Anti-vax push from inside of the government

© Yuri Arcurs | Dreamstime.com

By Stacy Gittleman

The United States of America was built on rugged individualism and free thinking. That being said, this country has always had its share of vaccine-hesitant or anti-vaccination movements. They stretch back to the time when British scientist Edward Jenner discovered the antidote for smallpox in 1721.

In the New World, Boston and parts of Massachusetts were suffering through a smallpox outbreak that was killing thousands, according to reports on the history of vaccines from the National Institutes of Health. Soon, a local reverend and two doctors established a variolation program that was positively received by many volunteer recipients. However, there were adversaries of the program. As smallpox spread, so did the vaccine controversy. At the height of the epidemic, a bomb was thrown into the reverend’s house.

Smallpox and the quest to eradicate it played a role in the Revolutionary War. In 1766, American soldiers under George Washington were defeated in Quebec by the British troops because of a smallpox epidemic that significantly reduced the number of healthy American troops. Soon after that, Washington mandated that all enlisting soldiers had to be variolated before they were put into military maneuvers.

Debates and movements against smallpox inoculation carried on well into the 18th and 19th centuries fueled by religious objections and fears that the vaccine itself would sicken recipients and mistrust of government-backed health mandates.

This led to the formation of the country’s first anti-vaccination leagues in the late 1800s.

According to reports from the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, the Anti Vaccination Society of America, the New England Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League, and the Anti-Vaccination League of New York City waged court battles to repeal vaccination laws in several states, including California, Illinois and Wisconsin.

Between 1902 and 1903 Boston endured another smallpox outbreak that resulted in 1,596 cases and 270 deaths. The Board of Health of Cambridge, Mass., mandated all city residents to be vaccinated against smallpox.

City resident Henning Jacobson refused vaccination because he perceived that the law violated his right to care for his own body. In turn, the city filed criminal charges against him. After losing his court battle locally, Jacobson appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1905, the court ruled in the state’s favor, deciding that the state could enact compulsory laws to protect the public in the event of a communicable disease. This was the first U.S. Supreme Court case concerning the power of states in public health law. 

“A look at literature going back into the 1800s shows that vaccine mandates were portrayed as being a horrific affront to personal liberties,” said Dr. David Gorski, a professor of surgery at Wayne State University. “For much of the modern era, popular culture has tended to caricature anti-vaccine activists as fringe or ‘granola’ left-wingers clustered on the coasts. When I first started writing on this topic, the stereotype of the anti-vaccine movement was that it was all these hippies from the West Coast, like in Marin County or San Francisco. But from the start, it was a false assumption to make it sound like there was not a right-wing component that was there all along.”

Gorski said in recent history, the anti-vax movement picked up steam through the Tea Party Movement.

“Since around 2010, the anti-vaccine movement decided it was a winning strategy to lean into the whole appeal to sentiments of freedom. And it worked. Over the next 15 years, there was a noticeable rightward shift in the political center of gravity of the anti-vaccine movement,” according to Gorski.

Then came the Disneyland measles outbreak in late 2014. According to records from the National Institutes of Health, the outbreak spread to seven states, Canada and Mexico and infected a total of 275 cases before it was finally declared over in April 2015.

The outbreak sparked debate about vaccine hesitancy and the vaccine opt-out movement. Afterwards, organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association advocated aggressively for eliminating non-medical exemptions.

In turn, California in 2015 passed SB 277 that eliminated non-medical exceptions in the state. But this legislation, according to people like Gorski, only further ramped up the drumbeats from the anti-vax movement to dig in their heels and resist vaccine mandates.

Conversely, in Michigan, Republicans at the state Senate in May 2025 introduced House Bill 4775 that would amend the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on “vaccination status.” Additional proposed legislation would further prevent Michigan from enforcing vaccine mandates for schoolchildren and require the state to extend civil rights protections to residents who reject immunizations. 

Downtown reached out several times to Rep. Jim DeSana, (R-Carleton), the main sponsor of the legislation package, but he did not respond to requests for comment.

Anti-vaccination movements throughout the country’s history have come and gone. But according to experts interviewed here by Downtown, never has there been a time in American history when the anti-vaccine movement captured so much sway, its proponents and champions risen to such high levels in the federal government, as we are seeing today.

The United States of America is teetering on the edge of losing the measles eradication status it gained in 2000. Canada already lost its status in November 2025, so health officials say the United States will not be far behind.

