Pennsylvania is now the epicenter of the national measles epidemic. A total of 5 death measles-associated deaths since Sept. 30. Prior to the RFK Jr.-Trump-Bhattacharya-Oz alignment for disrupting America’s public health, Measles was “eradicated” from the United States. A CIDRAP model now forecasts a surge coming to Florida if our trajectory doesn’t change.
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In February 1848, a 26-year-old doctor named Rudolf Virchow arrived in Upper Silesia, a poor, rural corner of Prussia that’s now part of Poland. A typhus epidemic was killing thousands, and the Berlin government wanted a doctor to assess how to contain this pathogen, advise local authorities, and propose a plan.
Virchow spent a few weeks going from village to village. He found typhus, but he also found families barely eating because of years of failed harvests. People slept huddled together for warmth and rarely changed or washed their clothes. These were ideal conditions for the body lice that carry typhus from one person to the next. (Although no one would make that connection for another 60 years.) The government had mostly ignored this population for years.
In his final report, he said treating individual sick people with medicine wasn’t necessarily the long-term solution; what was needed was education, jobs, better housing, fairer taxes, and “full and unlimited democracy.” He wrote: “Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing but medicine at a large scale.” (The government thanked him with sanctions, including pay cuts and the loss of his hospital-provided housing.)
Source: Katelyn Jetelina, “Politics is medicine on a large scale” (October 28, 2026)
Your Local EpidemiologistPolitics is medicine on a large scale
4 days ago · 481 likes · 38 comments · Katelyn Jetelina
CIDRAP reports on a University of Maryland mathematical model suggesting that further declines in Florida’s measles vaccination coverage could lead to severe outbreaks over the next five to ten years. The article by Sarah Boden reports on the model and its limitations.
Source: Sarah Boden, CIDRAP News: Florida measles model (September 30, 2026)
We did not list measles in our October surprise discussion. In Pennsylvania, the outbreak is epidemic now and maybe enough to impact the midterm elections. In Florida, I haven’t seen much political attack ad usage dealing with disease. The dengue outbreak is spreading and there are now transmission cases in twelve Florida counties, with Hillsborough County being the outbreak epicenter.
This isn’t the first time we’ve examined the intersection of public health and politics. In our September 22 commentary, Zika, The Midterms, Maine, we explored the lasting human and economic consequences of infectious diseases and asked whether measles outbreaks and vaccination policies might influence voters in Pennsylvania, Maine, and Florida. As the midterms approach, those questions remain relevant.
Measles may be making a political comeback, too. In a STAT opinion piece, two former Republican congressmen, both physicians, warn that declining vaccination rates and mixed messages about vaccine safety could cost their party votes in the November midterms. Their warning comes from within the Republican Party itself.
The Florida connection
The issue of vaccines is still ongoing and intense in Florida. The DeSantis position about vaccine usage is well known and DeSantis is a lame duck as Governor. His infamous surgeon general, Dr. “anti-vax” Ladapo, continues to fester. But it hasn’t been the dominant campaign issue. Governor’s race candidate David Jolly says he will “fire” Ladapo on day 1. Source: WGCU & WPEC (CBS). Byron Donalds says he is open to retaining Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo. Donalds says neither he nor his family received a COVID-19 vaccine, but he has acknowledged vaccinating his three children against other diseases.
Sources: Florida Phoenix (September 22, 2026) and Miami Herald (October 8, 2026).
Covid pandemic period excess death rates (March 2020-December 2021) were examined by the Yale School of Public Health and published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Here’s the story and link: Political party affiliation linked to excess COVID deaths | CIDRAP https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/political-party-affiliation-linked-excess-covid-deaths. Bottom line. In Florida, I believe that more Republicans died from COVID-19 and the numbers are broken down county if you dig deeply enough. The Ladapo anti-vax policy was especially visible during the Omicron and Delta Variant episodes because vaccines had become available. Politics influenced individual decisions to vaccinate or not vaccinate. Deaths are separate and hard-counted statistics. Florida had reported 62,688 COVID-19 deaths by January 6, 2022, according to the state’s contemporaneous surveillance report.
Study: JAMA Internal Medicine study (2023)
Death count: Florida COVID-19 weekly surveillance report (January 7, 2022)
Ladapo is still the Florida Surgeon General. Where he ends up next year is unknown today. But below is a little history of someone else who thinks the way Ladapo does, IMO. You decide.
