Kennedy’s moves were only beginning. The fervent anti-vaccine campaigner and conspiracy proponent launched his boldest assault on immunizations in January, trimming the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule from 17 immunizations down to 11 to match guidance from Denmark, a far smaller, more homogenous nation with universal health care. The US is now an outlier among comparable countries for recommending so few childhood vaccines.
Conspiracy theories and political risks
Although these and other adjustments to vaccine guidance by Kennedy and his associates have been widely condemned by medical and public-health experts, they still don’t satisfy his ardent anti-vaccine followers, who make no secret of wanting all vaccines ended.
On Monday, the MAHA Institute, a think tank spun out of Kennedy’s Make America Health Again movement, hosted an event filled with high-profile anti-vaccine figures. Attendees included Del Bigtree, a well-known conspiracy theorist who runs the Informed Consent Action Network, and Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded.
The program centered on a supposed “Massive Epidemic of Vaccine Injury,” a fabricated public-health crisis the MAHA Institute is promoting under the label “Mevi.” The six-hour gathering was essentially a showcase of anti-vaccine talking points, packed with false claims, misinformation, and disinformation about immunizations — including assertions that vaccines cause autism and autoimmune conditions and that COVID-19 shots are deadly.
At the opening, MAHA Institute President Mark Gordon outlined his sweeping view that the medical establishment has run a complex, global, decades-long conspiracy to conceal vaccine harms — which he described as poisons — and to doctor data about their benefits. One slide declared, “Vaccines are the greatest scam in medical history.”
He concluded that “the childhood vaccination schedule needs to be eliminated and all vaccines need to be removed from the market.”
While Gordon and his fellow speakers appeared indifferent to how popular or politically costly their positions might be, the Trump administration seems to disagree. The Post reported that Trump’s lead pollster, Tony Fabrizio, found vaccine skepticism “rejected by most voters,” and that opposition to vaccine mandates is “politically risky.” His polling, like many others, shows broad public backing for vaccines and for vaccine requirements. Fabrizio cautioned in a December memo that politicians who push to eliminate vaccine recommendations “will pay a price in the election.”
