JONATHAN M. METSCH, Dr.P.H. – Tracking Emerging Public Health Challenges – August 12, 2026 – MEASLES
“SOMEWHERE IN AMERICA, sometime soon, a parent is going to take their 1-year-old to the pediatrician for what should be a normal well-child visit including vaccinations. They’re going to be nervous, like so many parents are—trying desperately to do all the right things for their child’s health, doing their very best to figure out what the medical science really says. And when the pediatrician recommends the standard measles vaccine doctors have been giving safely for half a century, the parent is going to say no, because they heard the shot’s current formulation might be lethal.”
At that point, the doctor might ask where they got that information. The parent will say they heard it from the president of the United States.
Sadly, they will be telling the truth.”
“Legally speaking, the order may not do much. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spent decades crusading against vaccines, tried to implement the same schedule changes in January. A federal court blocked those changes, ruling that Kennedy had made the decision on his own authority without going through the proper procedures or consulting the kind of experts that the law requires. Trump’s order would seem to fail the very same legal tests, which means the official government recommendations should, in theory, not change.
But as a practical matter, the order could influence states, which have the power to set school vaccination recommendations—especially if the Justice Department starts launching lawsuits against states like California with tighter requirements. And that’s to say nothing of how actions and rhetoric by normally respected agencies and officials, including the president himself, can influence the behavior of parents.”
“And it’s not just the measles making a comeback. Pertussis, the “whooping cough” disease that once killed thousands of children a year, is on the rise again. Doctors and hospitals are reporting more parents turning down Vitamin K shots that prevent potentially lethal brain clotting during infancy. Overall, one in six parents now say they skipped at least one of the officially recommended vaccines for their children, according to a KFF-Washington Post poll from last summer.” (1)
“Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal has torn into Donald Trump’s new crusade against childhood vaccines.”
“Now the Journal—the conservative broadsheet owned by the Murdoch family’s News Corp—has warned him the whole thing could blow up in his face. In a withering editorial, its board argued that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 72, and his trial lawyer pals profit from stoking fear of vaccines, and that targeting children’s jabs risks driving away voters who have been deserting Trump in his second term.
““Mr. Trump likes to paint a golden sheen on everything, but his proposed regimen isn’t based on rigorous science, or really any science at all,” the editorial said.
Its closing line was brutal: “The other risk: more measles.””
“Under Monday’s order, flu, COVID, rotavirus and hepatitis A and B shots are downgraded to “shared clinical decision-making” between parents and doctors, while dengue is advised only for “high-risk” groups.
Trump also claimed, offering no evidence, that the current combined MMR shot could be “quite lethal,” the Journal noted.”
The paper’s board shredded the reasoning behind all of it. It questioned whether the president is trying to frighten parents off vaccinating their kids altogether. It warned that splitting the MMR means years of manufacturing changes and extra trips to the doctor, so fewer protected kids. And it asked why a president with zero interest in copying Europe is suddenly leaning on European vaccine schedules.”
“The Journal warned that could mean the DOJ suing states whose school-shot rules stray from Trump’s list—the same strong-arming of states, it said, that Biden officials were guilty of over COVID.” (2)
“President Trump signed an executive order on Monday calling for scaling back the number of vaccinations American children receive. At an Oval Office event announcing the order, Mr. Trump suggested falsely that vaccines were linked to autism and that the combined measles, mumps and rubella shot could be lethal, among other claims.
While it is not clear yet whether the order has any legal power, experts said they were concerned that the statements from Mr. Trump, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others at the event would sow further doubt and confusion about the safety of immunizations.
Here is what the evidence shows on some of those claims.” (3)
“The “Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans” executive order comes months after a federal judge stayed the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) January 2026 changes to the childhood immunization schedule.3 By recognizing that same 11-disease list through direct presidential action instead of through ACIP, the order effectively reinstates the stayed policy through a different legal mechanism, sidestepping the court fight rather than resolving it.” (4)
“In a statement, Michael Osterholm, director of the Vaccine Integrity Project and an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, urged parents to trust the science. “Parents should continue to rely on the evidence-based immunization recommendations developed by trusted medical and public health experts, including the American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP],” he said. “Today’s Executive Order does not change the underlying scientific evidence supporting childhood immunization.” (5)
“We encourage parents to discuss questions about vaccination with their pediatrician or other trusted healthcare provider,” Osterholm said.
David Mandell, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, notes that separating vaccinations into multiple visits will place a “tremendous burden” on already strained primary care pediatricians and will make the process of getting vaccinated “much more challenging” for families. “My fervent hope is that pediatricians and families choose to follow [the AAP’s] vaccination schedule rather than the decidedly unscientific and dangerous one that this executive order puts forward,” Mandell says” (6)
“The official said the number of recommended childhood immunizations would drop “down to 11 diseases”, compared with 18 at the end of 2024.
