Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is far from the only top government official who has it out for vaccines. President Donald Trump has just personally delivered perhaps the worst blow to childhood vaccination in the U.S. seen so far.
Late yesterday afternoon, Trump signed an executive order aimed straight at the heart of the childhood vaccination schedule. Among other things, Trump has called for the measles, mumps, and rubella combination vaccine to be broken up into three separate shots. This order is not only based on debunked ideas about the dangers of vaccination, but it also threatens to further unravel the progress we’ve made against once-vanquished diseases like measles.
Vax attack
This is far from the first time that the Trump administration has meddled with childhood vaccines.
In January, the RFK Jr.-led U.S. Department of Health and Human Services attempted to cut short the list of vaccines routinely recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The list would only cover 11 diseases as opposed to 17 at the time. As justification, the administration claimed the U.S. was simply following the lead of European countries. Yet only Denmark has such a low number, and many health experts, including those from Denmark itself, criticized the decision as arbitrary, unscientific, and baffling.
This plan has been sidetracked by an ongoing lawsuit filed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups against RFK Jr. and HHS, however. In March, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy issued a ruling that’s blocking the implementation of several vaccine-related policy changes issued by HHS, including the CDC’s trimming of the schedule, at least for the time being.
In this latest order, Trump cited the lawsuit as the primary reason to “reaffirm” that the U.S. should cut down its recommended list of childhood vaccines to meet a European “gold standard.” According to the order, this would mean only fully recommending vaccines for 11 diseases, while other vaccines for diseases like hepatitis B or rotavirus would be recommended as part of a “shared clinical decision-making” process or only for certain high-risk groups.
During the press conference announcing the order, Trump and his officials offered varying justifications that don’t agree with each other. The White House has stated that the 2024 childhood vaccine schedule contained 84 vaccine doses, while Trump yesterday said it was 72, and RFK Jr. later said it was 94.
No strong evidence has ever supported the idea, popular among the anti-vaccination movement, that the frequency or timing of the current vaccine schedule poses any added risk to children. But even leaving that aside, the actual number of doses from widely recommended vaccines that children will likely get is closer to 30. Anti-vaxxers usually fudge the number by counting combination vaccines like the MMR shot as three separate doses (so two doses of the MMR become six) and by including every annual flu shot until the age of 18 as well as annual boosters of the covid-19 vaccine, the latter of which isn’t even recommended anymore for children thanks to the Trump administration.
Speaking of the MMR vaccine, Trump’s new order has explicitly pushed for it to be broken apart into separate vaccines for each; it also calls for all vaccines to be individually administered at separate medical visits. As for why, Trump claimed yesterday that children are now getting vaccinations “the size of a soda bottle” dumped into their bodies at once (this is not true).
To add insult to injury, Trump may also have taken a nap during this press conference.
Why this matters
It’s debatable just how much of this order will have a tangible impact on the vaccines children in the U.S. receive today. States set their own vaccination schedules, though they’ve historically been aligned with that of HHS/CDC. In the wake of RFK Jr.’s ascension, however, many states have openly stated they will not follow RFK Jr.’s diktats and that they will instead abide by the recommendations of outside medical groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Trump’s wish to break up the MMR vaccine is also complicated by the fact that no individual vaccines for these diseases are even licensed in the U.S. or much of the world in general. This complete lack of vaccine supply means it is unclear if and how a transition to single vaccines could even happen in the near future.
Yet, we should be worried about this latest attack, if only because it signals that Trump and RFK Jr. are not about to give up their crusade against vaccines, even as many within the GOP have seemingly tried to dissuade the White House from doing so, fearing political blowback. Just last month, for instance, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump wanted RFK Jr. to be more aggressive in forcing through changes to the childhood vaccination schedule and to validate the debunked link between vaccines and autism.
And even if Trump can’t get everything he wants with vaccines, it won’t take much to cause more harm. The U.S. is already in the midst of the worst measles outbreaks seen in decades. These outbreaks are largely centered around communities with very low vaccination rates, and the vast majority of U.S. children (over 90%) are still getting their MMR shots. Measles is incredibly contagious, however, and even a slight drop in the national vaccination rate fueled by Trump’s fearmongering could help create sustained outbreaks for years to come.
The life-saving practice of vaccination in the U.S. has arguably never been more in peril than it is today, and the one leading the charge against it is our own president.
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