Domestically, measles cases exploded from 285 in 2024 into the thousands in 2025, with the first three measles fatalities in the U.S. in a decade. Rather than addressing this public health crisis, current policy reversals are likely to accelerate this dangerous trend, and some are claiming that all safety guardrails have been removed from the nation’s vaccination program.

With the appointment of RFK Jr. as the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the country is experiencing a significant backslide in the direction of its vaccine policies, which some say has been a backlash against stringent public health measures from the COVID-19 pandemic era.

In June of 2025, RFK Jr. singlehandedly fired all 17 members of the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the governing body that provides oversight and recommendations on vaccines, which was considered the North Star for the pediatric practice in the United States. He replaced them with new appointees, many regarded as pseudo-scientists or plain out “quacks” who will advance an anti-vaccine agenda, some for their own personal gain, according to interviewed sources.

In December 2025, the newly formed ACIP scrapped the 34-year-old guideline that all newborns receive the Hepatitis B vaccine in the hospital, a measure that has been regarded as completely safe and a preventative measure against long-term chronic conditions like kidney disease and cancer.

In January 2026, the ACIP lowered recommended vaccinations from 17 to 11.

Three of the six immunizations the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it will no longer routinely recommend — against hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and rotavirus — have prevented nearly 2 million hospitalizations and more than 90,000 deaths in the past 30 years, according to the CDC’s own documentation.

The committee also dropped blanket recommendations for vaccinations against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), meningococcal disease, flu and COVID, and now recommended only for children at high risk of serious illness or after "shared clinical decision-making," or consultation between doctors and parents.

RFK Jr.’s departure from established medical practices is considered so reckless and jarring to the state of American public health that Oakland County Congresswoman Haley Stevens on December 12, 2025, filed articles of impeachment demanding his removal, the same week a case of measles was reported in Oakland County.

Bolstered by a coalition of 14 Nobel Laureates and other scientists, Stevens’ articles of impeachment specifically pointed out his dereliction of duty and his lying under oath to protect the nation’s vaccination program during his confirmation hearing.

The impeachment articles also include:

• Severely restricting access to vaccines, spreading absurd conspiracies, and putting lives in danger, including unfounded claims that Tylenol is harmful;

• Cancellation of research on mRNA vaccines;

• Closing resources working to prevent future pandemics;

• Hiring David Geier — who was disciplined by Maryland medical regulators for practicing without a medical license — to reinvestigate the long-discredited theory that vaccines cause autism.

“The threat RFK Jr.’s policies pose to Michiganders’ health and human safety is only growing,” Stevens told Downtown in a phone interview. “We’ve seen an uptick in measles cases after we achieved eradication in the United States and cuts to scientific research. I kept hearing from (bipartisan) parents, educators, scientists and community members about how frustrated, worried and helpless they felt. After an incredibly serious process of calling on him to reinstate funding, to listen to scientists, to reconsider, even to resign, I was given no choice but to act. Filing these articles of impeachment was my last resort — but it is still the right thing to do.”

Stevens views RFK Jr’s placement as the leader of the DHHS as a direct attack on science and a threat to Michiganders’ health and safety.

“What worries me most is that we are turning science upside down,” Stevens said. “We’re now seeing even polio potentially called back into question. Pregnant women are being blamed for taking something as basic as Tylenol. This is a rejection of science, and that rejection is putting the health and safety of people in Michigan at real risk.”

Stevens said she is hearing from the medical community in Michigan – members who span the political spectrum – and their concern as they watch their legacies of work and research and building health infrastructure is being undermined, while school officials are dismayed that overturning vaccine recommendations place schoolchildren in danger of exposure of diseases that are largely preventable through vaccines.

“In our schools, we are also seeing an expansion of non-medical exemptions in our schools that can expose other children to preventable disease,” Stevens said. “Parents are confused and scared because the long-standing vaccine recommendations they trusted are being undermined just as we see an increase in measles cases. When you give license to reject vaccines, you’re not just making a statement — you’re increasing the risk of outbreaks in our schools and our communities.”

Stevens, who is running for the U.S. Senate, said she understands the “long game” in Congress, said that this attack on public health cannot wait until after the midterm elections, saying “We have to keep the drumbeat up on the threats to the health and safety of Michiganders, especially our children.”

With RFK Jr. leading the drumbeat, egged on in a large part by the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, public health officials and academics of political science and philosophy say there has never been poured so much confusion onto the public as to how or when to vaccinate.

But are vaccine naysayers strong enough to influence the midterm elections? Sources interviewed by Downtown say the jury is still out.

