"Measles-related death" in 2015? Let's look a little more closely at the late Catherine Montantes...

Yesterday I published a short article in response to the measles mania currently in the mainstream news, which is reporting on the current measles outbreak in Texas. My article contained the following graphic:

A reader commented that the CDC had reported one death in 2015 and another several years ago. I knew about those reports and remembered that the one in 2015 was in a vaccinated woman with underlying health problems. When I initially checked yesterday, I couldn’t find any reference to the reports. I was admittedly in a hurry and did not dig as deeply as I would have otherwise. After the comment, I did some additional digging and was able to find the news reports about the death in 2015, which was attributed to pneumonia, which was reportedly caused by a measles infection the 28-year-old woman never knew she had, and which was undiagnosed until measles was found in her blood on autopsy.

Is it just me, or does this remind anyone else of the difference between dying “from COVID” and dying “with COVID?”

In addition to the 2015 death, there were two deaths reported in 2003. Here is what the CDC has to say about those two deaths:

The first death that was “attributed to measles encephalitis” was in a child who was seriously ill and who had received a bone marrow transplant three months prior to his/her death. The fact that the child received a bone marrow transplant means he or she was on immune suppressive drugs at the time of death. Immune suppressive drugs leave one far more vulnerable to serious illness from any and all infectious agents, including “the common cold.”

Something I find very interesting (and suspicious) about the CDC’s report of the 13-year-old who died in 2003, is this statement:

“Despite an intensive search, no additional cases were detected in the surrounding area.”

Where did this child get measles from if there were no additional cases found “despite an intensive search?” The answer to that question may be, “From the vaccine.” Just as happened to this child, with vaccine-strain mumps from the MMR vaccine:

This little boy received the MMR vaccine at 14 months of age. Four months after MMR vaccination, he was diagnosed with SCID (Severe Combined Immune Deficiency Syndrome). He was diagnosed with autoimmune hemolysis and developed a persistent H1N1 infection. He received successful Stem Cell Therapy, and his immune system improved, but six months after Stem Cell Therapy he started regressing and losing cognitive abilities, motor skills, and language. He developed seizures. His hearing was affected, and he developed personality changes and behavioral changes.

Sound familiar?

After multiple hospitalizations, he died at 69 months of age.
On autopsy, vaccine-strain mumps virus was found in his brain, and this was determined to be the cause of chronic encephalitis - FOUR YEARS AND SEVEN MONTHS AFTER HE WAS VACCINATED.

From the report:
"Using deep sequencing of fresh brain biopsy material, we identified the Jeryl Lynn 5 mumps virus (MuVJL5), a component of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine that had been administered to the child before the diagnosis of SCID. Similar to findings in measles viruses recovered from cases of SSPE, the mumps virus genome from the brain showed evidence of biased hypermutation, particularly in the matrix (M) gene. Comparison with sequence data from the original vaccine batch used to immunize this child identified the expansion of variants present at low frequency in the vaccine as well as de novo fixed missense substitutions. This case represents the first conclusive demonstration of chronic panencephalitis due to mumps virus." (From the MMR vaccine. And yes... it was the same strain used in both the UK and the US).

As the CDC reports, the second “measles-related death” in 2003 was in a 75-year-old international traveler who was infected in Israel. We don’t have any further information on this person’s medical history or vaccination status. We also don’t know if the measles that was detected was wild measles or vaccine strain measles.

Now let’s talk about Catherine Montantes…

Catherine J. Montantes of Port Angeles died April 8, 2015, of measles-caused pneumonia, according to a death certificate filed with the Washington State Department of Health.

The infection wasn’t detected until after an autopsy, health officials said. And the death — the first confirmed fatal measles case in the U.S. since 2003 — wasn’t announced until almost three months later, on July 2. The death came in a year when a measles outbreak linked to the Disneyland theme park in Southern California dominated health-care headlines. (source)

According to the reports, Ms. Montantes did not know she had measles, and the infection was only diagnosed on autopsy. What she had was pneumonia. She also had dermatomyositis, and she was taking immune suppressing drugs.

