{"id":64510,"date":"2026-08-12T17:43:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T17:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/64510\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T17:43:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T17:43:16","slug":"hiltzik-trumps-awful-vaccine-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/64510\/","title":{"rendered":"Hiltzik: Trump’s awful vaccine order"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

No one can claim to have been surprised by the executive order President Trump issued Monday calling for a radical transformation of childhood vaccination practices<\/a> in the U.S.<\/p>\n

After all, Trump has been beating the anti-vaccination drum for years. His secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is an established anti-vaccine activist. <\/p>\n

Trump himself has been an almost limitless fount of misinformation and disinformation about medicine, promoting useless nostrums against COVID-19 such as hydroxychloroquine, pondering whether ingesting bleach would kill the virus and questioning whether expectant mothers should take Tylenol.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen proof where they have a vaccination that looks like the size of a bottle of soda, poured into a little child\u2019s body, and bad things happen.<\/p>\n

\u2014 President Trump fabricates a yarn about childhood vaccinations<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s executive order marks a new phase in his battle against public health.<\/p>\n

The order is tantamount to a one-stop shop offering all the common anti-vaccine tropes claiming that America\u2019s children have been overwhelmed by excessive immunizations \u2014 a multivalent injection of fact-free claptrap, if you wish. <\/p>\n

Get the latest from Michael Hiltzik <\/p>\n

Commentary on economics and more from a Pulitzer Prize winner.<\/p>\n

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The tsunami of fabricated claims in the order and voiced by Trump and others at the Oval Office announcement Monday is almost overwhelming.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s a saving grace in this episode, it\u2019s that most states and the vast majority of parents<\/a> are likely to ignore Trump\u2019s order. But the order will leave its mark by magnifying the confusion many parents already face in making decisions about their children\u2019s immunizations. That\u2019s a public health threat all on its own.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look at Monday\u2019s order, which claims to \u201cdeliver gold standard childhood vaccine recommendations.\u201d<\/p>\n

First, the order pares the list of recommended immunizations to 11 diseases from 17. Six immunizations \u2014 for hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, flu and COVID-19 \u2014 are knocked down from \u201crecommended\u201d to \u201cshared clinical decision-making.\u201d That\u2019s code for expanding the opportunity for parents to refuse the shots for their children.<\/p>\n

Trump calls for supplanting the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine by individual vaccines for each disease, administered at separate physician visits. <\/p>\n

He calls on the Department of Justice to pursue cases against states and localities whose immunization rules contradict \u201cparental authority, religious freedom, disability accommodations, and equal protection under the law, including their obligations to provide religious and medical exemptions from childhood and adolescent immunization requirements.\u201d <\/p>\n

He revived the canard about vaccines contributing to a rise in autism, despite the connection having been thoroughly refuted by years of clinical research. <\/p>\n

Trump also called on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, under whose imprimatur federal vaccine recommendations are issued, to revise its recommendations to match those of other \u201cpeer, developed countries.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n

That last item points to Trump\u2019s disregard for the niceties of government procedure. In effect, he has presented his newly installed director of the CDC, Erica Schwartz, with a heaping, steaming platter of policy manure. Schwartz only won Senate confirmation on Wednesday, after a hearing in which she pledged to \u201cnever betray the science\u201d<\/a> on which CDC policies are based. This is her first test.<\/p>\n

Schwartz hasn\u2019t commented on the Trump order as of this writing. I asked the CDC for her view on the executive order, but received no reply.<\/p>\n

Trump unveiled his executive order at an Oval Office ceremony at which no licensed physician was in attendance. Trump himself issued mouthfuls of balderdash during the event. \u201cI\u2019ve seen proof,\u201d he said, \u201cwhere they have a vaccination that looks like the size of a bottle of soda<\/a>, poured into a little child\u2019s body, and bad things happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be crystal clear: There\u2019s no such thing. To quote infectious disease expert Jake Scott of Stanford Medicine<\/a>, \u201cevery vaccine given at a baby\u2019s two-month visit adds up to about half a teaspoon. A 20-ounce soda bottle is more than 200 times that.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Monday\u2019s announcement, Trump called the MMR vaccine \u201cquite lethal.\u201d Asked by a reporter what evidence he had for that, he replied, \u201cWhat I\u2019ve herd is that there are some people that say it is that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s order cites no scientific research to justify splitting multivalent vaccines such as the MMR into individual parts, even though it\u2019s obvious that doing so and requiring multiple doctor visits will raise the cost and time-wastage for many households and despite research showing that the bundled vaccines don\u2019t present a health threat to children and work as expected. <\/p>\n

