New Vaccine Recommendations

“The HHS stressed on Monday that all 17 vaccines, including those no longer recommended for all children, will still be covered at no out-of-pocket cost to patients by government and private health insurance plans.”

https://reason.com/2026/01/06/new-vaccine-recommendations/

The big plan behind Kennedy’s overhaul of childhood vaccines

“In dropping government recommendations Monday that children routinely receive shots for four diseases, Kennedy’s allies believe they are closer to realizing a top priority: a country in which people who claim vaccine injuries can more easily sue vaccinemakers for millions in civil court.

Manufacturers of those vaccines would no longer be shielded from liability, the plan’s proponents assert, and could be driven from the market amid an influx of lawsuits alleging injuries from their products. In that scenario, the anti-vaccine movement would have a high-profile opportunity to shape the public narrative about childhood shots in courts nationwide.

Kennedy and Health and Human Services Department officials announced that longstanding recommendations that children receive flu, meningitis, hepatitis A and rotavirus vaccines were downgraded to a category known as “shared clinical decisionmaking,” meaning patients are encouraged to confer with health care providers before getting the shots.

In all, the number of “routine” vaccine recommendations — which assume vaccination as the default — have now been cut by a third, from 18 to 11, since 2024.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/07/the-big-plan-behind-kennedys-overhaul-of-childhood-vaccines-00713852

“but weren’t the democrats dictators during covid” | Destiny Reacts to Sam Harris on Triggernometry!

Donald Trump said he lied about public health during Covid in order to prevent a panic. He said he played down the deadliness of Covid in order to not create a panic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2tIzp7cvqY

Is RFK Jr Bringing Back Darwinist Medicine

In rare cases, modern vaccines have negative side effects, and under normal law, people can sue and sympathetic juries can reward huge sums of money. This would make vaccines unprofitable, and without vaccines many many people would die from a variety of diseases. Instead, in the 1980s, we set up a parallel system for vaccines where people with negative side effects can get a payment, but not an exorbitant sum from a normal lawsuit. This system is underfunded and understaffed and could use reform to keep up with claims, but throwing the system out risks for-profit vaccine companies ending the production of vaccines, resulting in many deaths. So, the system is needed, unless the government chooses to manufacture vaccines themselves. People can still sue vaccine manufacturers for negligence, but that is hard to prove.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JCtkwqa64c

Congress Failed to Extend the Health Care Subsidies. Now What?

By letting the Covid-era boost to ACA subsidies end, Republicans are making health insurance for 24 million people much much more expensive. These are people who: don’t get subsidized health insurance at work, make too much for Medicaid, but also too much for regular ACA subsidies. Many are small business owners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59uBAuavn2Y

French Study on mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Finds a Drop in Severe COVID—and No Increase in Deaths

“The researchers followed 22.7 million vaccinated individuals and 5.9 million unvaccinated individuals for nearly four years. They found not only that vaccinated people have a 74 percent lower risk of death from severe COVID-19, but also that those individuals have a lower risk of death, period. Specifically, people who received the shots have a 25 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality.

The researchers sought to control for various confounders, such as a healthy-vaccinee effect, where healthier individuals are more likely to opt for vaccination, or a frailty-related bias, where those in poorer health may avoid it.

“This study helps to put an end to the misinformation spread about mRNA vaccines,” the study’s lead author, Mahmoud Zureik, told Le Monde. “Providing data on the absence of long-term risks helps strengthen confidence in these vaccines, which will be developed for other viruses and diseases.”

Their results should indeed strengthen confidence. But Kennedy, who has been shifting research dollars to purportedly “safer” vaccines, will likely ignore it.”

https://reason.com/2025/12/05/french-study-on-mrna-covid-19-vaccines-finds-a-drop-in-severe-covid-and-no-increase-in-deaths/

RFK Jr. Breaks His Promises About the CDC on Vaccines and Autism

“What about his promise to maintain the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes? Nope. RFK Jr. fired all of the vaccine experts and loaded up the committee with anti-vaccination appointees.”

https://reason.com/2025/11/22/rfk-jr-breaks-his-promises-about-the-cdc-on-vaccines-and-autism/

The Medicaid Program That Saved Money, Turned People’s Health Around — and Got Killed

“After a few months in the program, Smith was no longer diabetic, and she has now been sober for two and a half years.
Her story highlights the success of the Healthy Opportunities Pilot, which launched in North Carolina in March 2022. The program had benefits beyond health and quality-of-life improvements; researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill found the program saved $1,020 a year per recipient on health care costs, and the 38,000 participants had “significantly lower” emergency room visits than their peers.

The program was unique, funded with a five-year, $650 million federal grant approved by the first Donald Trump administration. The idea was to use fresh food, safe housing and transportation — social and economic factors that researchers say determine 80 percent of a person’s health — to improve the lives of the sickest, most expensive patients.

But the Healthy Opportunities Pilot shows the limits of such food-based interventions in public policy. These programs often require longer-term investments, chafing against the cost-cutting instincts that characterize Trump’s second term and legislatures in most red states — the policy level at which most MAHA ideas are put into practice.

In the case of HOP, the Joe Biden administration approved a Medicaid waiver last December to continue the program in North Carolina, which Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, hoped to expand throughout the state over the next two years. But in June, the Republican-led state legislature declined to fund it. State lawmakers argue the program costs more than it saves — a claim that state policy experts dispute because of the way Republican lawmakers were calculating the numbers. These experts say the long-term savings potential was given short shrift.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/11/08/healthy-opportunities-pilot-medicaid-north-carolina-maha-00626465