Jess Steier, DrPH, PMP, is founder and CEO of Unbiased Science, an educational outreach organization that since 2020 has delivered public health messaging through social media, online symposiums, and investigative longform articles that reach over 30 million people.

At best, she said that there is a part of the American population that is not anti-vax, but confused. And currently, the CDC is only adding to this confusion.

“I don’t like the term anti-vax,” admitted Steier. “Not everyone who questions science is anti-science, and not everyone who has questions about vaccines are anti-vaxers. People are doing the best with the information that they have, and they may not have been exposed to the best, science-based information.”

“The majority of Americans still want access to vaccines and an immunization schedule for their children,” Steier stressed. “On one hand, you have scientific and medical organizations saying one thing, and now the federal government is saying another. That is leading to more confusion. Let’s just say it is a frustrating time to be in public health.”

Though she is not a political scientist, Steier said that the growing libertarian MAHA movement has a loud voice and the ear of elected officials and candidates.

Steir said people in the MAHA movement like RFK Jr. not because they understand any of his policy positions, but because he validates their frustration with institutions that seem disconnected from their lived experiences.

“The MAHA movement has tapped into their mamma bear instincts who believe they know what is best for their children and wish to find and advocate for their children’s health in an autonomous way,” Steier said. “From RFK Jr., we get this messaging that Americans are sick, that we have so many chronic illnesses, and we feel like there is something wrong and big changes are needed. RFK Jr. tapped into this.”

Recently, Steier participated on an online panel event with a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that aims to bridge the political divide on a multitude of issues. The topic of the debate was: “Is RFK Jr. good for America’s Health.”

Many admitted they had absolutely no idea of what policies RFK Jr. represented or what his qualifications were, but what they heard was that he represented a change to the status quo when it comes to public health.

On her organization’s Substack, she wrote about three observations she made from participating in this debate: Americans are desperate for a change to the status quo on how public health is approached, the COVID pandemic had a profound effect on the way the public views public and scientific health institutions, and social media circulates a plethora of misinformation on public health, including about vaccines.

Steier added that RFK Jr. has made matters worse by vilifying healthcare providers, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, accusing them of making a profit by keeping Americans sick.

She wrote: “This isn't just wrong; it's the systematic dismantling of some of our last remaining trusted messengers. It's one of the thorniest problems in science communication, and I honestly don't have a good solution.”

Another observer of the public’s perceptions of vaccines is Jennifer A. Reich, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado in Denver. Reich is the author of the 2016 book Calling the Shots. Since 2007, she conducted hundreds of interviews with parents to understand their views on vaccines. She said there was a time when those who were skeptical or hesitant ran the gamut on the political, educational and socioeconomic spectrum. Now, she observed, it is mostly those who lean politically to the right.

What she is also observing is the amount of pressure put on parents these days to believe that they must take charge of the health and well-being of their children, and it is their responsibility to question mainstream authority.

“Before COVID, vaccine hesitancy was entirely nonpartisan,” said Reich. “There were equal approaches to decision-making on vaccines on the left and the right. The families I interviewed came from conservative and progressive leanings, but they said very similar things about vaccines. That all changed after COVID, and it has become politicized in a way I had not seen before.”

Reich said vaccine hesitancy has grown stronger among conservatives and Evangelical Christians. This hesitancy centers around the COVID vaccine, but she fears this is spilling over into conventional preventative immunizations like measles, and suspects this hesitation is having a stronger hold in politics.

From a voting standpoint, Reich said her research shows that identity politics is stronger than ever. And how and when the United States loses its measles eradication status, as Canada just did last November, this may shape the way people vote this coming November.

“Electoral politics are complicated in ways they haven’t been in the past,” Reich said. “Research suggests that voting now is more tied to identity than issues compared to just a few decades ago. I think we're going to see this play out if people become unhappy if they sense that the institutions which they used to hold in high regard (like the CDC) are now seen as places of chaos.”

Reich added that even those who hold RFK Jr. in high regard, like those in the MAHA movement, may show very little support in what the CDC is doing in its making these changes to vaccine recommendations.

According to an October 2025 Washington Post and KFF “Survey of Parents” fielded just before the CDC announcement to cut recommended childhood vaccines, just 26 percent of parents thought the CDC recommended “too many” childhood vaccines, while 52 percent thought the CDC recommended “about the right amount” of vaccines for children. Sixteen percent of parents expressed uncertainty and were unsure of the agency’s recommendations. About 38 percent of parents surveyed identified as supporters of the MAHA movement.