Montantes had been diagnosed with dermatomyositis, a rare disease that causes chronic muscle inflammation and weakness. Drugs to control the inflammation also suppress the immune system, leaving people vulnerable to infections. (source)

Dermatomyositis is extremely rare. It is estimated that approximately 2 out of 100,000 people are diagnosed with dermatomyositis. Let’s look a little more deeply into this…

From the Mayo Clinic:

Also from the Mayo Clinic:

According to the Mayo Clinic, it is unknown what causes dermatomyositis, but environmental factors combined with genetic factors are among the suspected causes. Environmental factors include “some medications.” Because I tend to be very curious about these kinds of things, I wondered if “some medications” might include vaccinations. So, I went to VAERS…

Yep. 422 reports of dermatomyositis - a very rare disorder - have been reported to VAERS. The most frequent “vaccine” associated with dermatomyositis is the COVID shot. We can safely assume that had nothing to do with Catherine Montantes, since she died in 2015. After the COVID shot, the most frequent vaccines associated with a dermatomyositis diagnosis are Hepatitis B, Influenza, HPV, and MMR vaccines. Which got me wondering…

We know Catherine Montantes was fully vaccinated as a child and adolescent. Her mother confirmed that in this exclusive interview with The Guardian.

We also know Catherine Montantes was diagnosed with dermatomyositis just a few months before she died.

And we know she was a dental hygienist. Which got me wondering… What vaccines do dental hygienists have to have?

From her mother, we know that Catherine Montantes was vaccinated with the MMR vaccine as a child. Because she was born in 1987, Catherine would not have received the Hepatitis B vaccine as an infant, as it was not added to the childhood schedule until the 1990s. My son was born in 1981. He was a teenager during the time when the ACIP (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) recommended Hep B vaccination for adolescents who “missed it” as babies. But it wasn’t required for school, and his doctor never brought it up, so I’m guessing that’s probably the case for a lot of people who were born in the 1980s. Which means, Catherine Montantes most likely got the Hepatitis B vaccine three-shot series when she began working (or during clinicals in preparation for work) as a dental hygienist. She also most likely got yearly flu shots, since we know she was raised by a mother who valued vaccines, and she was working in a field that required them.

Was Catherine Montantes’ dermatomyositis caused by vaccinations? We will never know, but it’s a possibility that should be considered.

Another possibility that should be considered is that the pneumonia that killed Catherine Montantes may have been due to dermatomyositis, since interstitial pneumonitis is a very frequent complication of dermatomyositis, and is associated with high mortality rates, particularly in the first year after diagnosis (source).

For those (like me) who don’t know automatically what interstitial pneumonitis looks like on x-ray…

And for comparison, this is what measles pneumonia looks like on x-ray:

Hmmm… pretty darn close to the same thing, isn’t it? Actually, pretty much the same, since pneumonia that is associated with measles affects the lung interstitium… and is, therefore, interstitial pneumonia.

Another question in my brain… given that dermatomyositis is so rare, and given that measles pneumonia is also so rare in the United States, what are the chances that the coroner doing the autopsy on Catherine Montantes had any level of experience in differentiating whether the pneumonia that killed her was caused by dermatomyositis or by a measles infection that was completely undetected until measles was found in her blood on autopsy? That’s another question that will likely go unanswered.

What is clear is that among the three deaths that have been “attributed” to measles, there are significant and serious questions about whether or not the measles was wild-type or vaccine-strain, and whether or not the most recent death “attributed” was actually due to interstitial pneumonia from dermatomyositis.

What is ALSO abundantly clear is that in the two cases we know anything about, both of the individuals were taking immune suppressing drugs and had very serious underlying health conditions that made them extremely fragile. And in the case of Catherine Montantes, there is reason to believe that her underlying condition may have been caused by vaccines she took for her work as a dental hygienist.

In BOTH cases (the 13-year-old in 2003 and CM in 2015), neither individual ever showed any signs of measles infection. The ONLY reason their deaths were “attributed” to measles complications is because measles virus (vaccine or wild strain?) was found on autopsy. As anyone who has paid any amount of attention over the last five years will immediately understand, there is a difference between dying FROM measles and dying WITH EVIDENCE of measles virus in the blood.

After further review of the evidence in these cases, I stand by my previous assessment. There have been ZERO measles deaths in the United States since January 1, 2000. EVEN IF you believe that (wild) measles had anything to do with these deaths, it is completely inaccurate to say the three people died from measles. IF measles was a factor - and it MAY have been, what really killed them was a combination of their underlying serious health problems and the medications they were taking, which wiped out their immune systems, leaving them far more vulnerable to secondary bacterial infections like pneumonia and encephalitis.