On Sept. 19, the CDC officially voted to remove the COVID-19 vaccine from its list of recommended vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women. The change is part of the Trump Administration’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative. But, some health advocates fear that the move away from vaccines may make America sicker.
MAHA’s decision to stop recommending the COVID vaccine for these groups aligns with the Trump Administration’s previous actions against vaccines. On June 9, head of MAHA and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replaced all 17 members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) with advisors who share his anti-vaccine sentiments. ACIP is responsible for advising Kennedy and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the best current vaccine selections to safely reduce the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases. Kennedy’s new ACIP panel has cut mRNA vaccine research funding and limited access to the COVID vaccine.
Less access to a vaccine can contribute to reduced immunity to the disease it prevents. “When a high enough proportion of a population is immune, the spread of [that disease] slows or stops,” Infectious Disease teacher Mary Murphy said. “This is called herd immunity.” The herd immunity threshold varies by disease, but according to the World Health Organization, COVID-19 requires around 75% to 80% immunity to prevent its spread, depending on the variant.
“When vaccination rates fall below the herd immunity threshold, outbreaks can and do occur,” Murphy said. According to an NBC News article published on Sept. 15, 67% of counties and jurisdictions in states collecting data for combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccines now have immunization rates below 95%, which is the herd-immunity threshold needed to prevent a measles outbreak.
When vaccination rates drop, the vaccine’s effectiveness inevitably decreases too. As of Sept. 7, with 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccine administered per person, the U.S. has only 1.57 daily COVID-related deaths per 1 million people. But during December 2020, at zero doses of COVID-19 vaccine per 100 people, the U.S. saw 9.85 daily deaths per 1 million people. “Vaccines are a unique type of medical intervention,” Murphy said. “If I get vaccinated, I help protect you, and if you get vaccinated, you help protect me.”
While vaccines are proven to help prevent the spread of disease, Kennedy suggests that they could also lead to the development of neurodevelopmental disorders. “I do believe that autism comes from vaccines,” Kennedy said in a 2023 Fox News interview.
The 2025 MAHA report highlighted increased numbers of children in the U.S. diagnosed with autism since the 1980s. According to the report, autism occurred in less than 0.05% of American children in the ’80s and rose to 3.2% in 2022. At the same time, the number of recommended childhood vaccines increased from three in 1986 to 29 in 2025.
While rates of autism have risen over a similar time period as the number of recommended childhood vaccines, the increase is due to a constantly-expanding definition of autism, according to a report by researchers at Johns Hopkins.
Although there is no conclusive evidence that vaccines cause autism, they may carry some separate risk. “Serious side effects [in vaccines] are extremely rare, … [but] there is no medical intervention that doesn’t have risk,” Murphy said. “That said, vaccines are aggressively tested and monitored years after they are developed to ensure safety.”
Getting vaccinated seems like a no-brainer to many, but others heed Kennedy’s warnings. An anonymous Bay Area high school student commented on their experience with a parent who shares Kennedy’s skepticism around vaccines. “I’m not entirely sure where my mom gets her information from, [so] I can’t say much about [its] credibility,” they said. “What I do know is that her research is selective and biased, which shapes her skepticism toward vaccines.”
Kennedy’s restriction of COVID-19 vaccine availability is worrying to many. “[A vaccine ban would cause] more death and suffering,” science teacher Geoff Ruth said. “Many diseases that we have effective vaccines for cause horrible, painful deaths — more people will suffer those horrible disease effects as a result of this move to prevent vaccine access.”