Most counties don’t have their own health agencies, and some specific population groups have low vaccination rates
Pennsylvania is bracing for a wave of measles cases, with some public health officials concerned that it’s “only a matter of time” until the disease spreads beyond the outbreak’s epicenter.
Last week the state reported its fifth measles-associated death amid 943 confirmed cases across 39 counties. The outbreak comes amid concerns that public health in the US has been hit by increasing vaccine skepticism, especially due to the power and influence of controversial health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Contributing to the challenge is that Pennsylvania is one of the few US states where its counties mostly lack their own health department, with only seven of its 67 counties having their own.
They’ve been vaccine hesitant from the outset. However, if you have the general population holding to at least herd immunity levels, you don’t have much of a problem. Amish are .74% of the PA population. I was trying to figure out how many Mennonites are in PA, but I’m not finding reliable results - since they are commonly confused with Amish (and Hutterites).
What is different now is the vaccine denialism in the wider culture. The idiotic vaccine denialism has been ticking up as older generations (that knew better) die off, but now we have an actual vaccine denialist running the HHS. I’m sure having donnie and him having a platform where they spread absolute fucking nonsense has had, and is going to have, more people opt out.
This is from a year ago:
https://www.wesanews.org/health-science-tech/2025-09-30/routine-vaccination-rates-decline-pennsylvania-kindergarteners