AMNA NAWAZ: Schools are back in session, fall is just around the corner, and that means viruses, colds, and flu are on their way back too.

Today, a coalition of leading medical groups issued their own vaccine guidance in response in part to changing and confusing messaging from federal officials.

GEOFF BENNETT: This all comes on the heels of rising measles cases in multiple states this year, and two recent deaths that have become the center of a hot dispute.

William Brangham tells us more.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Last week, Pennsylvania's governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro, publicly announced that two people had died, both of whom had measles.

One was a newborn who got the virus from his mother.

The other person was also unvaccinated.

State officials called these measles-associated deaths.

But the CDC took the unusual move of contradicting state officials on that classification.

So, for more on this moment that we are in, we are joined again by pediatrician Dr.

Paul Offit, where he also directs the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Dr.

Offit, welcome back to the program.

So there are these two deaths in your state.

Both people had measles.

State public health officials say that these were measles-associated deaths.

But the CDC later argues, well, there's not enough information and we're not going to categorize them that way.

This, as you well know, has now blown up into this big fight between your governor, Shapiro, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, who alleged that Shapiro was giddy in announcing these deaths and had possibly fabricated the cause of these deaths.

What do you make of what has gone down here?

DR.

PAUL OFFIT, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia: Well, I think the Pennsylvania Department of Health could have helped us out more here.

I mean, when those two little girls died in West Texas last year, the 6-year-old and 8-year-old unvaccinated girls died, you knew the cause of death, measles pneumonia, which is typically the cause of death.

Here, they didn't really announce specifically what the ages were of these two people died, what their vaccination status was or what their cause of death was.

So that could have helped us out.

But I think Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

has diverted the conversation away from what we should be having.

What we should be having is we know that, over the last year-and-a-half, we have had 5,000 reported cases of measles in this country.

And when you talk to people on the ground both in Texas or in South Carolina or now in Pennsylvania, they think that is a vast underestimate.

They think there could be three to four times that number of cases.

Now you're heading into the winter months, and children are going back to school.

Measles is a winter-spring disease.

And I think the conversation should be, let's identify these high-risk communities like the Lancaster County community in Pennsylvania, get clinics out there, vaccinate as many kids as we can so that, when we head into winter and spring, we don't suffer even more children suffering, more children being hospitalized and more children dying of this disease.

That should be the conversation.

But, unfortunately, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is, frankly, an anti-vaccine activist acting as secretary of health and human services, doesn't talk about any of that.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Can I ask you about this distinction and help us and our audience understand this, the distinction of between dying from measles and a measles-associated death?

What's the distinction?

DR.

PAUL OFFIT: I think there really isn't one.

I think what physicians will often say, for example, is measles-associated pneumonia, measles-associated dehydration, measles-associated encephalitis.

And what they mean is that measles caused that.

We know the details of one of these deaths.

So it was an infant who died in the first day of life.

We know he had measles in his lungs.

We know he had a splenic rupture.

We know that the spleen can enlarge and become rupturable because of measles.

So we know all that.

So I think it is fair to say that that child died from measles, but we just keep going back and forth on this sort of semantic morass, instead of focusing on what we should be focusing on, which is, it's September.

This is going to get much worse as we head into the winter months.

Let's make sure kids get vaccinated.

But you never hear that from our secretary of health and human services, because he wants to divert us away from one of the really important issues here.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mean, the CDC also fell into this semantic mess and says they're not going to categorize this on their federal tally of measles fatalities.

This has been seen as a bit of a test of the new CDC director, Dr.

Erica Schwartz.

What do you make of the agency's response here?

DR.

PAUL OFFIT: I think it's been disappointing.

I think the CDC initially reported those two deaths in 2026 from measles in our state, Pennsylvania, and then they took it down.

And you get the sense there's a politicization of this, and it's too bad.

I mean, while, I mean, public health will always to some extent be political because it requires resources, it shouldn't be partisan, and it's become partisan, and it's hard to watch because our children are suffering this fight.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Separately, just today, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics felt that the national environment was such that they needed to come out and reiterate that vaccines are safe and life-protecting.

What is your sense as to why they felt the need to step out in this moment?

DR.

PAUL OFFIT: Well, you had President Trump issuing an executive order where he recommended that we don't have 17 routinely recommended vaccines, but we go down to 10 or 11, recommended separating the measles, mumps, rubella into its three component vaccines, recommended changing adjuvants in vaccines.

And I think they wanted us to make -- they wanted people to know that those statements made by President Trump with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

standing next to him were not science-based.

There's no new science here.

They wanted to reiterate what is the science-based routinely recommended vaccines for children to make sure that people understood that.

And I think people do.

I think, despite President Trump's press conference, the next day, the sun came up, parents took their children to pediatricians, they were still getting vaccines according to the routinely recommended science-based schedule.

So I think that will pass.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Dr.

Paul Offit, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, always good to hear from you.

Thank you.

DR.

PAUL OFFIT: Thank you.