The American Academy of Pediatrics noted this week that Donald Trump’s new “Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations” are “not based on gold-standard science.” This is accurate but understated: They’re not based on science at all.
The executive order, like the rest of the anti-vaccination crusade led by the president and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., rests on vibes, superstitions, and folklore. It would be tempting to compare it to witchcraft if not for the risk of defaming witches.
Trump’s directive seeks to reduce the number of vaccines recommended for children by more than a third, from 18 to 11, exposing many more to the worst outcomes of hepatitis B, influenza, and COVID-19. It also recommends that each vaccination be administered in a separate appointment, and that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) shot be split into immunizations for each of the three diseases, which are not available as such in the United States.
Reprising an earlier Health and Human Services policy that was blocked by a federal judge, Trump’s order is on dubious legal as well as scientific footing. But even if it doesn’t survive judicial scrutiny, the administration’s continued muddling of vaccination messages has obvious risks.
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Likewise, making child immunizations that much harder for working parents by requiring more appointments can only bolster the president’s remarkable success in making America measly again. More people have already contracted measles under this administration than in all the preceding years of this century combined.
Cases of pertussis, also known as whooping cough and commonly prevented by a combination vaccine, hit a 13-year high in 2025. This year, a flu outbreak sickened hundreds of Air Force trainees and killed one after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made vaccinations optional. It’s all too foreseeable given Trump’s disastrous mismanagement of the pandemic, which killed more than a million Americans.
Childhood vaccinations, meanwhile, saved more than a million lives over the past three decades. A federal study found that they also prevented 32 million hospitalizations, half a billion illnesses, and $2.7 trillion in direct and indirect costs.
So why is the White House so determined to undermine what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called “one of the greatest achievements of biomedical science and public health”?
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Apart from the endlessly debunked myth that vaccines cause autism, Trump, Kennedy, and Co. seem strangely preoccupied with the number and volume of shots. This week, they claimed that the previous schedule subjected children to a total of 57 shots — or 72 or 94. The president said that entails “large amounts of, like, vats” of fluid “pumped into your child’s body.”
That is about as medically sound as his infamous Clorox cure for COVID. The most expansive understanding of the shots required to attend school yields about 35 doses over the first five years of a child’s life. At about half a milliliter each, that amounts to a bit more than a tablespoon.
Trump has acknowledged that his objection to the measles, mumps, and rubella shot is “based on what I feel.” Asked this week to explain his contention that the injection could be “quite lethal,” contradicting half a century of use and study of the vaccine, he replied, “What I’ve heard is that there are some people that say it is that way.”
But no one has to believe what the president heard some people say when it comes to the lethality of measles itself: The disease has already killed two unvaccinated children on his watch. How many more will follow?