HHS Just Gave Parents More Say in Their Kids’ Vaccines — And the Vaccine Establishment Is Running Scared

Federal health officials on Monday announced a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule, reducing the number of vaccines universally recommended for all children from 17 to 11.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) emphasized that all currently recommended vaccines will remain available and fully covered by insurance.

However, health officials moved six vaccines from the universally recommended category into a category designed to emphasize shared decision-making between families and clinicians.

What does it mean when a vaccine shifts from the mandatory universal recommendation category to “shared clinical decision-making” (SCDM)? What changes? And why is the vaccine establishment so terrified of the change?

Why ‘shared clinical decision-making’? And why now?

COVID-19 changed everything.

For three years, federal health officials told Americans the COVID-19 vaccines were “safe and effective,” would “stop transmission,” and that anyone who questioned the narrative was an anti-science conspiracy theorist.

The vaccine establishment — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the whole alphabet soup — spoke with one voice: Trust us. Don’t ask questions. Just comply.

Then the truth started leaking out. The vaccines didn’t stop transmission — Pfizer never even tested for it. The “95% effective” claim was relative risk reduction, not absolute risk reduction. Turns out, the vaccine was closer to 0.85% effective.

Myocarditis in young men wasn’t “rare” — it was systematically undercounted. Natural immunity was dismissed as irrelevant, then quietly acknowledged. The 6-foot social distancing rule? Made up. Exposed as not based on science. Masks for toddlers? No evidence.

All of this came to the public’s attention because, and only because, of the courageous doctors and scientists who called it out during the pandemic. Doctors like Pierre Kory (lead plaintiff in Kory v. Bonta, one of my COVID-19 misinformation cases pending before the U.S. Supreme Court), and Richard Eggleston and Thomas Siler, plaintiffs in another of my COVID-19 misinformation First Amendment cases, also pending before the Supreme Court.

And to those, I must add the person I call “doctor zero” (as in patient zero in mass infection cases), Simone Gold — double trouble because she’s both a doctor and a lawyer.

The COVID-19 debacle might not have created the public’s distrust of public health authorities, but it surely reinforced that the distrust was justified.

Unlike mandatory school vaccination, COVID-19 restrictions and mandates hit everyone — not just parents with school-aged kids in states without a religious exemption.

The foundational lie: ‘Vaccines conquered infectious disease’

The vaccine establishment’s origin story goes like this: Before vaccines, children died in droves from infectious diseases. Then vaccines came along and saved us all. Anyone who questions this narrative wants children to die.

It’s a powerful story. It’s also mostly false.

In September 2025, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) waved a chart at HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., claiming vaccines had saved “154 million lives” by nearly eradicating infectious disease mortality. Kennedy’s response should be required viewing for every American.

Outstanding: RFK, Jr. directly takes on US Senator Maria Cantwell from Washington State. Thank you, Mr. Secretary! One of the best short videos to protect you and your family against the dangers of vaccines. pic.twitter.com/P4tahvd1kk

— Family Policy Institute of Washington (@FPIW) November 19, 2025

The data tell a different story. A CDC-funded study from Johns Hopkins — Guyer et al., published in Pediatrics in 2000 — analyzed 100 years of U.S. mortality data. The conclusion: nearly all the mortality reductions from infectious diseases occurred BEFORE vaccines were introduced.

The numbers are stark:

• Measles: Deaths fell from 13,000 annually in 1900 to a few hundred by 1960. The vaccine wasn’t introduced until 1963 — three years later. A 98% reduction before a single dose was administered.
• Pertussis (whooping cough): The largest mortality drop happened before the vaccine.
• Polio: Mortality fell 90% between 1923 and 1955, before the Salk vaccine.
• Tuberculosis: Deaths virtually eliminated in the U.S. without mass vaccination.
• Scarlet fever: Mortality plummeted along the same timeline. No vaccine ever developed.

What actually caused these dramatic declines? Clean water. Sanitation. Refrigeration. Better nutrition. Chlorination. Flush toilets. The mundane infrastructure of modern civilization — not pharmaceutical products.

McKinlay and McKinlay’s landmark 1977 study estimated that medical interventions — including vaccines AND antibiotics — accounted for less than 3.5% of the total mortality decline.

