EP 1017 Measles and Death: Denialism New Health Reality

 While we are in the midst of the worst measles outbreak in decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has suddenly changed the way that deaths are attributed to measles.  At one point, Pennsylvania health officials had a death toll at 4 measles-associated deaths, while the CDC counted none.  Those numbers have changed and gone up but America, and its top health official, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. have a serious case of health denialism owing to his many years in the fringe community of anti-vaxxers and those who do not believe in germ theory.  Seth Kalichman, Professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut and author of “Denying AIDS: Conspiracy Theories and Pseudoscience in a Post-COVID World”, is our guest today and he says a clear sign of denialism is the moving of goalposts in measuring health risks and mortality associated deaths.  As we see declining vaccination rates in this moment along with weakened regulatory oversight, the risks for all of us go up, but particularly for those in underserved communities, already struggling with health costs and access.

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