This subject of disease is not getting traction nor debate in the midterms which are focused on interest rates for home mortgages or inflation or diesel fuel prices. And all of that is important. But the recent death of a lab worker at a Russian anti-plague research institute from pneumonia of unknown origin may change the narrative. The Russians are tighter than clams on telling the truth. Anyone remember Wuhan?
Factual background: ECDC: pneumonia of unknown origin at Russian anti-plague institute (October 2026)
Will Senator Rand Paul seek to investigate if the Russians were using “gain-of-function” research on the Yersinia pestis in that lab to see if they could then introduce it in Ukraine after bombing Ukrainian infrastructure? That is a purely speculative question. For those who say such things don’t happen, I will remind them that Nazis tried to introduce malaria in Italy in WW2 as a weapon against American forces. And I will remind history buffs that Attila’s attack on Rome was defeated by malaria and not by Roman Legions. Remember my co-authors and I wrote a book on this stuff. The Fed And The Flu is available on Amazon and other bookshops.
RFK Jr.’s policy record
Here’s a list to think about whether you are in Pennsylvania or Florida or elsewhere.
Chronology source: Paul Offit, “The ‘S’ Word” (September 28, 2026)
On February 21st, 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke to a crowd of more than 1,500 Amish and Mennonite families in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a group that five years later would be the epicenter of a massive measles outbreak. He misinformed them that “because vaccines are not a drug, they’re the only medication that has not been tested for safety.”
Eight months later, on October 19th, 2021, RFK Jr. published, The Measles Book: Thirty-Five Secrets the Government and the Media Aren’t Telling You about Measles and the Measles Vaccine, in which he wrote: “Measles outbreaks have been fabricated to create fear that in turn forces government officials to ‘do something.’ They then inflict unnecessary and risky vaccines on millions of children for the sole purpose of fattening industry profits.”
Four years later, on February 13, 2025, RFK Jr. was sworn in as our Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS)—the nation’s #1 public health official.
One day later, on February 14, 2025, Lubbock County, Texas, reported its first case of measles in an unvaccinated school-aged child. This was the beginning of what was to become the largest measles epidemic in the United States in more than 30 years. Would RFK Jr. set aside his anti-vaccine past and rise to the challenge?
On February 26th, 2025, two weeks after RFK Jr. had been sworn in as Secretary of HHS, a 6-year-old unvaccinated girl died of measles pneumonia at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, Texas. This was the first child death from measles in the United States in more than 20 years. Dr. Lara Johnson, Covenant’s chief medical officer, said that many children were being admitted for supplemental oxygen and respiratory support—not, as RFK Jr. had suggested, just for quarantine purposes. At that point, West Texas had reported 124 confirmed cases of measles and 18 hospitalizations.
A few days later, on March 2nd, 2025, RFK Jr. wrote a letter to Fox News, stating that parents should consult their healthcare providers about the MMR vaccine, but that the decision was a personal one. In other words, parents could reasonably choose not to vaccinate their children against measles during a massive measles epidemic. RFK Jr. also wrote that good nutrition remained the best defense against infection.
Ten days later, on March 12th, 2025, RFK Jr. appeared with Sean Hannity on Fox News to promote beef tallow over seed oils for frying. During the interview, RFK Jr. said that the measles vaccine “caused blindness and deafness,” “killed people every year,” and “caused the same symptoms as measles.” For these dangerously irresponsible statements alone, RFK Jr. should have been fired as Secretary of HHS. But he wasn’t.
Three weeks later, on April 3rd, 2025, an 8-year-old unvaccinated girl became the second child to die from measles.
On April 8th, 2025, five days after the second child had died from measles, and under increasing pressure from the White House to support the MMR vaccine, RFK Jr. told CBS News that “the federal government’s position and my position is that people should get the measles vaccine. But the government should not be mandating those.” Again, RFK Jr. refused to say the “S” word, that the measles vaccine was safe.
On March 5th, 2026, about one year after the first child had died from measles, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, issued the first public service announcement by federal officials in support of the measles vaccine. Bhattacharya said, “The MMR vaccine remains the most reliable and effective way to prevent [measles]…Two doses are 97 percent effective at providing lifelong protection against measles and its complications.” Still, nothing about the vaccine’s safety.