Yet the vaccine establishment has spent decades taking credit for the other 96.5%. That’s not science. That’s marketing.

So, what does ‘shared clinical decision-making’ actually threaten?

Not children’s health. The data prove that.

What it threatens is the mythology — the carefully constructed narrative that vaccines are responsible for modern civilization’s triumph over infectious disease, and therefore must never be questioned.

If parents can have real informed consent conversations with their doctors — if they can weigh actual risks and benefits for their individual child — the whole edifice starts to crumble. Not because parents will stop vaccinating (they won’t, as we’ll see), but because they’ll start asking questions.

And the vaccine establishment has never had good answers.

That’s what the hysteria is really about. Let’s look at what SCDM actually does and doesn’t change.

Insurance covers SCDM vaccines

The loudest claim is that vaccines in the SCDM category won’t be covered by insurance. This is false, and the people saying it know it’s false.

Here’s the CDC’s own FAQ:

“This coverage requirement includes shared clinical decision-making recommendations when they have been adopted by CDC and are listed on the immunization schedules.”

KFF Health News confirms:

“The insurance requirement extends to vaccines with ‘individual decision-making’ (also known as ‘shared clinical decision-making’) recommendations as well, which are those ‘individually based and informed by a decision process between the health care provider and the patient or parent/guardian.'”

The Avalere “Guide to Vaccine Coverage Policies” states that payers must cover without cost-sharing “all on-schedule products with routine and SCDM.”

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Vaccine Education Center states:

“For children, the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program is designed to ensure payment for all vaccines on the childhood immunization schedule, including those that are recommended with SCDM. For adults, most private insurance plans pay for routinely recommended vaccines as well as those with SCDM, under Affordable Care Act (ACA) regulations.”

Before Monday’s announcement, we already had SCDM vaccines. Serogroup B meningococcal or MenB for adolescents 16-23. HPV for adults 27-45. Hepatitis B (Hep B) for adults 60+ with diabetes. All covered. The sky hasn’t fallen.

The insurance argument is simply wrong.

Are vaccine makers immune from liability claims for SCDM vaccines?

What about liability? Does moving a vaccine to the SCDM category affect the manufacturer’s immunity created by the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act?

This is where it gets legally interesting and frankly murky. It’s genuinely unclear.

The liability shield in 42 U.S. Code Section 300aa-22(b)(1) applies to vaccines covered by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). For a vaccine to be covered, 42 U.S. Code Section 300aa-14 requires that the CDC recommend it for “routine administration to children.” The Vaccine Injury Table, maintained by the secretary, lists covered vaccines.

The untested legal question is this: Does “routinely recommended for children” include Category B/SCDM recommendations, or only Category A routine recommendations?

Current SCDM vaccines like MenB remain on the VICP table — but they also have routine recommendations for high-risk populations. A vaccine that went to pure SCDM for everyone, with no routine recommendation for any childhood population, would present a novel question.

The statute doesn’t define “routine administration.” No court has interpreted whether SCDM qualifies. If it doesn’t, vaccines moved to pure SCDM might fall outside VICP coverage — and outside the liability shield.

It is no secret that in his past pre-government days, Kennedy repeatedly complained about vaccine manufacturers’ immunity and called for its end. The question is whether he has administrative pathways to do so, or whether doing so requires congressional action.

The cleanest path would be legislation. A bill (H.R.9828) introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) would directly repeal the immunity provisions in 42 U.S. Code Section 300aa-22(b)(1). But Congress is Congress, enough said.

Administratively, Kennedy could:

• Change CDC recommendations to pure SCDM, creating the legal ambiguity described above.
• Attempt to remove vaccines from the VICP table through rulemaking under his authority to “modify” the table (42 U.S. Code Section 300aa-14(c)).

Either path would trigger immediate litigation. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, courts might go back to the drawing board on their interpretation of “routine administration,” giving no deference to agency interpretation.

And the Major Questions Doctrine would loom over any attempt to strip immunity from a multi-billion-dollar market.

But “would face litigation” isn’t the same as “would lose.” This is genuinely unsettled legal territory. The uncertainty itself may be significant — manufacturers facing years of litigation over their liability status is not nothing.

