Who to trust with your child’s vaccine schedule

When it comes to childhood vaccines, I think Secretary of Health and Human Service Robert F. Kennedy said it best in his confirmation hearing.

“My opinions for vaccines are irrelevant... I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.”

I couldn’t agree more.

When Donald Trump began his run for the White House in June 2015, many Americans were excited to see a candidate who was not a politician. It’s been much of his popularity for many years. He’s a businessman, not a politician.

It would make sense then that those who support Trump for this reason would also support an HHS secretary who is not a politician, but instead has an education or work history in health care.

Unfortunately for all Americans, RFK does not. His job history includes work as an attorney, an environmental law lawyer, the co-creator of a bottled water company and a run for president in 2024.

He is the son of RFK Sr., a former senator and attorney general, and the nephew of former president JFK. He was raised a politician.

As the mother of a 6 month old, the changes to the childhood vaccine schedule directly impact me and my family.

On Jan. 5, under the guidance of Trump, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a revision of the childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule. This had dropped the recommended of vaccination against 17 diseases and COVID-19 to 11, saying they did to align the U.S. with “peer countries” like Denmark.

Ah yes, us and Denmark, very similar. We both offer 12 months of paid maternity leave, have affordable government-ran childcare, universal healthcare, free education, five weeks of paid vacation annually and low crime rates. Wait a second, I don’t think that’s right.

By plane, the United States is more than eight hours from Denmark. Depending on where you start in the country, it’s 4,000 to 4,800 miles. Diseases adapt based on environmental risk factors.

“Most diseases are complex and stem from an interaction between your genes and your environment,” the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences wrote. “Factors in your environment can range from chemicals in air or water pollution, mold, pesticides, diet choices or grooming products.

In India, they vaccinate for typhoid. Many African countries have malaria vaccines as a part of their childhood immunization schedule.

Someone in Africa could say, “Well if the U.S., a developed country, doesn’t vaccinate for malaria, why should we?”

We don’t need to mimic other countries. We need to talk to our health care providers, utilize the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Center for Disease Control and other medical agencies with years of experience.

I know skeptics worry that big pharma pushes vaccines because they are profitable, and it makes sense to be skeptical! But much less is spent and made on prevention than on treatment.

According to a report by Harvard University, vaccine sales generate roughly $40 to $60 billion in annual revenue, approximately 3%-5% of the global pharmaceutical market. This doesn’t consider in the costs of manufacturing vaccines, a venture that ranges between $200 million and $500 million for a successful vaccine.

If you want to look at what is making big pharma the most money, it’s daily drugs primarily for cancer, followed by diabetes and weight loss drugs.

Anyway, back to the childhood vaccine schedule. The new guidelines have three categories of immunizations — those recommended for all children, those recommended for certain high-risk groups or populations and those based on shared clinical decision making.

The first category will include vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, polio, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, Haemophilusinfluenzae type B (Hib), pneumococcal disease, human papillomavirus (HPV) and varicella (chickenpox). Though it’s worth noting that it will only be recommended to have only one HPV dose instead of the previously recommended two or even three.

Those in the “recommended only for high-risk groups” category include respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), hepatitis A, hepatitis B, dengue, meningococcal ACWY and meningococcal B.

What I find interesting, is that if you look up the “high-risk” groups for these diseases, four of the six list infants or young children as high risk. So why wouldn’t they just be automatically recommended in the first years of life?

The final group of vaccines, those not recommended but available based on a doctor-parent decision are those for rotavirus, COVID-19, influenza, meningococcal disease, hepatitis A and hepatitis B.

Yes, they have three of these in two categories. No, I have no idea why.

While HHS assures parents that these immunizations will all still be fully covered by Affordable Care Act insurance plans and federal insurance programs, including Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Vaccines for Children program, there is no guarantee private insurance companies will continue to cover those that are no longer in the “core schedule.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics and other leading medical organizations have filed a motion to block this new immunization schedule, saying that “HHS arbitrarily and illegally overhauled the CDC’s schedule without following the evidentiary-driven and legally required processes for issuing recommended vaccine schedules in the United States.”

Please, more than anything, talk to your doctor. Our babies’ doctors are not getting some kind of “cut” for recommending immunizations. The only benefit they see is that they aren’t having to come to the hospital while they are on call to treat sick babies.

Most of us new parents are terrified of RSV. I was so happy our physician, Dr. Krogstad, told us her experience with the RSV vaccine. In her experience, it has drastically dropped the number of infant hospitalizations.

Why would you listen to an environmental lawyer playacting as a health expert when you can talk to those with decades of education and experience?