{"id":2030,"date":"2026-08-13T23:16:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T23:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=2030"},"modified":"2026-08-13T23:16:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T23:16:30","slug":"u-s-vaccine-guidance-is-a-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=2030","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Vaccine Guidance Is a Mess"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

This is an edition of The<\/i> Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. <\/i>Sign up for it here.<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s New Plan to Get His Name Back on the Kennedy Center<\/a><\/p>\n

In January, the Trump administration attempted to fundamentally change the way the United States handles childhood immunizations. Following a memo from the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC updated its vaccine schedule to recommend that some shots no longer be given to all children. A federal court undid the effort in March. In an executive order in May, Donald Trump called on states to adopt the narrower schedule anyway. On Monday, Trump issued a new executive order on the same subject, focused on lowering the number of vaccines that the government recommends for all children. As I wrote earlier this week, this White House has a habit of doubling down when it doesn\u2019t get its way. But only states have the power to put these proposals into practice\u2014and many state policy makers, concerned that the White House is contradicting existing research, aren\u2019t keen to follow its guidance.<\/p>\n

According to the new executive order, preventive shots for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, dengue, and other diseases should be recommended for \u201chigh-risk\u201d groups only. The order also calls to split up vaccinations for measles, mumps, and rubella\u2014the two-dose MMR shot that has been a standard recommendation for U.S. children for decades\u2014into three separate stages, and directs the attorney general to pursue legal action against states that don\u2019t respect \u201cparental authority, religious freedom, disability accommodations, and equal protection under the law.\u201d (The order says it will align U.S. policy with the best practices of other countries, such as Denmark, but the experts I spoke with highlighted that what works in one country won\u2019t necessarily work in another.)<\/p>\n

The mandate may not have any legal authority to compel states to change their guidelines in the near term, although the invocation of the attorney general suggests that litigation may be on the horizon. And the single-disease vaccines that the executive order encourages aren\u2019t yet available in the U.S. But this week\u2019s order risks creating even more uncertainty about vaccines than already exists. \u201cIf you set out to write a policy that confuses people, it would look a lot like this one,\u201d Jake Scott, an infectious-disease specialist at Stanford, told me.<\/p>\n

Between the policy priorities of the Trump administration and the guidance of public-health experts, Americans have been stuck in a state of vaccine whiplash. When the American Academy of Pediatrics broke with the government earlier this year over its proposed vaccine schedule, the chair of the organization\u2019s committee on infectious diseases told reporters that the recommendations are a \u201cstrong departure from the medical evidence and no longer offer the optimal way to prevent illness in children.\u201d Some state lawmakers have been fighting over how best to adapt to the CDC\u2019s changing guidelines; Kansas\u2019s GOP-dominated legislature tried to bring the state\u2019s vaccine rules into alignment with the CDC\u2019s, only for its Democratic governor to veto the effort in April. And many other states have publicly said that they will reject the guidelines.<\/p>\n

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has questioned vaccines\u2019 safety in the past, has been driving the discussions of the CDC\u2019s vaccine advisory committee, as my colleagues Tom Bartlett and Katherine J. Wu reported. And although the secretary has moved away from explicit anti-vax rhetoric in recent months (following a reported White House push for health officials to stick to messages with broad public support), vaccine skepticism clearly lingers within the administration. During the press conference for Monday\u2019s executive order, Trump suggested that the MMR vaccine could be \u201cquite lethal.\u201d There is no evidence for this. Measles, though, can kill: Last year, the U.S. saw its first deaths from measles in a decade.<\/p>\n

Rethinking MMR at this moment poses extreme logistical challenges. Even if pharmaceutical companies opted to invest the time and money to introduce these shots to the American market, splitting up the doses would create new problems for caregivers. \u201cWe are essentially tripling the operational labor required of the parent or guardian (who must now schedule three separate appointments for their child),\u201d Maimuna Majumder, a Harvard epidemiologist, told me in an email, which is \u201call but guaranteed to result in missed vaccines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more The Lesson Watergate Was Supposed to Teach<\/a><\/p>\n

In the meantime, the executive order risks misinforming Americans who are already unsure of how they feel about vaccination. The Kaiser Family Foundation released a study in June suggesting that about a third of American adults fall into a \u201cmixed middle group\u201d of vaccine skepticism\u2014they believe some myths and reject others. My colleague Nick Florko, who covers public health, told me that these are the people most likely to be swayed by the administration\u2019s latest push: \u201cThose are the folks that might see this and think, Okay, maybe my belief that I want to delay this vaccine is well founded because the federal guidance now says that we should do that<\/i>.\u201d Under the White House\u2019s rubric, the Americans who most need clear guidance are those who stand to lose.<\/p>\n

Related<\/b>:<\/p>\n

\n