In the survey, 56 percent of MAHA parents trusted RFK Jr. to provide reliable information about vaccines, more than twice the share of 23 percent of non-MAHA-supporting parents who say the same. While just nine percent of MAHA parents say they are “anti-vaccine,” 55 percent say they are “in the middle” when it comes to vaccines.

Reich said the MAHA movement believes in taking many aspects of health, including know-how on vaccines, into their own hands. Rather than putting trust into longstanding expertise of healthcare and public health professionals, the MAHA movement asks parents to “do their own research.”

In interviewing hundreds of parents on this topic, Reich has witnessed what this pressure looks like.

“In my interviews of parents, I learned that people are most critical of the ones who just follow recommendations (of their pediatricians) blindly, who don't question, who don't ‘do their own research,’” Reich said. “Good parenting is now defined as vigilance for one’s family and the ability to make individual and personalized decisions. The problem is, when it comes to public health and vaccines, it doesn’t work that way. In broader society, there are interventions we cannot just choose or not choose because they impact the people around us. The ability to control infectious disease is one of those things.”

Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Michigan’s chief medical executive, painted a sobering picture of where vaccination rates are heading in the state, as well as the number of families filing for non-medical exemptions for vaccines. She had hoped that after the pandemic, when vaccine rates tumbled, immunizations would pick up again. But only the opposite is occurring.

Bagdasarian explained that Michigan had worked for years to improve childhood and school vaccination coverage.

With each state setting its own vaccination requirements to attend public schools, Michigan requires children entering kindergarten must have started their immunization rounds for Diphtheria. Tetanus, Pertussis. Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Varicella (chickenpox), Hepatitis B, and Polio.

By the time they enter the seventh grade, Michigan schoolchildren must have completed their immunization schedules for Diphtheria. Tetanus, Pertussis. Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Varicella, Hepatitis B, Polio, and Meningococcal conjugate.

By 2019, Bagdasarian said state childhood immunization rates for preschool-aged children had risen to 75 percent, not enough to reach the 95 percent needed for herd immunity, but it was going in the right direction. When COVID hit, that number plummeted to 69 percent. Her hopes that this was a temporary setback were dashed as vaccine rates continue to fall. Now, statewide, childhood vaccination rates for the age set of five and under are at 68 percent.

Vaccination rates are a little higher for schoolchildren by the time they reach kindergarten and the seventh grade, around 89-90 percent, but they are still below the rates set before COVID, which were averaged between 93-95 percent statewide.

From a bird’s-eye view, the numbers may not seem so bad. But at the granular, county-by-county or school-by-school level, Bagdasarian warned that the statistics get more concerning. From a geographic standpoint, Dr. Bagdasarian said there are distinct pockets and regions in the state where vaccination rates are low and medical exemptions are high.

The number of pockets with low immunization rates – under 70 percent – is growing.

“In 2011, we had a geographic cluster of eastern and northern counties that had a vaccine coverage rate of less than 70 percent,” Bagdasarian said. “By 2017, there were only eight counties that had vaccination rates of under 70 percent. But by 2024, the number of counties with vaccination rates under 70 percent exploded. We see them in southeast Michigan along the Ohio border, in northwest Michigan, and in the northeast reaches of the Upper Peninsula. Now, most of Michigan’s counties have immunization rates that fall below 70 percent.”

With that said, the state’s building-by-building statistics of lower-than-needed vaccination counts show there is an ever-growing risk for an outbreak of the most contagious deadly disease known to man: measles.

“At the building level, we’ve got schools where 98 percent of people are vaccinated, and then we’ve got schools where 30 percent of students are vaccinated, or 40 percent of students are vaccinated,” Bagdasarian said. “What that means is, if there is a single measles case in one of those low vaccination schools, those schools will be shut down because of the potential for large outbreaks.”

Falling vaccination rates are coupled with rising non-medical exemption rates, giving parents in the state greater wiggle room to either put off or completely hold off from getting their kids vaccinated and still allowing them to attend school.

According to 2024 data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, vaccination waivers are highest in counties in the thumb and in the western reaches of the Upper Peninsula, between eight and 22 percent. In Oakland County, between seven and nne percent of schoolchildren have vaccine waivers. Nationally, non-medical exemption rates for school vaccine mandates rose to nearly four percent in 2024–25, up from pre-pandemic rates of 2.5 percent. Seventeen states now report exemption rates above five percent.

