A pediatrician’s thoughts on the new vaccine schedule

 A pediatrician’s thoughts on the new vaccine schedule

The other day, I was getting my semi-annual cleaning at the dentist office. When the hygienist asked what I did before retirement, I told her I was a medical school professor. That touched off a 15-minute interrogation about childhood vaccination. She has an infant daughter. While she’s gotten all the recommended vaccines, she was plainly distressed by the Trump Administration anti-vax agenda and all the bogus anti-vax propaganda on the internet. I tried to answer her questions and put her at ease about her embrace of modern medicine over conspiracy theory, and she thanked me.

Although I know something about infectious disease, immunology and vaccines, I’m not an authority on vaccines and I’ve never practiced medicine. So I’ll hand the microphone to Ken Haller, MD, a friend and former colleague.

“Really, how many kids does #RFKjr want to kill? It's a valid question considering his reckless death-dealing In the disastrous changes to the CDC's recommendations for how many vaccines children should get.

 

“This is particularly distressing for me because, in over four decades of pediatric practice, I saw certain diseases almost disappear in children. These were prevented by vaccines that are now no longer recommended by the CDC, among them liver disease from hepatitis A and hepatitis B, meningitis (infection of the spinal cord) from Meningococcus, and death from dehydration caused by Rotavirus diarrhea. 

 

“These radicals are saying that they want the US immunization schedule to reflect that of other “peer countries” which give fewer vaccines to children, and they seem particularly fond of Denmark. Denmark may be a lot of great things, but from a public health standpoint, it is not a “peer country” of the United States. It has a population of just over 6,000,000, far less than the number of people in New York City alone, as opposed to 340 million in the US, and Denmark also has an incredibly homogeneous population. Since the US is a vastly more diverse (Oops! There’s that word!) and people here live in widely varied circumstances, we have more infectious diseases that require vaccination, and thankfully we actually have vaccines that can prevent many of them. If Denmark doesn't have that problem, lucky them! But in our case, fewer people getting vaccinated against these things means more kids are going to get sick and die.

“The CDC is also doing this during a particularly bad flu season where nine children have already died in this country from the flu, something that we can and do vaccinate against. 

"It's bad enough to have crackpots talking about conspiracy theories regarding vaccines on YouTube, but when it comes from the United States public health establishment – until recently the most respected infrastructure of its type in the world – some people are unfortunately going to think that maybe there is something to this.

“Let's be clear: There is NOTHING to this. There is NO science. There is NO lived experience. There is NO rational basis for anything that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC are doing regarding vaccines except for RFKJr’s bizarre pronouncements.

 

“We have to keep pushing back. We have to make sure that health insurance companies will recognize that it is much cheaper to give thousands of doses of hepatitis B vaccine to kids than it is to pay for taking care of one child with chronic hepatitis B disease or hepatocellular carcinoma, conditions that could lead to a liver transplant or death and that could have been prevented with a simple shot. We have to keep hounding our elected representatives to tell them that RFK, Jr, in particular should be removed from his post immediately as a menace to public safety. And we have to, one-on-one, have those conversations with people who are wavering about the best thing to do for their child's health.”