More importantly, after 39 years of living with manufacturer immunity for the products that seem to have played a significant role in the billion-dollar dramatic deterioration in the health of American children (my view), it is well past time we have this serious discussion about whether this whole immunity thing is doing American children more harm than good.

Let’s put the immunity question into global perspective

Care to guess how many other countries in the world give manufacturers immunity from lawsuits for vaccine injury?

None. Zero.

No other country grants immunity from civil liability and prohibits civil tort suits against vaccine manufacturers (with one exception, which I’ll discuss).

Many countries have administrative remedies in addition to civil tort suits. However, the U.S. is the only country in the world that has a civil liability system yet prohibits the vaccine-injured from accessing it.

New Zealand, like the U.S., forces the vaccine-injured into an administrative process, but that’s because New Zealand has done away with civil tort remedies for all injuries.

Unlike the insurance question, which is clearly settled in favor of SCDM coverage, the immunity question is open.

Moving childhood vaccines to SCDM might create a pathway to challenge manufacturer immunity. However, it’s untested, and anyone who tells you they know the answer is guessing.

Can states mandate SCDM vaccines?

The federal government doesn’t mandate vaccines. States do, under 10th Amendment police powers. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommends, states decide whether to require.

Forty-six states have religious exemptions. Only California, Connecticut, Maine and New York have medical-only exemptions. And California has already decoupled from ACIP through Assembly Bill 144.

So, in the vast majority of states, parents who want to decline vaccines already can. Moving from Category A to Category B changes nothing for them.

The international evidence: We’re not just talking about Denmark

Critics dismiss comparisons to Denmark by claiming, “We’re not Denmark, a homogeneous country of 6 million people.” Fair enough. So, let’s look at the full picture.

A 2024 study in Vaccines (Farina et al.) systematically mapped childhood vaccination policies across all 30 European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries. The findings are striking:

• 17 countries have no mandatory, recommended-only childhood vaccinations. Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden.

In these countries, all childhood vaccines are offered and covered, but parents decide. That’s functionally identical to what ACIP calls “shared clinical decision-making.” But there’s a critical difference: these European nations have full sovereign authority to mandate vaccines — but they chose not to.

In the U.S., the federal government cannot mandate vaccines. Under the 10th Amendment, that power belongs exclusively to states. So, when ACIP “recommends,” it’s only a recommendation to the states and has no direct force unless state laws couple their mandates to CDC/ACIP recommendations. When Denmark or Spain “recommends,” it’s a deliberate policy choice by governments that could mandate — but decided parental choice works better.

• 3 countries have limited mandates — one to three vaccines mandatory, the remainder are recommendation-only.

Belgium mandates only the polio vaccine; parents decide on all other vaccines. In Germany, only the measles vaccine is mandatory; it’s up to the parents to decide on all other vaccines. Malta mandates tetanus, diphtheria and polio vaccines — all other vaccines are parental choice.

• 10 countries have comprehensive mandates — most vaccines are mandatory: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia.

So, even among the 13 countries with “at least one mandate,” three of them — Belgium, Germany and Malta — operate predominantly on shared clinical decision-making for the vast majority of their vaccine schedule.

Germany, Europe’s largest economy with 84 million people, mandates only the measles vaccine — and recommends everything else.

That means 20 of 30 EU/EEA countries either have no mandates at all or operate primarily on a recommendation basis with only limited mandates for specific high-concern vaccines.

Only 10 countries have comprehensive mandate systems like the U.S. model.

Add the U.K. (population 67 million, recommendation-only with 92% DTP coverage) and Japan (population 125 million, no mandates since 1994, 98% coverage), and the picture is clear: The majority of the developed world trusts parents with vaccine decisions and achieves excellent coverage.

It is fair to say that EU/EEA countries have achieved high vaccination rates through mandatory and non-mandatory vaccination. So, mandatory is not strictly necessary for public health success.

The international data demolishes the CDC’s premise that eliminating parental choice is necessary for public health. Countries respecting medical freedom have lower infant mortality, less chronic disease, and comparable vaccination rates — while American exceptionalism has produced exceptionally sick children.