Michigan does not allow nonmedical exemptions unless the child’s caregiver completes an inperson education requirement with their local county health department. This is an appointment outside of their pediatrician’s practice. At the appointment, a public health nurse or educator reviews the diseases the vaccines prevent, explains risks and benefits of vaccination, answers questions and addresses concerns and ensure that parents are making an informed decision.

If, after the session, the parent still chooses not to vaccinate, the county health department issues an official stamped State of Michigan nonmedical waiver form.

Upon receiving this county-certified waiver, the public school records the exemption in their immunization system and keeps it on file. A new waiver is required when the child enters a new school level (from grammar school to middle school level) or when the child changes schools or school districts.

In February, the St. Clair County Health Department is easing the process for parents to attain non-medical vaccination waivers. It is reminding residents of their waiver rights, and allowing residents who seek waivers to bypass an educational session required by state rules before gaining a waiver.

“Michigan has one of the most liberal exemption policies for vaccines,” explained Bagdasarian. “Not only do we allow medical and religious exemptions, but we also allow any sort of personal philosophical reasons to be included as to why someone will not vaccinate their children. Our exemption rates have been going up, and our routine immunization uptake rates have been going down. This is a trend that took hold during COVID and I was hoping by now this trend would be turning in the other direction but it is not.”

Bagdasarian said public health and healthcare professionals must approach the issue of declining vaccination rates with empathy for parents.

“Every parent wants to make the best possible decision for their child,” Bagdasarian said. “There is not a parent in the world who is saying, ‘I’m going to use my child as a political card.’ Every parent wants to do the right thing for their kid.” Whenever I enter a conversation with parents, I understand they are seeking the best possible information to decide about vaccines. But there is a difference between parents who just want more information and those who weaponize distrust.”

Bagdasarian said that vaccines are the victims of their own success. Most people today have no living memory of seeing a child afflicted with polio in an iron lung, or a child in the hospital due to complications from mumps or diphtheria, for example.

“The success of vaccines has made these diseases invisible,” Bagdasarian said. “At times, we need to give the public historical context and some good storytelling to make them understand what life was like before we had a nationwide vaccination program.”

For example, it was just two generations ago that chickenpox was a common childhood disease. But chickenpox has harmful, if not life-altering, impact, as Bagdasarian remembers when she was a young doctor in her clinical rotations.

“I once cared for a young woman who was nonverbal and bedbound her entire life and had severe mental and physical disabilities,” recalled Bagdasarian. “This is because her mother had contracted chickenpox during her first trimester of pregnancy. And unless you have seen those types of outcomes, you don’t realize how horrific these diseases can be that are now easily preventable through vaccines.”

Bagdasarian also reminds the public of what life was like before the polio vaccine. Fears of spread were highest during the summer, when children could contract the disease in swimming pools.

“Every summer, mothers would be terrified if their kid got a fever, because they didn’t know if it was a passing (virus), or if it was polio, and their child was going to end up paralyzed,” Bagdasarian explained. “When the polio vaccine was finally licensed, church bells rang around the entire country. Mothers wept tears of joy because they no longer had to be (scared of polio) anymore.”

Bagdasarian said that because of a myriad of false messaging, the same unanimous enthusiasm did not exist when vaccines for COVID emerged in the spring of 2021.

Though Bagdasarian would not specifically comment on RFK Jr., she noted that “disturbing seeds are being sown” at the federal levels of public health administration that do not serve parents or children.

Because of this confusion engineered by the CDC, pediatric practices across the country are parting ways with the agency and instead leaning into the recommendations and guidance of medical organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which is still adhering to old recommendations of 17 childhood vaccines.

The fact that the CDC can no longer be looked upon as the gold standard for setting public health benchmarks is devastating to public health officials like Kate Guzman, RN, health officer of Oakland County.

Regarding RFK Jr.’s decision to cut vaccine recommendations such as getting flu and COVID shots, Guzman was not surprised.

“I knew it in my gut that this was coming,” she said. “(The CDC dropping vaccine requirements) tells me what's coming next, which is further chaos regarding school vaccine requirements.”

To drill down more into the data on vaccine rates, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services breaks down vaccine rates to the individual school building. Any school that does not have the “herd immunity” threshold of 95 percent or higher is marked in blue.

Guzman said throughout the state, including Oakland County, there is a lot of blue.

Guzman said if there is one measles case reported in any of the schools in the blue zone, they may be forced to shut down, and unvaccinated children are required to stay home until all the cases cease.

