irreparable injury” on the government.

But nobody will appeal this loud but ineffective non-order.

That leaves us with the tantalizing possibility that the government may continue with its internal preparations for implementing the ballot envelope standard even while they move to appeal the injunction. Yesterday, the government’s lawyers filed an emergency motion to reconsider the injunction in light of the SCOTUS ruling— one step before appealing. Judge Talwani has not yet ruled on that motion.

The bottom line is that both the League’s injunction and, presumably, the USPS’s preparations are moving forward. I did not see that one coming.

Have a wonderful Wednesday! …

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