Aletho News

Is Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s using measles scare to push Covid-era public health regulations?

By Jefferey Jaxen | August 27, 2026

On August 8, as measles cases climbed across Pennsylvania and schools prepared to reopen, Gov. Josh Shapiro’s Department of Health published a sweeping rewrite of the state’s communicable-disease rules.

17 days later national headlines now report of two measles-associated deaths whose status is current unresolved with several clear anomalies that has the public, politicians and Kennedy himself asking serious questions about their validity.

Regulation 10-242, filed with the Independent Regulatory Review Commission as IRRC No. 3490, runs hundreds of pages and would remake 28 Pa. Code Chapter 27 — the same chapter that governed isolation, reporting, and outbreak control long before Covid. Public comment closes September 21. Shapiro’s gubernatorial election vote happens on November 3 the stakes are high.

The political context is harder to ignore.

The rule update would erode parent consent in a child’s health care, create a mandatory vaccine tracking database, and give the Department of Health access to children’s medical records without parental consent.

Specifically regarding measles, the newly proposed rule would create a category called § 27.160 isolation plus outbreak quarantine of “presumed susceptibles.”

The rule would pair isolation with outbreak quarantine of those presumed ‘susceptibles’ and keep them out of a setting until they prove they are not susceptible, take a measles vaccine, or no cases occur there for 21 days.

In an outbreak concentrated in communities with religious or philosophical exemptions, that is not a technical tweak. It is a lever.

The proposed rule would do far more than update a measles protocol. Under the draft, the department or a local health authority “may enter an apartment, building, health care facility, school, college or university, or other location” during an investigation if the official shows agency credentials. No warrant is required. People may not “interfere.” In schools, officials would get “reasonable and timely access” to students for contact tracing or partner services and could “meet and speak with a student or other person in private.” The text does not require parental notice, parental presence, or parental consent before that interview.

Reportable diseases, infections, and conditions would expand from about 52 to 125, including COVID-19 and an open-ended “emerging disease or condition”

House Republican Leader Jesse Topper called the package “oppressive COVID-era policies” and demanded it be withdrawn.

“Submitting these regulations seems to be devoid of any understanding of our recent history of dangerous government overreach…”

Shapiro’s office and the legacy media have treated the outbreak and, still unconfirmed, measles deaths as proof of leadership and treated Kennedy as the face of “anti-science.”

The regulation tells a different story. It is a bid to restore, by rule-making, authorization the failed pandemic response taught many Pennsylvanians to fear and reject. While a contested measles emergency still dominates the news the rule’s public comment file is open. The election is not far behind.

August 27, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Human rights, Pennsylvania, United States