Guzman said each state has its own guidelines for vaccine rates and now she predicts that more states will begin following the CDC’s looser recommendations while others will stick to recommendations long established before the current Trump administration.

Asked if there has been anything coming down the pipeline about completely changing recommendations to getting vaccines by kindergarten, Guzman said there have yet to be any announcements.

“The CDC has made no updates on school requirements because from their standpoint, this is a state-by-state decision and not up to the federal government,” Guzman. “But while the CDC has yet to directly say ‘no, kids going into kindergarten should not or do not need vaccines,’ they are encouraging and promoting something called shared clinical decision making (SCDM).”

SCDM emerged as a concept as recently as 2019. It means that the decision to vaccinate be made jointly by the healthcare provider and the patient with consideration for the individual benefits and risks. But this has always been the case: the decision to vaccinate – whether it be a child or an adult - has always hinged upon a discussion between a doctor and their patients.

Unlike routine recommendations, SCDM vaccines are administered based on patient-provider discussions and individual preferences. The vaccines that now fall under SCDM include RSV vaccinations for adults 60 and older, pneumonia shots for adults 65 years and older, HPV vaccinations for adults aged 27 to 45 years, the meningococcal B vaccine for adolescents and young adults 16 to 23 years, and Hepatitis B vaccinations for adults 60 years and older with diabetes.

Guzman said the term is veiled language that only unnecessarily complicates vaccine scheduling and places an undue burden on already stretched pediatric and primary care healthcare practitioners.

“Pediatricians will typically approach parents of their patients, tell them that this is the vaccination schedule, and the parent will be on board with the injections,” Guzman said. “The way I see it, you've got pediatricians who are struggling to keep up with a patient load that pays their bills and keeps their office doors open, and now they will have extra work because of the direction the CDC has gone by promoting the concept of shared clinical decision making.”

To offset the declining rates of vaccinations and to ease the burden of pediatric practices, Guzman is hopeful that this spring, her department will launch free classes for expectant parents to provide them with accurate education on vaccines and answer other questions about labor and delivery options. Guzman said that online class offerings will be taught by registered labor and delivery nurses as well as other public health educators regarding vaccine education.

“Let’s start from a place that every parent wants to do what is right to keep their child healthy,” Guzman said. “Each family should be making decisions based on their beliefs, values, and comfort level of risks (the minimum risk of complications from a vaccine versus the risk of contracting a life-threatening illness that can be avoided with vaccines). That is where I would like to hit this issue hard. Let’s develop spaces to have those individualized conversations as public health officials. Let’s take this burden off the pediatrician’s office and let us as public health officials have these in-depth conversations.”

Mark Navin, Chair of Philosophy at Oakland University, studies medical ethics issues and has long examined trends in public perceptions of vaccines. Instead of insisting on mandates, where pockets of the population are digging in and opting out through the increasing ease of acquiring non-medical exemptions, Navin said community, school, healthcare, and other institutional leaders must build back trusting relationships about healthcare and vaccines among a generation of parents and younger people who he said remain “broken” by the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Navin and Lainie Friedman Ross, MD, PhD, Chair of the Department of Health Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester Medical Center, co-authored “America’s Vaccine Policy Whiplash,” which was published in the October 2025 Journal of American Medicine.

The viewpoint piece examines vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccine leanings from the intersection of weighing in on personal freedoms versus the needs of public health.

Navin said that immunization is one of the first decisions young parents make, and they need to understand the historic significance of vaccines in terms of public health while trusting the government and other institutions to make evidence-based immunizations for their children. Unfortunately, in the years following the COVID pandemic, that trust has waned.

“Outside of the development of clean water supplies through proper sewerage systems, vaccines as a public health innovation have saved more lives than anything else in the modern age,” Navin said. “But the idea of sticking needles into healthy babies only works if there is a high level of trust in the government institutions in power, and that parents believe these government institutions speak for them.”

Navin continued: “If you think about it, vaccination is a strange thing. We are taking the antigens of a virus or disease and injecting them into healthy babies. Parents are only going to do that if they trust the healthcare professionals and the institutions who have assured them that this is safe.”

He continued: “The problem is that many Americans, especially after the pandemic, have dropped out of many aspects of communal life, including connection to houses of faith, the public school system, or other communal gathering places that were once the glue of American society,” Navin said. “And among minority or marginalized religious or immigrant communities, vaccine hesitancy can go one way or another depending on what leaders of those communities tell their constituents.”

