MONROE UNFILTERED: THE DAILY BUZZ | Sept. 16
Shot in the Arm: What Swiftwater Can Teach PA
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
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DAILY WEATHER
Wednesday is the pick of the week, but the rest of the week holds up well too. Monroe County gets a partly cloudy, comfortable day today, a high near 80°F, a low around 64°F tonight, and just a 13% chance of rain, with light winds out of the southwest around 7 mph.
Thursday brings a slightly better chance of catching a shower late in the day, a high near 81°F, a low around 65°F, and a 33% chance of PM showers. Friday clears back out, partly cloudy and pleasant with a high near 79°F and a low around 55°F.
Get outside while you can; days like this get scarcer as fall sets in.
PA'S MEASLES OUTBREAK CLAIMS A FOURTH LIFE
The Pennsylvania Department of Health confirmed Sept. 15 that an 18-year-old in Mifflin County had died of measles-associated complications. Mifflin County Coroner Andrea Alcalde identified the specific cause as acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, a rare but serious measles complication. The teen was unvaccinated. It's the fourth measles-associated death in Pennsylvania this year, part of an outbreak that stood at 693 cases across 38 counties and 133 hospitalizations as of the Department's Sept. 14 count.
The first two deaths this year were infants in Lancaster County, reported in August. The third was a 40-year-old woman in Jefferson County, in north central Pennsylvania, who died Sept. 12 according to Coroner Greg Furlong. The Mifflin County teen, in central Pennsylvania, is the fourth. Both counties sit hundreds of miles from Monroe, and no local case has been confirmed.
The number of deaths is no longer in dispute, but what to call them still is. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has questioned whether measles was truly the cause of the earlier Lancaster County infant deaths, pointing to a coroner's finding that one infant died of a ruptured spleen with measles merely present. State health officials say “measles-associated” is a surveillance term, not a cause of death finding, a distinction that's kept Kennedy and Gov. Josh Shapiro sparring since late August.
Frankly, the dispute over terms seems petty; this is a preventable disease and everybody should be working together to stop the spread before it hits our corner of the state.
HISTORY WITH A TWIST: SWIFTWATER'S FORGOTTEN VACCINE LAB
Long before Sanofi Pasteur's Swiftwater campus was producing roughly 42% of the nation's flu vaccine doses, a Brooklyn-trained doctor built the region's first vaccine lab in the same town for a very different disease.
Col. Richard M. Slee arrived in Swiftwater in the early 1890s recovering from cholera and married into the family that owned the Swiftwater Inn. In 1897, he used that connection to found Pocono Biological Laboratories, with the U.S. Army as his first customer. The lab produced an improved, glycerolized smallpox vaccine, developed at France's Pasteur Institute, with far fewer side effects than the older cowpox-based version, and by 1898 it supplied every vaccine used in the Spanish-American War in Cuba.
By 1915, the lab had expanded into tetanus, diphtheria, typhoid, and canine distemper vaccines shipped worldwide, so overwhelmed with demand by 1914 that it turned away an estimated $1 million in orders. Slee's son Arthur ran the lab while his father served in the military and later the New York State Department of Health.
Here's how we get from that lab to Sanofi Pasteur today. Per Sanofi's own company history, Pocono Biological Laboratories became part of the National Drug Company, then Connaught Laboratories, then Pasteur Merieux Connaught, then Aventis Pasteur, before the site took on the Sanofi Pasteur name it carries now, the same campus the whole way through. That campus produced its first influenza vaccine in 1947, decades before it grew into one of the country's leading flu vaccine producers.
As Pennsylvania works through its measles outbreak, it's worth remembering Monroe County isn't just a place a pandemic once passed through. It's the birthplace of the vaccine infrastructure now fighting one.
THE DAILY RUNDOWN
Justice Served. A New Jersey man has been sentenced in the wrong way crash that killed an East Stroudsburg man. Victor Peters, 46, of Parsippany-Troy Hills, was sentenced Sept. 11 to 16 years in New Jersey State Prison. He drove his SUV the wrong way on I-80 West in Rockaway Township, Morris County, New Jersey, before dawn on Feb. 2, 2025, striking a pickup truck driven by Destinn McKnight, 31, a physician assistant at LVH-Pocono. The sentence falls under New Jersey's No Early Release Act, meaning Peters must serve 85% of it before he's eligible for parole. A Morris County jury found Peters guilty in July.
Guilty Plea in Middle Smithfield Shooting. Jahfari Kamdar, 20, of East Stroudsburg, pleaded guilty Sept. 11 to first-degree felony aggravated assault and a firearms license violation, before Monroe County Court of Common Pleas Judge Janet Jackson. As the more famous Janet Jackson would say, “He was nasty.” (sorry, that joke never gets old to me).
Kamdar had originally faced attempted homicide and robbery charges. According to the criminal complaint, Kamdar arranged a drug deal near the Lake of the Pines community in January, grabbed the goods without paying, then shot the victim through the hand and into the thigh when he was asked to pay up. No one's throwing a parade for a guy who arranged a drug buy that turned into a shooting, but credit where it's due: the victim drove himself to safety and called it in. He was treated at St. Luke's Monroe Campus. Kamdar is due to be sentenced Dec. 3.