Iowa Health Officials Announce Measles Has Developed A Preference For Buffet-Style Dining, Describe Findings As 'Consistent With What We Know About Measles Wanting Things'

DES MOINES, IA — The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services has formally added a southern Iowa Pizza Ranch to its list of potential measles exposure locations, a development that epidemiologists are calling 'the most scientifically important thing to happen to a pizza buffet in recent memory, possibly ever.'

In a press conference held Tuesday, Iowa HHS Director Maureen Claflinger presented a forty-slide deck confirming that measles — a viral illness caused by the measles virus, which experts describe as 'a virus that causes measles' — had been present at the restaurant during an undisclosed date earlier this month.

'What we know,' said Dr. Claflinger, pausing for emphasis, 'is that measles was there. What we also know is that Pizza Ranch was there. What we are still investigating is whether these two facts are related, or whether this represents a third, separate fact that merely resembles the other two.'

The Iowa Viral Pathogen and Casual Dining Overlap Commission, a body convened specifically for this announcement, released a companion white paper Thursday outlining the current scientific consensus on measles and buffet environments.

'Measles travels through the air,' the report states in its executive summary. 'Pizza Ranch also contains air. We are not saying these are the same air. We are saying they are both air, and that air, as a concept, connects them in ways our models are only beginning to understand.'

The report, which runs to eighty-three pages including appendices, dedicates an entire chapter to clarifying that the Ranch Buffet — which includes pizza, chicken, and a dessert bar described by one commissioner as 'structurally sound' — did not transmit the measles itself.

'The pizza did not give anyone measles,' said Dr. Theron Ulbricht, the commission's lead researcher, speaking slowly and with deliberate eye contact. 'The pizza was incidental to the measles. The measles brought itself. The pizza was simply present, as pizza tends to be, in a pizza restaurant.'

Dr. Ulbricht acknowledged that this distinction had been difficult to communicate to the public.

'People hear 'measles at Pizza Ranch' and they think: pizza caused this. It did not. What caused this is the measles, which is caused by the measles virus. The pizza was, at most, a bystander. We have cleared the pizza. The pizza's record is clean.'

State officials confirmed that any individuals who visited the location during the exposure window should monitor themselves for symptoms, which include fever, rash, and cough — all of which, experts note, are 'symptoms that occur in the body and not in the pizza.'

When asked whether this was the first time measles had been linked to a Pizza Ranch specifically, Dr. Claflinger consulted her notes for an extended period before responding.

'It is the first time we have added a Pizza Ranch to the list,' she said. 'The list did not previously contain a Pizza Ranch. It now does. We consider that an update to the list, and we stand behind the list.'

The Pizza Ranch franchise in question released a brief statement expressing 'full cooperation with health officials' and noting that their commitment to the buffet experience 'remains unchanged and undiminished by this development, which we also did not cause.'

Iowa HHS says it will continue to monitor the situation and update the exposure list as needed, adding that the list is 'a living document in the sense that it can grow, though not in the biological sense that the measles also grows, which is a different kind of living and should not be confused with the list.'