THE BULWARK – ONE OF THE MORE FASCINATING and revealing twists of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s crusade against vaccines is the way it holds up the policies of Denmark—tiny, socialist Denmark—as a model for America.
Denmark’s official vaccine guidelines for children are narrower than ours. They include the older, more familiar vaccines for diseases like measles, mumps, and pertussis. But they don’t include more recently developed shots for diseases like RSV, rotavirus, and meningococcal disease.
Roughly speaking, Denmark now recommends childhood vaccination against ten conditions while the United States calls for shots against sixteen.1
But that disparity won’t be there much longer if Kennedy gets his way. Late last week, he was all geared up to announce that, going forward, the United States would be slimming down its vaccine schedule to match Denmark’s.
CNN reported (and other outlets later confirmed) that the announcement was imminent. The Department of Health and Human Services even distributed a planning email with logistics for an unspecified big policy reveal that was going to take place on Friday.
The reveal never came. A few hours after sending the logistics email, HHS sent out another scrubbing the plans. And it’s still not totally clear why.
A senior HHS official told Politico that the general counsel’s office had raised legal objections to the proposed vaccine policy change; a second senior official said White House officials had ordered a postponement because they were planning a separate health care announcement (on drug prices) for the same day.
Either explanation would be consistent with how HHS under Kennedy has operated, which is very much not in the careful, methodical way you would expect of a well-functioning bureaucracy.
The department and its officials have already been forced to backtrack on public positions because of legal, medical, or political complications …
