Dr. Stephen Diamantoni has one job as Lancaster County Coroner. He reviews deaths. He signs the certificates. And when Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced that two people had died from measles in Lancaster County — the first measles deaths in the state in 35 years — Dr. Diamantoni went looking for the paperwork.
He couldn't find any. Because those deaths don't exist.
Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons — a former prosecutor — confirmed that the coroner's office has zero records of any death caused by measles in the county. One individual did die while infected with measles. The distinction matters: dying with measles and dying from measles are two very different things. We learned that lesson during COVID, and apparently we have to learn it again.
Gov. Shapiro used the claim of two "measles-associated deaths" to push for vaccine mandates and to frame parents — particularly in Lancaster County's Amish communities — as reckless. He told the public that vaccination rates had dropped from 97% to 92.3%. What he left out was the timeline. That drop happened during the Biden administration. Under Trump, vaccination rates declined by 0.1%. But the governor wasn't interested in context. He was interested in a crisis.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed the discrepancy publicly. "We are trying to get information about those two casualties," Kennedy said. "According to a statement that was released by the Lancaster County Commissioner today, they cannot find any measles deaths in Lancaster County." Kennedy also revealed that the CDC attempted to get the data directly from Shapiro's office. "The state is refusing to cooperate," he said.
Refusing to cooperate. The governor announces deaths to justify mandates, and when the federal government asks for the receipts, Harrisburg goes dark.
Commissioner Parsons pushed back on the predictable response from mandate advocates. "Asking questions is not 'pro-measles,'" he said. "Asking for information is not 'anti-science.'" He noted that both the governor's office and Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health — where Commissioner Alice Yoder previously served as an official — have refused to respond to inquiries from county leadership.
Shapiro also claimed publicly that there was "no fetal tissue in the MMR" vaccine, a statement that doesn't hold up to a basic ingredient review. But accuracy wasn't really the point for the Democrat Governor. The point was fear. Announce the deaths, push the mandates, shame the dissenters, and hope nobody checks.
Somebody checked.
Sec. Kennedy also offered some international context that Shapiro conveniently skipped. Mexico currently has 11 times more measles cases than the United States. Canada has four times more. Britain has twice as many. None of those countries have RFK Jr. running their health agencies, and none of them are doing better than we are. But measles panic only flows in one direction in American politics — toward mandates, toward control, and toward communities that don't vote the right way.
GOP legislators in Pennsylvania are now formally questioning Shapiro's claims. The coroner has no matching death records. The CDC can't get cooperation. The county commissioners are being stonewalled. And the governor who built a mandate push on a body count is nowhere to be found.
Two deaths were announced. Zero were confirmed. The man whose literal job is certifying how people died says the governor's story doesn't match the paperwork.
That's not a public health crisis. That's a credibility crisis wearing a lab coat.
