One of President Donald Trump's leading health officials was assailed by critics for casting doubt about the measles-related deaths of people in Pennsylvania.
State officials announced that two unvaccinated residents were the state's first deaths tied to measles in 35 years, although the coroner's office in Lancaster County said its investigators had not handled any measles deaths, and Dr. Mehmet Oz stepped into that gap to sow doubt about the outbreak in that county.
"I don't want to fear monger, and I don't want anyone in America concerned inappropriately," said Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. "We don't know exactly what happened in Pennsylvania yet. We don't know if the children died from measles or had another condition that was already attacking them and they happened to get measles at the same time."
"We lived this during Covid," the physician added, "where we erroneously attributed children dying to Covid when in fact they didn't die of Covid. They were dying, and they happened to have Covid in their system at that time."
The state Health Department said one of the two people who died was an infant, who the county coroner said had tested positive for measles and died because of a ruptured spleen.
Lancaster County has been the epicenter of a statewide outbreak, with 177 of the 393 cases in Pennsylvania so far this year, and officials said none of those ill people had been fully vaccinated with two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella shot.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely claimed that evidence supports breaking up the shots for those vaccines, which President Donald Trump called for in an executive order on childhood vaccines, and critics called out Oz for politicizing the measles outbreak.
"First pro-measles administration," snorted journalist Laura Bassett.
"'Let’s not rush to judgment against measles,'" marveled media strategist J.J. Abbott. "This is insane."
"The @FoxBusiness chyron literally reads, ‘PENNSYLVANIA REPORTS 2 MEASLES DEATHS,'" observed the Bad Fox Graphics account.
"He is lying. He knows what happened in Pennsylvania," accused historian Moshik Temkin. "This man has been in violation of his Hippocratic Oath for years now. A disgrace to his vocation."
"Measles. A medical mystery," scoffed attorney Scott Greenfield.
"Maybe the measles only weakened them and hastened their death!!!!" shouted psychiatrist Tyler Black. "This is what I mean... Antivaxxers don't care about kids, health, or death. They only care about their precious 'vaccines don't work they hurt' narrative."
"Snake oil salesman, dangerous quack," jeered political scientist Norman Ornstein. "Unfit for any office."