A local example of this going in a positive direction, Navin said, occurred during the 2019 measles outbreak in southeast Michigan, which particularly impacted the religious Jewish community. When cases began to climb in Orthodox circles in places like Southfield and Oak Park, Navin said prominent rabbis and rabbinical boards released statements urging families to vaccinate their children, and vaccine clinics popped up at synagogues.

“After that measles outbreak, I heard from Oakland County health officials that they were pleased with what they saw from the leadership of southeast Michigan’s Orthodox Jewish community,” Navin said. “Those relationships saved the day, even if there may be at times distrust towards the local public health authorities. And where those relationships don’t exist, that’s where we get into trouble (with vaccination rates).”

Navin said a large component of gentle societal pressure to vaccinate is coming from the field of pediatrics.

Locally, one of those practices is Bloom Pediatrics with offices in Birmingham, Bloomfield, Detroit and Southfield.

Dr. Katie Schafer, DO, FAAP, and managing partner of Bloom Pediatrics, said she is devastated about the changes to long-held vaccination recommendations at the federal level, at the fact that her practice can no longer list CDC recommendations for a vaccination schedule and instead uses that of the AAP and that she no longer has confidence in decisions and rulings made by the ACIS.

Schafer said Bloom Pediatrics is known in the community for being vocally pro-vaccine, and family patients know this when they choose their practice for the care of their children. At the onset of the COVID vaccine administering phase, her practice deployed a “vaccine machine,” a purple-painted minivan giving a nod to the Mystery Machine of the Scooby Doo cartoon, where members of the practice parked in local school parking lots to give the vaccine to community members.

“What's happening at the federal level with DHHS and with RFK Jr. is a major insult to our profession,” Schafer said. Though her practice rarely sends communications to its entire patient population, following the CDC ruling drop recommended childhood vaccines from 17 to 11, and it informed all its patients that they would be upholding the recommended vaccine regimen previously held before RFK Jr. took over.

“We have tried to stay apolitical, but when politics interfere with the health of our patients, we felt it was our duty to act,” Schafer said. “Before the RFK Jr. confirmation hearing, we emailed our patients to contact their senators to express concern about his anti-vaccine stance. In my professional life, my charge is to look out for the public’s and children’s health. When political motives get in the way of that, we as a practice had to act. And the resounding responses from our patients were thanking us for standing up and paying attention. ”

The second and third times the practice reached out to its patient base was to inform them that they would no longer be following the new CDC guidelines about immunizations and they were particularly troubled about the CDC’s about face on the importance of getting COVID boosters to all healthy children and adolescents between the ages of six months and 22 years and then informed patients that it will continue to follow older guidelines of recommending vaccinations for hepB, hepA and meningitis.”

“I can't believe that in my professional life, I'm diverting from the Centers for Disease Control,” Schafer lamented. “Just five years ago, we were waiting with bated breath for ACIP to approve the COVID vaccine for children and the CDC to sign off on it. We relied on them for assurance and guidance, and now, five years later, ACIP has been dismantled, its members replaced by non-doctors, non-scientists, and anti-vaxxers. The departure (from conventional science and medicine) has been profound.”

Schafer said with her offices open seven days a week, sometimes having vaccine clinics open until 8 p.m., Bloom Pediatrics is working to make vaccines as accessible as possible to patients.

But she is seeing a small but growing number of patients questioning if they should administer the hepB vaccine to their newborns in the hospital, and others dragging their feet on sticking to the practice’s vaccination schedule. Patients have up until the child is six months after birth to start their rounds of immunizations. At that point, Schafer hopes that a sense of trust has developed between the patient and the practice’s doctors and nurses, and that the patient has gained an understanding and an education on the value of vaccines and a regimented vaccination schedule. If they do not comply after six months, they are instructed to seek out a different practice.

By law, the practice is required to keep CDC literature in the examination room and have parents read it before administering vaccines. But Schafer instructs staff to read out new versions of vaccine precautions administered by the CDC, just in case they may sneak in a line linking the MMR vaccine to autism. She sees patients toggling between whether or not they want to get their kids immunized against the flu and COVID, depending on the number of sick people around them. This attitude of wavering on whether or not to get vaccines is beginning to seep into the decision to vaccinate for HepA and HepB.

“For the very first time, when I told a parent that we are ready to administer (to their child) HepA, the parent said she thought that was no longer on the list recommended,” Schafer said. “I said, if you are referring to a list created by conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxers, then, yes, it is no longer recommended. But if you want to go by a list compiled by decades of peer-reviewed research and evidence and physicians who will back it up, then yes, vaccines like HepA and HepB are very much still on the list.”

