America rewrites the childhood vaccine schedule
The US has scaled back ‘routine’ childhood vaccines, moving closer to a Danish-style schedule. This investigation examines what changed — and what the backlash reveals about vaccine policy.
For decades, the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule expanded quietly. What began as a modest set of routine childhood immunisations grew into a dense matrix of injections, boosters, and age-based recommendations.
The expansion happened incrementally, buried in technical meetings and policy updates, far from public scrutiny.
That changed this week.
The U.S. government announced a major revision to the schedule, reducing the number of diseases for which childhood vaccines are ‘routinely recommended’ from 17 to 11 — a shift that brings the United States closer to European countries such as Denmark.
The backlash from the medical establishment was immediate.
Medical associations, academics, and former public health officials warned the decision would put children at risk, describing the shift as reckless and ideologically driven.
Speaking to STAT, Dr Daniel Jernigan, former head of the CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases, said the changes would create confusion and make it “harder for people to know what to do.”
In The New York Times, Dr Demetre Daskalakis, who previously led the CDC centre overseeing vaccine policy, accused the administration of making “stealth changes in vaccine policy” without proper scientific review.
Were they right?
This article examines what changed, why the backlash to a Danish-style schedule has been so fierce, and what the episode reveals about how vaccine policy is made — and where its vulnerabilities lie.