Childhood vaccines: RFK Jr. escalates his war

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long railed against childhood vaccines

(Image credit: Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just “put millions of American children needlessly at risk,” said Bloomberg in an editorial. Fulfilling “a
long-standing goal of his anti-vaccine supporters,” he cut the number of recommended childhood vaccines from 17 to 11 last week, dropping government support for kids getting shots for Covid, flu, hepatitis A and B, RSV, and meningitis. Kennedy ignored vaccine experts and relied on the fallacy that healthy kids “can handle routine infections,” so they don’t need protection. In the real world, it’s often only when kids are hospitalized with the flu, RSV, and other infectious diseases that underlying vulnerabilities are discovered. Many Democratic states plan to ignore his recommendations, but this blow to public vaccination “couldn’t come at a worse time,” with a virulent flu strain taking nine children’s lives and measles and whooping cough making a comeback. Congress should haul in Kennedy for a hearing and pose one simple question: “Why are the nation’s children being asked to bear all the risks of this reckless experiment?

Kennedy justified his change by saying it aligns us with Denmark, said Sheldon Jacobson and Janet A. Jokela in The Hill. But Denmark’s population of about 6 million is far smaller than the U.S.’s and not as economically diverse. Denmark’s universal health care system ensures that sick children can receive prompt, free treatment. With his willful
ignorance, Kennedy is guaranteeing that “there will certainly be more disease” across America.

If Kennedy had new data, there would be “no reason not to re-evaluate the vaccine schedule,” said Pradheep J. Shanker in National Review. Science is constantly evolving. But “none of that applies” here. The childhood vaccine schedule is the result of decades of testing, experience, and millions of shots. “The only change was political and partisan,” with Kennedy “unilaterally deciding that he doesn’t like what the evidence and data show him.” That’s “the opposite of solid, gold-standard science.” Anti-vaxxers argue that Kennedy is merely “giving parents a choice,” said Jeff Nesbit in his Substack newsletter. But he has “systematically poisoned” parents’ faith in vaccines with reckless rhetoric. Now we’re actually “removing the ‘default to safety’ that has protected millions.” Rotavirus, for example, caused 70,000 hospitalizations a year before the vaccine. Evidently, Kennedy wants “hospital wards to fill up again.” Any nation “that cannot protect its children from 19th-century diseases is a nation in decline.”