The CDC’s reasoning for dropping the HepB vaccine for “low-risk” infants was that this has become the practice in countries like Denmark. RFK Jr. has repeatedly reasoned that our vaccination regimen should resemble the Scandinavian country of six million residents who enjoy universal, tax-funded coverage for all residents, focusing on equality and free access at the point of use for primary and hospital care. Within this care, all expectant women receive prenatal and postnatal care for themselves and their babies, often in the form of at-home visits.

“I don't know much about the Danish healthcare system,” retorted Schafer. “I do know we are an entirely different country. I do know that in 1991, when we introduced the birth dose of HepB vaccine in infants, cases of HepB plummeted in this country. We don’t have the same accessibility to testing and then retesting pregnant women for HepB. The in-hospital vaccine of HepB is the catch-all safety net for all the newborn patients whose mom may not had the best prenatal care, or who never received prenatal care. That's why the vaccine is administered in the hospital within 24 hours of birth. By going around saying that the US should not have to against HepB because Denmark isn’t doing it is a misleading and detrimental to public health.”

WSU’s Gorski minced no words about how he feels about the head of the nation’s DHHS.

“He is systematically dismantling the nation’s vaccine program,” Gorski said. “His goal is nothing less than the elimination of vaccines, no matter what he says otherwise. We have never had an anti-vaccine activist in such a powerful position in the federal government. He is now stacking all the lower positions in the DHHS and the CDC with like-minded individuals, many of them quacks, cranks and pseudo-scientists.”

He continued: “RFK Jr. has spent over 20 years promoting outright anti-vaccine misinformation and the distortion of science,” Gorski said. “To him, the hardened anti-vaxers are like those completely committed to something like a religion or a hardened political identity. You can’t change them easily. Maybe you can’t change them at all.”

But are the shifts in immunization policy and the sway of the MAHA movement strong enough to cause a shake-up at the ballot box in November?

Political scientists like the University of Michigan’s Josh Pasek are doubtful.

Pasek, a professor of political communication, has written about perceptions of the COVID vaccine.

While he has not specifically studied the political ramifications of this era of the CDC under RFK Jr., he does not see the upset of vaccination recommendations as a big enough issue to steer election outcomes in November. The CDC’s actions will be reflected in changing attitudes towards vaccines, not choosing a candidate, he said.

“By changing the norms at the government level, you likely are going to change people’s willingness to get vaccinated,” Pasek said. “That’s where we will see the change, rather than how people are going to vote.”

For vaccine policy to become a truly decisive electoral issue, Pasek said, many voters would have to see it as a top-priority issue, and enough of them would have to be willing to switch parties over it.

“Vaccines are not most people’s primary issue, and it is not the lens through which most see their politics through,” Pasek said. “Vaccines are one of the issues where the people who care more about it are a smaller group, but who tend to be more anti-vaccine. Those folks are going to be enthusiastic about this change to some degree, but it will not impact elections.”

Historically, Pasek said there used to be a liberal or left-leaning contingent within the vaccine-skeptical space, but that this group has drifted away from the Democratic Party.

Pasek said that most voters are not making their midterm choices based primarily on vaccine policy. Those who are deeply invested in this issue are often already parked in third-party or nontraditional political spaces rather than in the mainstream Democratic–Republican contest.

While RFK Jr. embodies a vaccine-skeptical, distrust-of-public-health brand that resonates with a certain segment of the electorate, Pasek suggests that there isn’t a clear, parallel force inside Congress or the traditional midterm landscape driving vaccine skepticism as a central campaign plank.

Pasek said that while Congressional candidates will be mostly “inert” when it comes to platforming vaccines during their campaigns, the rise and validation of RFK Jr. at the federal level may be a signal for candidates further down on the ballot to pick up the baton on vaccine skepticism.

“If there is any place where I would imagine you would see voters changing their views on candidates, it is going to be at the state levels,” Pasek said. “In some states, candidates will be changing policies to match new CDC guidelines.”

Pasek said even rising rates of measles cases are not changing the minds of voters to switch parties and vote differently. He is especially doubtful that parents who refused to vaccinate their children will change the way they vote, even in the midst of the spikes we are now witnessing.

“If you refused to get an MMR vaccine for your child and your child has now gotten measles, are you going to switch to the other side of the issue? Probably not. Most likely, as we have seen, people are going to continue to rationalize their position.”