Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a vaccine skeptic. His Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just announced new vaccine guidelines for the COVID-19 and MMRV vaccines. Photo by Francis Chungg/UPI | License Photo
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday that it updated its adult and child immunization schedules to apply individual-based decision-making to COVID-19 vaccination.
The CDC also changed its recommendation for toddlers to get protection from chickenpox as a stand-alone immunization rather than in combination with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination. The varicella vaccine protects against the varicella-zoster virus that causes chickenpox and shingles.
“Informed consent is back,” Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill said in a statement. “CDC’s 2022 blanket recommendation for perpetual COVID-19 boosters deterred health care providers from talking about the risks and benefits of vaccination for the individual patient or parent. That changes today. I commend the doctors and public health experts of [the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices] for educating Americans about important vaccine safety signals.”
ACIP unanimously recommended people talk to their doctors about the COVID-19 shot, regardless of age or health conditions. It didn’t recommend vaccination, but it didn’t recommend against it, The Hill reported.
Adding this new decision-making plan “puts up one more little barrier” to getting the shot, Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a professor of global health and infectious diseases at Stanford University, told NBC News. “It’s kind of a vague term that says you should have your doctor or your provider or pharmacist tell you what the risks and benefits are before you get the vaccine.”
In June, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of ACIP and replaced some of them with vaccine skeptics.
ACIP normally includes pediatricians, geriatricians and other vaccine experts. Kennedy’s new panel includes a psychiatrist, neuroscientist, epidemiologist and biostatistician, and professor of operations management.
In late August, Kennedy fired CDC director Susan Monarez because she refused to agree to OK in advance everything the ACIP recommended. She and Kennedy both testified before the Senate.
On Sept. 25, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., said she will file articles of impeachment against Kennedy for “health care chaos.”
