Endangering Lives Is the Policy

Public health dismantled in service of ideology and power.

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Starting wars, alienating allies, blocking the release of the Epstein files, inciting, encouraging, and excusing ICE violence. Amid all of that, it has been easy to miss an extremely important story—one that could cause countless preventable deaths for generations to come.

Politico reports that massive vaccine scheduling changes are coming under the leadership of Donald’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The agency is downgrading recommendations for multiple routine vaccines, including influenza, meningococcal disease, rotavirus, hepatitis A, and RSV.

Politico explains the shift this way:

Those shots will no longer be universally recommended, but advised, under a concept known as shared clinical decision-making, which emphasizes conversations between healthcare providers and patients before choosing to vaccinate. The agency shifted to this approach last year for COVID-19 and hepatitis B vaccine recommendations for most populations.

Let us be as clear as possible.

This is insanity.

This is yet another way the Trump regime is dragging us backward. Vaccines are one of the greatest accomplishments in human history. They have prevented millions of unnecessary deaths. Having a sociopath and conspiracy-minded creep in charge of the nation’s health apparatus has made it much more difficult for people to understand why vaccines are vitally important and crucial, not to mention access them.

Public health experts and pediatric groups have sharply criticized the move, warning that it bypasses established scientific review processes, undermines trust in vaccines, and makes the country considerably less healthy. Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, put it plainly:

At a time when parents, pediatricians, and the public are looking for clear guidance and accurate information, this ill-considered decision will sow further chaos and confusion and erode confidence in immunizations. This is no way to make our country healthier.

Agreed. This is a surefire way to make us sicker and put our children at increasing risk of acquiring potentially fatal but easily preventable diseases.

Kennedy is not a physician. He is not a virologist or an immunologist. He has no degree in any scientific discipline and cannot even claim the title of quack. He was previously an environmental attorney. He knows nothing about vaccines, immunology, or infectious disease. What he does have is a disturbing fixation on creating the conditions under which more American children will get sick, and some will die.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made these changes without vetting them through its usual independent advisory body, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Once again, long-standing norms were discarded because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could never get these reckless changes past experts who actually understand medicine, epidemiology, and public health.

The Trump regime’s justification is as maddening as it is dishonest. As The Washington Post reports, senior officials claim the changes are meant to align U.S. vaccine schedules with those in other countries and that this will somehow restore Americans’ confidence in vaccines.

Why? How?

NBC News Center Maine spoke with a health expert who underscored the danger of these changes:

If changes to our schedule are needed—and over the years we’ve made lots of changes when evidence supported it—they should come from careful scientific review. Parents deserve clear, consistent, evidence-based guidance they can trust.

Kennedy has personally influenced countless people to distrust vaccines. It is absurd on its face to suggest that this move has anything to do with restoring confidence.

Thanks to the distrust he has sown, there were 2,071 reported cases of measles in 2025. PBS News recently examined the consequences of the anti-vaccine movement as it relates to measles. A physician interviewed on the program explained just how dire the situation has become:

So when we say it’s the worst year in all those years, here’s just a quick look at the numbers. The national case count reached 1,288 on Wednesday, that is across 38 states. There’ve been 1,162 hospitalizations. About half of those are children under the age of five.

When asked to put those numbers into historical context, the expert continued:

This is the largest number of cases in more than 30 years. It goes back to before we had eliminated measles from the United States, which happened in the year 2000. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, we had large outbreaks in a number of cities, and that’s when we had these really high case counts. We’re rivaling those numbers now. This is a really disappointing milestone we’ve hit.

The United States was once on the brink of eradicating childhood diseases like measles. Now we are going in precisely the wrong direction.

Health and Human Services has been widely condemned for these decisions. Dr. Neil Stone, an infectious disease expert, wrote on X:

One of the vaccines being dropped from the CDC schedule is for meningitis. Meningitis—one of the most horrific, deadly infections you would ever have the misfortune to see—can and does kill kids within hours. Dropped to satisfy anti-vaccine fantasies. Sick.

It is sick. Kennedy is sick. The people who confirmed him are sick. The person who nominated him is sick. They share a common goal: to make this country sicker than it has been in decades. This is part of the Trump regime’s much larger project—keeping all of us tired, demoralized, scared, poor, and sick.

The consequences are already visible. Flu levels in the United States recently reached their highest point in 25 years. The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 1,200 positive flu tests in a single reporting period, with over 100 hospitalizations and three deaths.

Pediatrician Dr. Bonnie Maldonado, speaking to ABC7 News Bay Area, explained how these changes will burden and confuse parents:

How are they going to have the time to do all this, get this all organized, instead of just being able to walk into their provider’s office and get the normal recommended shots?

Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a Stanford pediatrician who has practiced for more than 30 years, described what is at stake:

I have seen children die from liver failure from hepatitis B, and it’s a horrendous death. It’s just terrible. And even if one child is protected, I would want to see that protection happen. Now we’re opening it up.

That, too, is part of the larger project.

Confuse people. Exhaust them. Convince them to turn away from safe, effective vaccines. Add sickness to the list of burdens the Trump regime is deliberately imposing on Americans.

The Trump regime is endangering lives—especially the lives of children.

That is not collateral damage.

That is the point.

The Good in Us by Mary L. Trump is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.