Freethought-Now

President Trump’s recent executive order to space out the mumps, measles and rubella (MMR) vaccine may sound benign at first glance. But it is only his latest interference with medical vaccination policies that will gravely harm public health.

First of all, mumps, measles and rubella aren’t even currently available as individual shots. But even if Trump’s interfering recommendations could be followed, they would require three different shots and appointments (that’s six once you include the second dose required before entering kindergarten), inevitably meaning many children would not receive all vaccinations and boosters at the appropriate times. The vaccines were combined because, according to Associated Press, studies have shown that combining the shots increases the likelihood of completing all the recommended inoculations by age 2. This makes sense given the difficulty of scheduling so many doctors’ appointments, particularly for families without ready access to transportation and sick leave. Even for parents who have the time and transportation to follow through on three times as many appointments, the excess appointments will burden physicians and clinics at a time when the United States is experiencing a severe pediatric care shortage.

Measles is one of the most infectious of the communicable diseases, lingering in the air for up to two hours and leaving a trail of severe complications up to and including death. Trump’s decision to risk the health of children is inexcusable. So is his rationale, which is to repeat the disproven allegation that the number and timing of vaccines can contribute to autism, even though scientific consensus and decades of studies have shown there is no link.

Meanwhile, only an appealed court order is currently blocking implementation of the Trump administration’s reckless and irresponsible move to reduce recommended vaccinations (meaning that they won’t necessarily be covered by many health insurance plans, including Medicaid). Trump’s new executive order reiterates that reduction. The scorned vaccines include those to prevent the flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of deadly meningitis and RSV, a major filler of pediatric hospital beds. 

The administration is practicing its speciality — death by a thousand cuts — with its endless attacks on vaccines, by its stacking of the vaccine advisory committee and by “Health” Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s relentless and discredited defamations of the science of vaccines. The harm is not just directly to individual and public health but to future development of more and better vaccinations. 

A year ago, the Department of Health and Human Services unforgivably deep-sixed 22 mRNA vaccine development projects. Jeff Coller, a professor of RNA biology and therapeutics at Johns Hopkins University who worked on messenger RNA for more than three decades, points out: “The mRNA Covid vaccine is an American government success story. Moderna’s vaccine was designed with the National Institutes of Health and paid for by the same department that killed the platform last August. It reached arms in 11 months under Operation Warp Speed, which President Trump still calls one of the great achievements of his first term. He is right about that. Published analyses credit Covid vaccination with preventing more than 3 million American deaths in its first two years. That achievement was delivered by mRNA. You cannot celebrate the miracle and defund the machinery that produced it.”

Coller adds that the fix is easy: Congress must restore the canceled contracts and “require that any decision to fund or defund an entire medical platform go through scientific review rather than a press release.”

Amen to that! 

Only those who repudiate reason could, after reaping the benefits of mRNA research during the Covid-19 pandemic, contrive to turn vaccinations into the villain instead of the savior. The true villains are Trump, Kennedy and the host of Christian nationalist nutjobs running our federal government.

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