Vaccination Rates

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

As of December 30, CDC reported a total of 2,065 confirmed measles cases this year -- the most since 1992.

Lauren Weber, Caitlin Gilbert, Dylan Moriarty and Joshua Lott at WP:

The share of U.S. counties where 95 percent or more of kindergartners were vaccinated against measles — the number doctors say is needed to achieve overall protection for the class, known as “herd immunity” — has dropped from 50 percent before the pandemic to 28 percent, according to The Post’s examination of the public records from 44 states and the District of Columbia.

Most of the counties that previously lacked herd immunity for kindergarten classrooms got worse, according to the Post analysis, which in most cases compared the academic years 2018-2019 and 2024-2025.

...

The Post’s findings show that at least 5.2 million kindergarten-age children in the U.S. are living in counties where vaccination rates for classrooms have fallen below the herd immunity threshold — up from about 3.5 million before the pandemic. While the vast majority of those who receive the measles vaccine are protected from severe illness and death, without herd immunity measles can still spread among those not immune, including those who cannot be vaccinated because of age or because they are immunocompromised.

Out of the 44 states reporting county-level rates, 36 and the District of Columbia also reported them for individual schools or districts. At least 19,000 schools — nearly half of schools in the Post analysis — were more vulnerable to outbreaks.

...
Medical specialists and public health experts expect more children will be left unprotected given policies advanced by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist 
who is rolling back government vaccine policies and recommendations

 ...

The national anti-vaccine organization that Kennedy founded, Children’s Health Defense, has linked vaccines to autism, an assertion not supported by evidence and which scientists say is false.

Mister Measles

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He has now hijacked the CDC website -- and the CDC itself.

As of December 30, CDC reported a total of 2,065 confirmed measles cases this year -- the most since 1992.

Aria Bendix at NBC:

A sizable uptick in measles cases in the ongoing outbreak in South Carolina has put the U.S. on the precipice of losing its elimination status.

South Carolina’s health department on Tuesday reported 20 new measles cases since Friday, bringing the state’s total this year to 179. That tally is higher than the number of measles cases recorded for the entire U.S. in six of the last 10 years.

This year, the country has counted over 2,000 measles cases, 93% of which were among unvaccinated people or those with an unknown vaccination status, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's by far the most since the disease was first considered eliminated in the U.S. 25 years ago.

Measles is considered eliminated in a country once it no longer spreads constantly for a full year. In the U.S., that deadline is fast approaching: Transmission of the highly contagious disease has been sustained since around Jan. 20. Unless that trend comes to an abrupt halt in the next three weeks — which is highly unlikely — the country could lose its elimination status, as Canada did in November.

About the Coalition of Autism Scientists

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.

A number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.

 Another leading anti-vaxxer is presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.  Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism.  He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's secretary of HHS. 

Tager-Flusberg, H. (2025), Debate: Standing up for science – how to combat misinformation in child mental health: protecting the integrity of autism research and practice in the United States. Child Adolesc Ment Health. https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.70058.  Abstract:

In 2025, the Coalition of Autism Scientists was formed to counter the misinformation and pseudoscience that was being advanced at the highest levels of the federal government in the United States. The background and history of how the Coalition was formed and its major activities, which include regular meetings, issuing public statements, and providing information and interviews to the media, are described. The importance of engaging in active advocacy in support of autism science is discussed along with some examples of the Coalition's impact. Given the direction that politics is going, sowing greater dissent between science and the public, continued vigilance in support of the highest quality research is critical if we are to meet the urgent needs of autistic people and their families.

Denmark's Vaccine Schedule

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

Polls show that many Americans either believe the myth or think it could be true.

Trump has spread this myth and withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization.

Now his administration is actively defending disinformation.  Trump has said that getting "too many shots" causes autism.  He's wrong, as Matthew Herper writes at STAT:

Researchers have had two responses to this allegation: First, data don’t indicate that vaccines increase the risk that children will contract other infections. Second, vaccines have become much more targeted over time, often involving fewer antigens to stimulate the immune system than earlier versions. Vaccines for pneumococcus, whooping cough, and other diseases now often contain only sugar molecules or proteins from the coat of a virus in order to produce an immune response. By this measure, children get more shots, but they contain fewer antigens.