I asked the White House for the scientific grounds for splitting up the vaccine. \u201cPresident Trump is one of countless parents who have voiced questions and concerns about the combined MMR vaccine,\u201d said White House spokesperson Kush Desai. \u201cThe Administration\u2019s push to develop separate vaccinations for all three diseases … ultimately will increase vaccination rates for all three diseases.\u201d <\/p>\n

In fact, experts generally hold that splitting the shots will decrease vaccination rates for all three diseases by erecting an unnecessary obstacle to the shots. That was Japan\u2019s experience when it split off mumps from the MMR vaccine and ended up with a higher incidence of mumps<\/a> than before.<\/p>\n

As it happens, almost nothing Trump called for is practical or possible today. Monovalent childhood vaccines aren\u2019t available<\/a> in the U.S., or in most other developed countries.<\/p>\n

Physicians oppose a return to monovalent vaccines because that would \u201cunnecessarily delay administration of the three vaccine components, leaving children susceptible for a longer period of time to serious, life-threatening diseases,\u201d according to the American Academy of Pediatrics<\/a>. \u201cUse of monovalent vaccines also would increase the number of injections a child would need and increase the number of visits required to complete the vaccination series.\u201d <\/p>\n

In other words, the bundled vaccines are better for children\u2019s health.<\/p>\n

Developing separate measles, mumps and rubella vaccines and bringing them to market could take a decade of R&D including clinical trials. Drugmakers aren\u2019t likely to embark on the process now, knowing that a new administration will take office Jan. 20, 2029, and \u2014 assuming it hews to accepted science \u2014 likely as not will reverse these recommendations. <\/p>\n

Also, vaccine policy is firmly in the hands of the states. None are mandated to follow federal standards. To date, almost all states have maintained their previous mandates or otherwise decoupled their policies from the federal recommendations. According to the healthcare information site KFF, by Jan. 20 this year, 28 states and the District of Columbia \u2014 including all states with Democratic governors \u2014 had announced that they wouldn\u2019t follow the federal government. <\/p>\n

In Florida, a red state, the anti-vax surgeon general Joseph Ladapo \u2014 whom I earlier labeled \u201cthe most dangerous quack in America\u201d <\/a>\u2014 has recommended ending all childhood vaccine mandates. But Florida lawmakers haven\u2019t gone along<\/a>, and the mandates are still in place.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s latest order is an attempted end run around a federal judge\u2019s ruling in March<\/a> that blocked Kennedy\u2019s attempt to cut the vaccine schedule to 11 immunizations. Trump followed that ruling with the executive order citing peer countries May 29.<\/p>\n

Vaccine specialists find Trump\u2019s citing \u201cpeer nations\u201d to be \u201cnonsensical,\u201d to quote Paul Offit, one of the nation\u2019s leading vaccinologists, of Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia. When if comes to child immunizations, Offit has observed<\/a>, there are no \u201cpeers\u201d to emulate: \u201cDifferent developed world countries make different decisions based on demographics, health system capacity, vaccine access, and vaccine cost,\u201d Offit notes. <\/p>\n

For example, Denmark, which Kennedy has held up as a model, doesn\u2019t pay for the rotavirus vaccine, \u201cwhich prevents a virus that causes vomiting, diarrhea, and severe dehydration,\u201d Offit says. But it has been recommended in the U.S. since 2006, eliminating as many as 70,000 hospitalizations every year. <\/p>\n

\u201cDenmark should mimic the U.S., not the other way around,\u201d Offit says.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that childhood immunizations save lives. The advent of the measles vaccine reduced the incidence of that disease<\/a> in the U.S. from an average of 530,000 cases per year to fewer than 50. Cases of whooping cough, polio, smallpox, rubella and diphtheria fell by 99-100% after vaccinations for each became standard.<\/p>\n

Trump and Kennedy want to return us to those bad old days by refashioning them fictitiously as the good old days. They would expose millions of children to severe disease and death, which that could be averted by the science at hand. It\u2019s a terrifying turn in American medical policy. In heaven\u2019s name, why would they want to do it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No one can claim to have been surprised by the executive order President Trump issued Monday calling for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[154,33692,8493,3863,8,33693,33489,5413,33696,6665,33694,9,33662,33695,7,1071,1186,1349],"class_list":["post-64510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-case","tag-child-vaccine","tag-disease","tag-executive-order","tag-headlines","tag-immunization","tag-mmr-vaccine","tag-monday","tag-monovalent-childhood-vaccine","tag-most-state","tag-mump","tag-news","tag-paul-offit","tag-rubella-vaccine","tag-top-stories","tag-trump","tag-u-s","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/117083780070514944","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}