Pres. Trump joins the chorus
On August 10th, 2026, after more than 6,000 people had been infected with measles, President Donald Trump, speaking from the Oval Office with RFK Jr. standing proudly at his side, said that the combination MMR vaccine was “explosive”, “quite lethal,” and should be divided into three separate vaccines.
Two weeks later, on August 23rd, 2026, Dr. Mehmet Oz appeared on the CBS News program, Face the Nation. Dr. Oz would be the first prominent health official to be asked about whether President Trump’s claims about the safety of the MMR vaccine were correct. Although Oz eventually answered “No” to the question of whether the MMR vaccine was “lethal,” he initially dodged the question by pivoting to parental choice, state eligibility, and the parents’ right to question vaccines. Oz understood that neither Trump nor RFK Jr. wanted a full-throated support of MMR’s safety. Vaccine safety had become the public health equivalent of election denialism.
A couple weeks later, on September 16th, 2026, Nicole Saphier, President Trump’s newest nominee for U.S. Surgeon General, appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee where she was asked whether she believed that the MMR vaccine was “quite lethal.” While Saphier was comfortable saying that the MMR wasn’t lethal, she never said that it was safe. Quite the opposite. Saphier praised President Trump for understanding that many parents were concerned that children were getting too many vaccines.
The next day, on September 17th, 2026, RFK Jr. spoke at the annual meeting of Children’s Health Defense, an organization that for the past ten years had paid him up to $500,000 a year to represent their anti-vaccine cause. “We care about every child who dies from measles,” said RFK Jr. “They get headlines. Shouldn’t we…care about children dying or suffering or being injured by vaccines.” After thousands of people had suffered from measles under his watch, hundreds had been hospitalized, and at least seven had died, RFK Jr. again returned to his strongly held belief that vaccines were doing more harm than good.
On October 8, 2026, RFK Jr. issued a press release titled “HHS Launches Agency-Wide Actions to Strengthen Vaccine Injury Research, Reporting, and Patient Care.” His claim that the public’s concerns about vaccine injuries have been dismissed or gaslit isn’t supported by the facts, according to Paul Offit.
Source: Paul Offit, “RFK Jr.’s Next Move” (October 19, 2026)
Medical organizations are becoming increasingly vocal in their criticism of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In this MedPage Today podcast, medical journalist Dr. Jeremy Faust discusses how professional societies, including the American Medical Association and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, are pushing back against federal public health policies. We wonder: is the relationship between Washington and the medical profession reaching a breaking point?
Listen: “Medical Societies Start Pushing Back on RFK Jr.” (MedPage Today, October 16, 2026)
And here we are.
Reading List and Sources
Katelyn Jetelina. October 28, 2026. “Politics is medicine on a large scale.”
Sarah Boden. September 30, 2026. “Measles disaster in Florida might not be far off, analysis finds.” CIDRAP News.
David Kotok. September 22, 2026. “Zika, The Midterms, Maine.” The Kotok Report.
Larry Bucshon and Michael C. Burgess. October 19, 2026. “Measles is back — and becoming a midterm liability for Republicans.” STAT.
Florida Phoenix. September 22, 2026. “Donalds might retain Joseph Ladapo as surgeon general.”
Miami Herald. October 8, 2026. Byron Donalds and childhood vaccination reporting.
Wallace, Goldsmith-Pinkham, and Schwartz. 2023. “Excess Death Rates for Republican and Democratic Registered Voters in Florida and Ohio During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” JAMA Internal Medicine.
Florida Department of Health. January 7, 2022. COVID-19 Weekly Situation Report.
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. October 5, 2026. Russia suspected pneumonic plague event assessment.
Paul Offit. September 28, 2026. “The ‘S’ Word.” Beyond the Noise.
Paul Offit. October 19, 2026. “RFK Jr.’s Next Move.” Beyond the Noise.
MedPage Today. October 16, 2026. “Medical Societies Start Pushing Back on RFK Jr.”
CDC. October 30, 2026. “Measles Cases and Outbreaks.”
David values thoughtful, reasoned, constructive responses from readers. To contact him, please send an email. The subject line should read “Response to RFK Measles Again.”
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