Amelia Nierenberg and Maya Tekeli at NYT:

The United States, a nation of 343 million people with a complex and overburdened health care system, is poised to adopt the childhood vaccine recommendations used in Denmark, a country of six million with universal health care. The decision has alarmed public health experts in both countries.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary, is expected to announce the move in the new year. It would reduce the number of immunizations required for American children to 10 from 17, radically changing the recommended vaccines without the deliberative process that the United States has relied on for decades.

Instead, Mr. Kennedy is following a presidential directive issued on Dec. 5 by President Trump, which said the United States was an “outlier” in the number of vaccines children receive, pointing to Denmark, Germany and Japan as peer countries that recommend fewer.

...
 Kristian G. Andersen, a Danish-American professor in the immunology and microbiology department at the Scripps Research Institute in California, said the United States already has one of the best standards for vaccine recommendations.

“Their childhood vaccine program covers almost everything it should,” Dr. Andersen said.

“The Danish program does not,” he added, noting that the Nordic country “has one of the most minimal vaccine programs among wealthy nations.”

“Denmark is the outlier,” Dr. Andersen said. “Not the United States.”

...

Denmark has universal health care; that means Danes can get treated more easily for diseases and often seek medical help earlier. Its people do not pay for most doctors’ appointment.

In the United States, about 8 percent of the population is uninsured. Even with health insurance, some American families need to decide whether a child is sick enough to justify the potential cost of a doctor’s visit.

Bobby's War on Science Will Have Casualties

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

Polls show that many Americans either believe the myth or think it could be true.

Trump has spread this myth and withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization.

Now his administration is actively defending disinformation.

Dr. Benjamin Mazer at NYT writes about RFK Jr's war on science.

Take the false idea that vaccines cause autism. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention once plainly declared that they didn’t. Mr. Kennedy instructed the agency to take a different position: “The rise in autism prevalence since the 1980s correlates with the rise in the number of vaccines given to infants,” the C.D.C.’s website has been updated to read.

This sort of claim is typical of the anti-vaccine community. A nearly identical statement appears on the website of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group Mr. Kennedy was formerly a part of. It isn’t true: Studies have shown that neither the number of active ingredients nor the amount of additives in vaccines corresponds to an increased rate of autism. But it sounds faintly data-driven and taps into a widely held belief that society has become overmedicalized.

Vaccine critics have won converts by branding their opposition to proven public health interventions as advocacy for individual liberty. “The decision to vaccinate is a personal one,” Mr. Kennedy wrote last March in response to the country’s measles outbreak. The C.D.C.’s acting director, Jim O’Neill, has followed the health secretary’s lead. In December he refused to endorse universal vaccination as a solution to the measles outbreaks, only going so far as to issue a vague recommendation for parents to “consult with their health care providers about vaccination options.”

Most parents, for the time being, seem to trust their doctor’s advice. Childhood immunization rates remain relatively high in the United States. But it has taken only a slight decline in vaccine confidence to set off the disease outbreaks we are seeing. It is easier for anti-vaccine groups to chip away at public trust than it is for the medical community to rebuild it.

At The Atlantic, Katherine J. Weu writes of the tendency to shrug off outbreaks of measles.

Measles was never inconsequential, though. Even a case that is initially “mild” can wipe out defenses that people have built up to other diseases—a kind of “immune amnesia” that can leave them more vulnerable to infection for months or years. Painful ear infections and prolonged bouts of diarrhea can accompany close to a tenth of measles cases. Some 5 percent of infections result in pneumonia that can eventually turn fatal; rarely, measles can also leave children deaf or blind. The disease also tends to hit undernourished, immunocompromised, and pregnant people particularly hard, and many of the severest cases tend to occur in the youngest children. This year, the U.S. has clocked more than 1,900 measles infections—the most the country has documented since 1992—and 11 percent have resulted in hospitalizations. Three people have died, two of them children.

In the prescient 2011 movie Contagion, major airports -- Hong Kong (HKG), Chicago O'Hare (ORD), and Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) -- serve as key points for Patient Zero (Gwneth Paltrow) to spead a deadly fictional virus around the world.

Special Ed Teacher Shortages Will Get Worse

In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). 

Anna Merod at K-12 Dive:

According to a July analysis by the Learning Policy Institute, 45 states reported teacher shortages in special education during the 2024-25 school year.

In September, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released the findings of its yearlong investigation into the national special educator shortage. The federal civil rights panel found that the widespread shortage is leading to a lack of supports and services that are needed to help the growing population of students with disabilities thrive in schools.

The findings were released just a couple of months before the 50th anniversary of the landmark federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The historic legislation, signed into law on Nov. 29, 1975, guaranteed that students with disabilities have the right to a free and appropriate public education nationwide.

Reflecting on IDEA’s big anniversary, educators and researchers said they’re still hopeful about several evolving and innovative approaches to recruiting and retaining more special education teachers. Those solutions include: 

• Paying special educators more than general education teachers.
• Offering targeted training and professional development for paraprofessionals, school administrators and prospective special educators.
• Developing special education teacher pipelines through grow-your-own programs.

At the same time, teacher preparation experts have expressed concerns about the Trump administration’s goal to downsize and eventually eliminate the U.S. Department of Education — especially when it comes to ongoing special educator shortages.

President Donald Trump, for instance, proposed in his fiscal year 2026 budget that IDEA Part D personnel development grants be zeroed out and that newly allocated funds go to IDEA Part B programs through a single state block grant program.

Trump’s attempt to drastically reduce the number of staff in the Education Department’s Office of Special Education Programs during the recent federal government shutdown also raised red flags among advocates. Their chief concern: that it would become very difficult to administer and oversee federal grants like IDEA Part D that help address special educator shortages.

The state block grant consolidation proposal, though unpopular among Congressional lawmakers, would particularly harm the ability of teacher prep programs to train high-quality special education teachers, said advocates and experts.

Autisms

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss various ideas about what constitutes and causes autism. 

Ariana Eunjung Cha at WP:

Natalie Sauerwald is one of the lead authors of the subtypes study and a computational biologist at the Flatiron Institute, part of the Simons Foundation, which funds scientific research. She compared earlier autism research to assembling a jigsaw puzzle, only to find that the pieces didn’t quite fit — not because the image was unclear but because “the box had always contained several puzzles, shuffled together.”

There isn’t just one autism, Sauerwald said: “There are many autisms.”

... 

The work published in July in Nature Genetics detailed the four categories.

• Broadly affected: The smallest group — about 10 percent of participants — faced the steepest challenges, marked by developmental delays, difficulties with communication and social interaction, and repetitive behaviors that touched nearly every part of life.
• Mixed autism with developmental delay: Roughly 19 percent showed early developmental delays but few signs of anxiety, depression or disruptive behavior. Researchers call this group “mixed” because its members vary widely in how strongly they display social or repetitive behaviors.
• Moderate challenges: About a third of participants fell into this group, showing the hallmark traits of autism — social and communication differences and repetitive habits — but in subtler ways and without developmental delays.
• Social and/or behavioral: The largest group, around 37 percent, met early developmental milestones on time yet often grappled with other conditions later on, including ADHD, anxiety, depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder.

...

That breakthrough idea was given another boost in October when a second study — published in Nature by an entirely different team using separate data — arrived at essentially the same conclusion: Genetically distinct forms of autism may unfold on different life timelines. The new analysis, based on data from the United States, Europe and Australia, suggested that children diagnosed after age 6 carried distinct genetic profiles and that their form of autism looked strikingly different from the early-childhood type — less like a developmental delay and more akin to conditions such as depression, ADHD or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Medicaid Cuts

The Politics of Autism includes an extensive discussion of insurance and Medicaid services for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.  

 At KFF, Bram Sable-Smith and Andrew Jones report on Medicaid funding for applied behavior analysis:

Efforts to scale back come as state Medicaid programs have seen spending on the autism therapy balloon in recent years. Payments for the therapy in North Carolina, which were $122 million in fiscal year 2022, are projected to hit $639 million in fiscal 2026, a 423% increase. Nebraska saw a 1,700% jump in spending in recent years. Indiana saw a 2,800% rise.

Heightened awareness and diagnosis of autism means more families are seeking treatment for their children, which can range from 10 to 40 hours of services a week, according to Mariel Fernandez, vice president of government affairs at the Council of Autism Service Providers. The treatment is intensive: Comprehensive therapy can include 30-40 hours of direct treatment a week, while more focused therapy may still consist of 10-25 hours a week, according to guidelines released by the council.

It’s also a relatively recent coverage area for Medicaid. The federal government ordered states to cover autism treatments in 2014, but not all covered ABA, which Fernandez called the “gold standard,” until 2022.

State budget shortfalls and the nearly $1 trillion in looming Medicaid spending reductions from President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act have prompted state budget managers to trim the autism therapy and other growing line items in their Medicaid spending.

So, too, have a series of state and federal audits that raised questions about payments to some ABA providers. A federal audit of Indiana’s Medicaid program estimated at least $56 million in improper payments in 2019 and 2020, noting some providers had billed for excessive hours, including during nap time. A similar audit in Wisconsin estimated at least $18.5 million in improper payments in 2021 and 2022. In Minnesota, state officials had 85 open investigations into autism providers as of this summer, after the FBI raided two providers late last year as part of an investigation into Medicaid fraud.

Trump Administration Defends Vaccine Disinformation; Measles Cases Spead

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

Polls show that many Americans either believe the myth or think it could be true.

Trump has spread this myth and withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization.

Now his administration is actively defending disinformation.

Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers:

WE’VE SANCTIONED: Imran Ahmed, key collaborator with the Biden Administration’s effort to weaponize the government against U.S. citizens. Ahmed’s group, Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), created the infamous “disinformation dozen” report, which called for platforms to deplatform twelve American “anti-vaxxers”, including now-HHS Secretary @SecKennedy . Leaked documents from CCDH show the organization listed “kill Musk’s Twitter” and “trigger EU and UK regulatory action” as priorities. The organization supports the UK’s Online Safety Act and EU’s Digital Services Act to expand censorship in Europe and around the world.

Thanks to RFK Jr.'s lies, there have been 2,012 confirmed measles cases in the US this year.   And things are likely to get much worse.

Thomas B. Edsall at NYT:

Epidemiologists contend that a 95 percent childhood vaccination rate, especially in the case of measles, is crucial to achieving what they call herd immunity — when enough people in a given geographic area have immunity to disease, so that it no longer spreads easily, eliminating the threat of epidemics.

In this context, 95 percent is a tipping point, and falling below it opens the door to a cascading series of adverse developments that worsen as the gap between herd immunity and the actual rate widens. One of those adverse developments is a rising death toll.

In an article in April in The Journal of American Medicine, “Modeling Re-emergence of Vaccine-Eliminated Infectious Diseases Under Declining Vaccination in the U.S.,” Mathew V. Kiang, Kate M. Bubar, Yvonne Maldonado, Peter J. Hotez and Nathan C. Lo wrote:

Over a 25-year period and under a scenario with current state-level vaccination rates, the simulation model predicted there would be 851,300 cases of measles, 190 cases of rubella, 18 cases poliomyelitis and eight cases of diphtheria. Under this scenario, we projected 851 cases with postmeasles neurological sequelae, 170,200 hospitalizations and 2,550 deaths.

If Trump, Kennedy and the anti-vaccine movement were to succeed in pushing down vaccination rates by 25 percentage points, the authors estimated:

26.9 million cases of measles would occur within the 25-year period, 790 cases of rubella, 87,600 cases of poliomyelitis and 11 cases of diphtheria. Under this scenario, we projected there would be 26,900 cases of postmeasles neurological sequelae, 100 cases of paralytic poliomyelitis, one case of congenital rubella syndrome, 5.4 million hospitalizations due to all infections and 80,600 deaths due to all infections.

There are now fewer than 10 cases of postmeasles neurological sequelae annually in the United States, and even an increase to 26,900 over 25 years would mean the illness hit just 0.008 percent of a population of 340 million. It is, however, an illness you would not want to wish on anyone, especially in its most virulent form, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis.

Blah Blah Blah from the Department of Education

In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).  The original name of the legislation was the Education for All Handicapped Children Act.

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of shifting it to a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it. 

Coordination has always been a problem for disability programs.  These changes will make it worse.

At Politico, Juan Perez reports that Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey met with disability advocates last week.

The roughly 45-minute discussion was cordial, according to three participants who spoke with Weekly Education. And agency officials committed to holding more discussions in the future.

Advocates are still worried about the potential fallout from transferring special education programs to federal agencies such as the Department of Labor or Health and Human Services.

“[McMahon] was very explicit that — particularly OSEP, which is what we were talking about mostly — was going to be moved out of the Department of Education and that the Department of Education was going to be dismantled,” said Laurie VanderPloeg, associate executive director at the Council for Exceptional Children, who was the director of the department’s Office of Special Education Programs during Trump’s first term.

“She did say that she was uncertain and that decisions had not been made in relation to whether OSEP would be moved to the Department of Labor or the Department of Health and Human Services,” said VanderPloeg, who attended the meeting.
...

“She and the others in the room kept reiterating that they fully supported IDEA, that they fully support students with disabilities, and they don’t intend to cut anything from them,” Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, said of McMahon’s message during the meeting. “We, quite frankly, said, ‘While we appreciate those words, your actions don’t match them.’”

“That’s what we have grave concern about,” Marshall said. “Because when significant change like this is happening and the actions don’t match the rhetoric, or the words, or the information, that’s what leads to fear and confusion and chaos. And that’s what we think is happening right now.”

Vaccine Schedule Changes Could Severely Reduce Vaccine Availability

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He has now hijacked the CDC website -- and the CDC itself.

Caitlin Owens at Axios:

The Department of Health and Human Services is planning to propose a new childhood vaccine schedule. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came close to promoting Denmark's slimmed-down recommendations before pulling back on Friday, Politico reported. But the change is still likely to happen — a risky political gamble, but one seemingly in sync with President Trump's recent directive to top health officials to "align U.S. core childhood vaccine recommendations with best practices from peer, developed countries."
...
[Antivax physician Robert] Malone wrote a Substack post on the U.S. adoption of the Danish schedule on Thursday, concluding that "this could be ... the biggest Christmas present ever for Children's Health Defense, The Informed Consent Action Network, a wide array of smaller organizations representing vaccine injured, and the trial lawyers of America."

The change could lead directly to fewer vaccinations and more vaccine-preventable diseases.  It could also effectively gut the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which provides compensation to the relatively small number of people who actually have vaccine injuries while shielding manufacturers from lawsuits.  Without the program, companies would simply stop making vaccines, which are not very profitable to begin with.

Kennedy has said he wants to "fix" the program. And anti-vaccine activists who've long made it a target contend it removes the incentive for drug companies to put out safe products. (These same activists also make claims about widespread vaccine harms without reliable evidence and contrary to the findings of the scientific establishment.)

Getting rid of it altogether would require an act of Congress, which is highly unlikely at this point.

But in a video he posted on X, anti-vaccine lawyer and past Kennedy ally Aaron Siri claimed that "there is a way to get rid of the [manufacturers'] immunity without Congress," saying that to be covered a vaccine needs to be "routinely recommended." Siri worked with Kennedy for years on vaccine-related lawsuits. He recently gave a presentation on the childhood vaccine schedule at a meeting of the CDC advisory committee. Siri noted that COVID vaccine, which is no longer recommended for children, is as a result no longer protected by the federal liability shield and that "if you took the other vaccines ... and you made them non-routine, they would be out."

 

CDC Goes Quiet on Measles, and Antivaxxers Rush to Fill the Void

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He has now hijacked the CDC website -- and the CDC itself.

Amelia M. Jamison, Lauren M. Gardner, What happens when the CDC stops posting about measles on social media? An exploratory analysis of social media coverage during the 2025 measles outbreak, Vaccine, Volume 71, 2026, 128074, ISSN 0264-410X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2025.128074.(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X25013726)

Abstract: Amidst the nation's largest measles outbreak in 30 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s social media accounts have gone quiet, creating a “void” in online health communication. In this vacuum, measles messaging has been dominated by news media rather than expert health authorities, resulting in polarized and potentially inaccurate information. In this exploratory study, we analyzed social media content around measles and MMR vaccines on Facebook, Instagram, and X. We observed an emerging “health communication void” around measles: the CDC posted only 10 times total, across the 3 platforms, in the first 8 months of 2025, down from an average of 45.8 posts over the same period from 2021 to 2024, despite fewer measles cases. Major news media outlets averaged 40.4 social media posts in the same period of 2025, with post frequency closely mirroring trends in measles cases. This shift in messaging may impact the public's situational awareness and further erode vaccine confidence.

Laine Bergeson at CIDRAP:

The CDC’s silence also created room for anti-science organizations to fill the void. Children’s Health Defense (CHD), an organization that had been deplatformed from Facebook and Instagram for spreading mis- and disinformation, posted 101 times on X during the outbreak. Its posts focused largely on the alleged dangers of the MMR vaccine while simultaneously downplaying the seriousness of the outbreak. CHD’s social media presence isn’t insignificant; it has approximately three times as many followers on X as the AAP does.

The study’s authors argue that silence from trusted public health institutions carries real risks. In polarized environments like social media, information gaps are rarely left empty, and political and science-skeptical voices have room to attain agenda-setting power. If mainstream media are allowed to set the agenda, measles becomes just another headline rather than a preventable disease that demands public attention and action.

2025: The Year of Autism Disinformation

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He has now hijacked the CDC website -- and the CDC itself.

FactCheck.org includes the Trump administration's comments on autism among the "Whoppers of the Year."

Tylenol and autism: In a late September press conference, Trump endorsed an unproven link between autism and the use of Tylenol, or acetaminophen, during pregnancy. Trump repeatedly told pregnant women, “don’t take Tylenol,” and offered the unsound medical advice to “tough it out.” Recent research indicates there likely isn’t a link. As for Trump’s medical advice, untreated pain or fever during pregnancy can be harmful to both mother and child, and medical groups have long recommended prudent use of the drug — taking acetaminophen when needed in consultation with a doctor.

The administration didn’t point to any new original research on the topic, which has been studied. Some studies have shown an association between using acetaminophen during pregnancy and an increased likelihood of having a child with autism, but no causal link has been established. Recent research indicates there likely isn’t a link. As for Trump’s medical advice, untreated pain or fever during pregnancy can be harmful to both mother and child, and medical groups have long recommended prudent use of the drug — taking acetaminophen when needed in consultation with a doctor.

HHS Secretary Kennedy later falsely claimed that two circumcision-related studies provided evidence that acetaminophen causes autism when given to children. That’s not what the studies found. In November, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed a webpage to say that its previous statement that “vaccines do not cause autism” is “not an evidence-based claim,” echoing Kennedy’s prior misrepresentations of science.

Samantha Putterman at PolitiFact: 

In [Dr. Mona] Amin’s state of Florida, health leaders are seeking to end the rules that require children to come to school vaccinated, at a time when childhood vaccination rates have already been dropping. About 88% of Florida’s kindergartners are up to date on vaccines today, down from about 94% in 2019 — both figures below the 95% rate typically needed to prevent infectious disease outbreaks.

Amin and other pediatricians see these falsehoods manifest in parents’ real-time decisions. About 61% of 1,000 physicians said in an August survey that their patients were influenced by misinformation, and nearly 86% said the amount of misinformation had increased in five years.

More parents are declining the vitamin K shot for their newborns. Administered hours after birth since the 1960s, the shot prevents bleeding into the brain, intestines and other internal organs. Parents’ refusal is leading to rising cases of vitamin K deficiency bleeding in infants.

Measles cases reached a 30-year high in the U.S. in 2025, with nearly 1,800 cases reported in 42 states as of November. Cases of whooping cough are also on the rise. Pediatricians we spoke with said parents of immunocompromised children are asking whether they should send their kids to school at all.

Some parents are hostile. Amin said she’s been screamed at around a dozen times

...

Numbers show pediatric care is under strain, and people in the field say misinformation isn’t helping. With parts of the country already facing critical pediatrician shortages, families struggle to find care and can wait months for appointments in some areas, especially for subspecialty doctors.

Amin teaches residents, and fewer medical school graduates are choosing to be pediatricians. Those already in the field are also leaving traditional practices, citing increasing falsehoods and doctor distrust, among other concerns.

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Although we found no clear data documenting the rise of doctor influencers, industry groups and researchers acknowledge the phenomenon in articles exploring its benefits, drawbacks and need for quality control. Even artificial intelligence has jumped into the mix, falsely portraying doctors on social media in order to spread falsehoods and market products.