Russia, China offer parents more freedom than New York, California

Russia’s federal law explicitly allows parents to refuse childhood vaccinations. No exemption required. Just say no.

China’s “mandatory” vaccination system? No penalties for refusal. The decision-making process is required — the actual vaccination isn’t.

Meanwhile, in New York and California, parents have zero choice. Vaccinate or your child doesn’t attend school. No religious exemption. No philosophical exemption.

Let that sink in.

On childhood vaccine choice, Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China offer parents more freedom than New York or California.

In those states (and in Connecticut and Maine), the “land of the free” has become the land of “inject your kids with whatever Pfizer is selling this year or we’ll lock them out of kindergarten. And if something goes wrong, too bad, you can’t sue.”

To me, that sounds like a criminal protection racket, and one of these days, I might just do something to push back.

Will vaccination rates plummet for SCDM vaccines?

Here’s the data point that demolishes the hysteria: Massachusetts has a religious exemption and a 95%+ kindergarten vaccination rate. New Jersey, Virginia, Rhode Island, same story: religious exemptions available, rates above 95%.

If SCDM would cause parents to stop vaccinating, we’d see it in these states. We don’t.

Parents in states where they can already opt out are choosing to vaccinate anyway. Clearly, the mandates aren’t driving compliance — parental choice is.

So why not formalize what’s already happening? If informed consent doesn’t reduce vaccination rates, why fight it so hard?

What moving a vaccine to SCDM actually changes

If insurance stays, immunity is uncertain but probably unchanged, mandates aren’t federally controlled and vaccination rates don’t change — what’s the point?

Three things matter:

1. The clinical encounter changes. Doctors must actually discuss risks and benefits with each patient. Informed consent becomes real, not theater.
2. Physician protection. Doctors who individualize care — who look at a particular child’s history and make a judgment call — can no longer be hauled before medical boards for “deviating from the standard of care.” The standard of care becomes an individualized assessment.
3. Practice coercion weakens. “Vaccinate or leave our practice” becomes harder to justify when ACIP itself says it’s an individual decision.

These aren’t nothing. They’re a step in the right direction — treating vaccines like every other medical intervention, subject to informed consent and professional judgment.

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The hepatitis B proof of concept

We just watched this play out in real time. On Dec. 5, 2025, ACIP voted 8-3 to recommend “individual decision-making” for the Hep B birth dose in low-risk infants. That’s 99.6% of U.S. births — infants born to mothers who test negative for hepatitis B.

The response from AAP was immediate and hysterical. President Susan Kressly called it “irresponsible and purposely misleading,” warning of “thousands” of infections and “devastating results.”

Committee members predicted “children will die preventable deaths” and “liver cancers.”

Paul Offit told CNN there would be a “four-fold increase” in infections and claimed 30,000 children under 10 contracted hepatitis B annually before universal vaccination.

The actual CDC data? Approximately 400 cases annually in that age group. Offit overstated by 75-fold.

Meanwhile, the U.K. and Canada already delay the birth dose. No infection surge. No liver cancer epidemic. No devastation.

This is what SCDM panic looks like: fabricated statistics, invented catastrophes and complete disregard for what other developed countries do safely.

The real fear: protecting a system that doesn’t tolerate questions

They’re not afraid SCDM will change vaccination rates. The data prove it won’t.

They’re afraid of losing the narrative of compulsion. That “CDC and AAP say so, shut up and comply.” The authority to punish dissenting physicians. The cultural power to label questioning parents as “anti-vax.”

SCDM treats vaccines like the medicines they are. And apparently, that’s intolerable to the vaccine mafia.

So, it seems that all the hysteria isn’t about protecting children — it’s about protecting a system that doesn’t tolerate questions.

Rick Jaffe is a health care litigator who has represented physicians in medical board matters and is co-counsel with Children’s Health Defense on vaccine-related litigation.

Disclosure: I am lead counsel in Thomas v. Monarez (D.D.C., Case No. 1:25-cv-02685), a lawsuit challenging the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule and seeking reclassification of all childhood vaccines to shared clinical decision-making. So yes, I have a stake in this debate. But readers can make their own judgment.