On Monday, President Trump announced a new Executive Order (EO) covering the childhood vaccine schedule. The EO recommends a number of changes, the most notable of which is reducing the number of diseases targeted by routine childhood vaccination from 17 to 11 (a 35% decrease) and the number of routine vaccines from 13 to 7 (a 46% decrease), as well as separating the combined measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine into three separate single-disease shots.
Notably, no individual shots are currently available on the market, and they would have to go through the FDA approval process before they are.
Trump’s Unhinged Comments During the Event
The EO is scary enough, coming as it does from an administration with a history of making terrible and dangerous public health decisions. What’s more frightening are the unhinged comments and outright disinformation that the president uttered during the Oval Office event.
Although the shots are generally just a tenth of a teaspoon or even less, Trump said, “Large amounts — like vats — of vaccine are currently pumped into your child’s body,” and he wants to “let time elapse between visits so the body can handle this massive amount of fluid being pumped in.” He also said he’s seen proof of “vaccinations the size of a bottle of soda poured into a little child’s body. And bad things happen…”
Then there’s this: “In many cases, we were requiring 72 jabs for our beautiful, healthy, lovely, delicate little children.” The actual number of “jabs” is about half that over 18 years.
With regard to the MMR vaccine, Trump said, “You have the MMR, we want it in three separate vaccinations given at separate times. Together there could be a possibility they are quite lethal and separately, it looks like they are not at all lethal but just very effective.” The MMR shot has been given for over five decades and is not in any way “quite lethal.” In fact, there is literally no evidence to suggest giving them separately is in any way safer.
What’s more, Dr. Richard Besser, the president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a former acting director of the CDC, told The New York Times, splitting up the MMR vaccine serves “no medical purpose and would force parents to make multiple appointments, needlessly take time off work and make child care arrangements.” In other words, it could actually be dangerous to split them up.
The EO says the vaccines for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and meningococcal disease should only be given to high-risk children. However, these are diseases that can be fatal to anyone.
Trump Wants to be the Hero of Autism
Trump seems to want to be known as the guy who solved autism. During the event, he said, “Decades ago, children received only a small fraction of the vaccines required today. In those times, people were much healthy [sic], and of course, the high rates of autism now observed did not exist. So there’s a reason for such epidemic rates of autism, and we’re going to bring it back to where it was.” He also said, “I came in and I said, ‘I want to find what’s going on with autism.’ It’s many, many times what it used to be years ago, and it gets progressively worse, and we had progressively more and more vaccines.”
This desire to be the autism hero may be why he said his so-called “Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations” are “something that I think will have a huge impact on autism.” This is obviously disinformation. Any suggested link between vaccines and autism – a major windmill that anti-vaxxers tilt at – has been debunked time and time again by actual scientific studies. And the increase in autism diagnoses is generally attributed to better screening and higher awareness, not some external cause like vaccines or acetaminophen. Additionally, his assertion that there were only “1 in 10,000 [cases of autism in children] 20 years ago” is simply false. In 2006, it was actually 1 in 110.
Perhaps the most subtly dangerous thing Trump said was, “There’s nothing that we lose with this. The worst thing that would happen would be nothing happens.” The truth is, when, not if, kids get sick from preventable diseases because they weren’t vaccinated for them, some of them will die needlessly. And if immuno-compromised kids get sick because their classmates or friends weren’t vaccinated, some of them will die needlessly, as well.
For someone who pretends to be so concerned about “our beautiful, healthy, lovely, delicate little children”, Trump couldn’t actually seem to focus during the event. When he wasn’t talking, he appeared to be either nodding off or actually sleeping through others’ remarks.
Doctors Respond to Trump’s Executive Order
The response to this EO from physicians is about what you would expect.
Dr. Willie Underwood III, president of the American Medical Association, released a statement saying, “Decisions about how and when vaccines are used should be driven by rigorous scientific evidence, patient safety, and independent medical and public health expertise. Altering a proven vaccination schedule without credible evidence risks weakening public confidence and putting children’s health at risk.”
Dr. Andrew D. Racine, president, American Academy of Pediatrics, said, “Today’s executive order is not based on ‘gold-standard science.’ There is no new evidence to justify significant changes to childhood immunization guidance…The only purpose of this announcement is to sow confusion so that more people doubt the importance of vaccines.”
Even Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy took to X to blast the president:
I’m a doctor. This executive order is wrong. The President does not have the expertise to make these changes.
Vaccines are overwhelmingly safe. Vaccines are effective. Vaccines DO NOT cause autism.
Breaking up vaccines will mean children have to get more shots to get the same protection, not fewer shots. It will increase hesitancy and make children less safe.
Parents should listen to their child’s pediatrician about vaccines rather than listening to an inaccurate executive order. This is so wrong.
The Upshot: Americans Don’t Agree with this BS
Thankfully, polling shows that Americans largely are still supportive of vaccines and don’t believe the myths surrounding them, myths perpetuated by the U.S. president along with his public health advisors like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But it’s a dangerous situation when our top leaders are lying to us about anything, much less our public health systems.
It’s a terrible day when a pediatric practice feels compelled to put a warning on their vaccination webpage that says, “The CDC is no longer considered to be a reliable or legitimate source of information.”
With the November midterm elections just around the corner, we’re about to find out if voters will hold their leaders accountable.