Only six of the 17 vaccines currently routinely recommended for all children in the US would continue to have full recommendations: measles, mumps, rubella (MMR), diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (DTaP), polio, Hib, pneumococcal disease, HPV and varicella.”
Five other shots would be recommended only for those at high risk: monoclonal antibodies to protect against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) as well as vaccines against hepatitis A, hepatitis B and meningococcal ACWY, which is recommended for teens and high-risk infants. Dengue and meningococcal B vaccines are also on this list, but dengue was already recommended only for those at risk and meningococcal B was shared clinical decision-making.
And six shots would be pushed to shared clinical decision-making: hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, influenza and Covid-19.
This is a previously obscure category that means a provider would be required to weigh the risks and benefits, despite strong evidence for the safety and efficacy of these vaccines.
On the call, the White House official said vaccines moved into this category “still are a recommendation, and so we assume that that means they’ll still be covered by insurance” and remain “available to parents that want them”, adding: “The president is interested in getting parents more choice and flexibility.””
“The executive order would also require the MMR vaccine to be broken into three separate shots, which is not currently possible in the US as there are no separately licensed vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella and the licensing process takes years.
The order also states that, “to the maximum extent feasible, all childhood immunizations should be administered at separate medical visits”. This would put a financial and logistical strain on families and medical providers by creating several additional visits.
The US attorney general would also be tasked with challenging state laws that conflict with the executive order. The US has no vaccination mandates. Shots that are required for school attendance are set at the state and local level.” (7)
“Jašarević noted that the WHO’s recommendations for when people receive vaccine doses is “based on years of research across the world on how the immune system develops, when a person is most susceptible for a disease and how to keep protection strong.”
“This is all science-based, what comes out from WHO, and this is the advice we give to all countries, and we hope that all countries will use this best scientific evidence that we have,” Jašarević added.
Medical experts have pushed back on these changes to the U.S. vaccine schedule. States are ultimately responsible for setting these immunization standards, but they rely on federal and global recommendations for guidance.
The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Andrew Racine, called the proposed changes to childhood immunization programs “not only disheartening but dangerous” in a Monday statement.
“Instead of ensuring every family can access life-saving vaccines for measles, influenza, RSV and more, federal leaders are once again spreading misleading claims,” Racine said.
Public health experts and doctors have also criticized the executive order’s inclusion of a new recommendation to split up the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) into three separate shots administered in separate doctor visits.
Dr. Ashish Jha, who served as the coordinator of the White House COVID-19 response under former President Biden, called the move a “terrible idea” in a Monday interview with The Hill’s broadcast partner, NewsNation.
“No other country does this,” Jha said. “No country in Europe does this. Tajikistan used to do this, but they don’t even do that anymore. But I don’t want to be like Tajikistan, right? I want to be like Canada and [the] U.K. and Germany and France, and none of them do this stuff.”” (8)
Recommended Child and Adolescent Immunization Schedule for Ages 18 Years or Younger, https://downloads.aap.org/AAP/PDF/AAP-Immunization-Schedule.pdf
The Rise of the Measles-Industrial Complex, by Paul Krugman, https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-the-measles-industrial?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
1.Vaccine Lies, Direct from the Oval Office, by Jonathan Cohn, https://www.thebulwark.com/p/vaccine-lies-direct-from-the-oval-office-donald-trump-rfk-jr-anti-vax-mmr-measles?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
2.GOLD STANDARD IDIOCY, by Tom Latchem, https://www.thedailybeast.com/murdoch-paper-hits-trump-with-brutal-warning-over-his-new-measles-vaccine-crusade/
3.Fact-Checking the Trump Administration’s Claims About Vaccines, By Apoorva Mandavilli Dani Blum and Maggie Astor https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/well/trump-vaccines-fact-check.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
4.Trump Childhood Vaccine Order: What It Means for Parents and Payers, by Sabrina McCrear, https://www.ajmc.com/view/trump-childhood-vaccine-order-what-it-means-for-parents-and-payers
5.Trump issues executive order aimed at rewriting childhood vaccine schedule, By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-signs-executive-order-aimed-at-rewriting-childhood-vaccine-schedule/
6.Trump issues executive order aimed at rewriting childhood vaccine schedule, By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-signs-executive-order-aimed-at-rewriting-childhood-vaccine-schedule/
7.Trump signs executive order with plan to reduce number of recommended childhood vaccines, Melody Schreiber and Joseph Gedeon, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/10/trump-vaccines-executive-order-measles
8.WHO defends childhood immunization schedules after Trump reduction order, by Sarah Davis, https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/6022336-who-immunization-guidelines-trump-order/
curated by Jonathan M. Metsch, Dr.P.H.
Clinical Professor of Environmental Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai