Vaccines: Does Europe Do Them Better?

The U. S. just made a big change to its vaccine recommendations, cutting back on the number of shots it will routinely recommend for kids. The government says it wants to "better align" with countries like Denmark. But is following Denmark’s lead a fairy tale come true — or a nightmare in slow motion? Plus, we find out what this new schedule could mean for kids’ vaccines in the U. S. We hear from Professor Jens Lundgren and pediatrician and researcher David Higgins. Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsVaccineSchedules In this episode, we cover: (00:00) The growing turmoil around vaccines in the U. S. (02:20) Why did the CDC change its vaccine recommendations? (07:29) Vaccines, the Danish way (16:20) Should the U. S. copy Denmark’s vaccine schedule? (20:22) How bad is this? (22:03) RSV: A case study in confusion (28:27) What should parents do now? This episode was produced by Blythe Terrell and Meryl Horn with help from Rose Rimler, Michelle Dang and Ekedi Fausther-Keeys. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Additional research help from Erica Akiko Howard. Our executive producer is Wendy Zukerman. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Emma Munger, So Wylie, Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka and Bobby Lord. Thanks very much to the Unbiased Science network, who connected us with David Higgins. They’ve been doing some amazing work on trying to explain what’s going on with the U. S. and vaccines. Unbiased Science — check out their podcast and their socials. Thanks very much to all the scientists we spoke to and emailed with about these changes. And special thanks to Bernadette Sciandra and Laurence Horn. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi. This is Meryl Horne in for Wendy Zukerman, and you're listening to Science Versus.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  This is the show that pits facts against filling up babies with shots.

• 0:15Speaker 00

  Today on the show, vaccines. In the US, there's been a ton of turmoil around vaccines. The Department of Health and Human Services is being led by a longtime vaccine skeptic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He's been accused of firing the head of the CDC for not rubber-stamping his vaccine policy. He's also added a ton of vaccine skeptics to this big vaccine advisory committee, and President Trump has chimed in here, saying that we've been giving kids way too many shots.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  They pump so much stuff into those beautiful little babies, it's a disgrace.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  And last week, the CDC announced a big change, saying they've got new vaccine recommendations for kids.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  New guidance from the CDC, reducing the number of vaccines recommended for children.

• 1:01Speaker 03

  They have scaled back the number of vaccines, now only recommending 11 vaccines.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  The CDC is now saying that some shots that were given to kids routinely, instead, should be given on a case-by-case basis, like to, quote, "high-risk groups." And to back up these new recommendations, the government has pointed to what some other countries are doing. They say that when you look at the US versus similar countries, some of them don't give kids nearly as many shots. And there's one country in particular that's gotten pointed to a ton.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  Denmark.

• 1:36Speaker 04

  Denmark. I hear Denmark a lot. They're a pretty healthy country. Why shouldn't we copy Denmark?

• 1:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, the CDC seems to be modeling its new recommendations on Denmark. So is this a fairy tale come true for the US, or is it more like a nightmare?

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Today, we're going to find out, why do some other countries recommend fewer vaccines than the US? Does it make sense to follow their lead? And we'll look at what the fallout could be. Because when it comes to vaccines, there's a lot of...

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Beautiful little babies.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  And then there's science.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  Science Versus is coming up after the break.

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• 4:22Speaker 00

  Welcome back. This is Meryl Horn. I'm here with my fellow senior producer, Rose Rimler. Hey, Rose.

• 4:27Speaker 07

  Hi, Meryl.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  So, we're talking about this vaccine news today. What have you been seeing about this?

• 4:33Speaker 07

  I haven't been following it super closely. I have been following it a little bit. And one thing I saw on social media that was going around was this infographic where there were like two cartoon babies. One cartoon baby is surrounded by syringes, you know, a handful of syringes, but the other cartoon baby is completely encircled with syringes, I guess, full of vaccines. And I think it was from Trump. And it says, like, in the text, it says, "In the US, babies get 72 shots." And I was like, is that true? That does seem like kind of a lot.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:14Speaker 07

  The graphic was just so ridiculous, too. So, yeah, I've been following it. I don't know. I don't really know what's true, what's not true.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  We looked into that one. So, yeah, I mean, it is true that babies get more shots today.

• 5:26Speaker 07

  Than in the past?

• 5:27Speaker 00

  Than in the past, yeah. But like, but they're not getting like 72 shots. So, the number, we did the, you know, we added them up, and it seems like if you add up all the individual shots that someone gets by the time they're 18 years old, including getting, you know, a flu shot and COVID shot every year, then you get 72.

• 5:47Speaker 07

  That's where they got that from.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, it's sort of true, but it's not that babies are getting 72 shots.

• 5:53Speaker 07

  Right.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  And then if you, if you just look at the number of diseases that kids are getting vaccinated against, of course, that number is much lower, right? Because it doesn't include all the booster shots.

• 6:04Speaker 07

  So, how many diseases is it?

• 6:06Speaker 00

  So, before this change, the CDC was recommending that every kid get vaccinated against 17 diseases. Now, it's just 11.

• 6:15Speaker 07

  So, they took away six vaccines that they recommend for everybody?

• 6:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:18Speaker 07

  Which ones?

• 6:19Speaker 00

  Okay. So, the recommendations changed for hepatitis A and B, meningitis, RSV, rotavirus, and flu.

• 6:26Speaker 07

  Okay. Wow.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  And they had actually already stopped recommending the COVID shot last year for every kid. So, now, those ones are only recommended to either high-risk groups or, quote, "based on shared clinical decision-making," unquote, the, you know, which is basically the idea that you have a conversation with your doctor and decide together instead of it being routine.

• 6:49Speaker 07

  Do more work to get the shot.

• 6:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's not as automatic. And they do say that insurance will still cover these vaccines if people want them. But, you know, on the whole, yeah, it makes it more messy.

• 7:02Speaker 07

  Hmm. Okay, Meryl, so in addition to the babies encircled with syringes, it is apparently bogus. Another thing I saw, I was reading a little bit about these changes that came down. And in the article, it said, "This will bring us in line with Denmark's policy." And I was like, Denmark?

• 7:23Speaker 07

  Like, I mean, that's interesting because I think a lot of people in the US idolize Scandinavia. And like, everything they do is better thought out and smarter and better for children than whatever we're doing in the US.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Especially when it comes to healthcare. We're often like, "Oh, look at these Scandinavian countries we should do what they're doing."

• 7:43Speaker 07

  Yeah. It's like this utopia of everybody on their wooden bicycles or whatever.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:49Speaker 07

  So, yeah, I mean, that made me sort of stop and think, like, what's, like, why Denmark, basically?

• 7:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Let's start there. Like, a big reason the US government says that it's making this change, it's not because there's a bunch of new vaccine science saying that vaccines aren't safe anymore. It is because we're trying to match up with what other countries are doing, like Denmark. So to find out how Denmark thinks about all of this, we went directly to the source. The Danish I had for breakfast.

• 8:21Speaker 07

  Meryl, go to your room.

• 8:26Speaker 07

  Unacceptable planning.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  We actually talked to Jens Lundgren. He's a professor of-

• 8:31Speaker 07

  He's a Danish?

• 8:32Speaker 00

  Yes. He's a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Copenhagen. And Jens actually advises the Danish Health Authority on which vaccines to recommend to the Danes. Do you remember the first time you heard that the US was kind of using Denmark as a model? And what you thought when you heard that?

• 8:47Speaker 08

  No, I felt that was, that was very surprising to make that analogy and then just uncritically adopt it. So that was surprising to me, I have to say.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, do you know why we use Denmark in particular?

• 9:02Speaker 08

  That's probably more for you to answer than me. Yeah.

• 9:06Speaker 07

  Right.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  So yeah, I went back and did my homework. And so there was this memo from the White House in December where President Trump praised Denmark, along with a few other high-income countries, basically for just doing fewer childhood vaccines. And then Trump called for a review on the US schedule to see if it should make any changes. And of course, you know, they did. So let's, I want to understand, yeah, like, why does Denmark recommend vaccinating against fewer diseases?

• 9:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, I have that question.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. And Jen said that, you know, a bunch of things factor into this decision for them of whether or not to recommend a vaccine. So how effective the vaccine is, the cost. And then there's how common the disease is. So basically, you, you have to do a math problem to consider, you know, if you're trying to decide if everyone needs a certain vaccine, you need to think about how many cases of a disease you're going to prevent by vaccinating everyone in the population.

• 10:06Speaker 08

  We would argue that if the numbers that we need to vaccinate is extraordinarily large in order to reduce the risk for one person for contracting a disease, then that's a legitimate discussion to have about whether it's worthwhile to induce a vaccine, although it is effective.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so this is one reason why Denmark might not want to vaccinate every kid. Some diseases are pretty rare. So an example here that I think is helpful is meningococcal disease, which can cause meningitis. And this is one of the vaccines that the CDC just changed the recommendations around. So if you look at the number of people who get meningitis every year, it is less than one case in every 100,000 people, both in the US and in Denmark. So what, what do you know about meningitis, by the way, Rose?

• 10:59Speaker 07

  That's the one that college students get when they live in the dorms, right? And it makes your... Brain swell and it's actually very, very dangerous. Is that right?

• 11:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's really terrible. It's often caused by a bacteria and it can affect tissues around your brain, which can lead to this huge immune reaction where it can basically make your brain puff up so much that you die. So when people get it in the US, maybe 10 to 15% of them will die. Sometimes it happens really quickly, like within 24 hours. But, you know, that hasn't been enough for Denmark to recommend the vaccine for every kid. Here is Jens.

• 11:38Speaker 08

  It is scary, yes, and it's a serious condition, but it's also rare. And therefore, for a COVID vaccine, the question will become, do you vaccinate blanket wide? So everybody? Or are you focusing your vaccination efforts if there is an outbreak? And we have chosen the latter.

• 11:57Speaker 07

  So basically, they'll go and vaccinate people surrounding the person that gets it?

• 12:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's the idea, kind of a more targeted approach there. I talked about this with another researcher, though, David Higgins. He's a pediatrician and researcher in Colorado. And he said that if you want to give the vaccines, like only when you've got an outbreak, then like in order for this to work, you really have to have your little like healthcare docs all in a row.

• 12:26Speaker 09

  You have to catch these diseases really fast. You have to quickly be able to find all of their contacts and that ring around the cases to vaccinate them and get vaccines to them. That requires a health system and a public health system that is really well resourced, that doesn't have a lot of gaps and cracks in it where things can fall through. That requires really good access to healthcare. We don't have those things in the US.

• 12:56Speaker 07

  Yeah, I could see how that would be harder to do here.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  There's a lot more cracks. Yeah, it's more fragmented, right? We don't have a national healthcare system like they do. And just a side note, the system doesn't work perfectly in Denmark either. So in 2024, Denmark had 26 known cases of meningococcal disease. And they did this contact tracing and found more than 100 people who were close contacts of people who got it and told them to get vaccinated. But they were only able to confirm that half of those people actually got the vaccine. And you know, the fact that the US has been vaccinating kids for meningitis routinely, it saves lives. So one modeling paper estimated that the vaccine prevented about 500 meningitis cases and 54 deaths in young people.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  So that was over a period of about 15 years.

• 13:48Speaker 07

  Another thought I have, Meryl, is if we're talking about how rare a disease is, sometimes diseases are rare because everybody or many people are vaccinated. Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, that's another good point, right? We're kind of ignoring that fact when we just look at how rare it is today.

• 14:04Speaker 07

  Well, could you argue that Denmark is benefiting from the US vaccinating more people in our population? So it's just suppressing meningitis around the world generally?

• 14:15Speaker 00

  Well, actually, a lot of other European countries do vaccinate for meningitis. And in some cases, they do it even earlier than the US does.

• 14:24Speaker 07

  So Denmark is a freeloader off everyone else's vaccination status?

• 14:29Speaker 00

  Basically.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  So yeah, that's kind of one factor that Denmark is looking at, though, you know, how common a disease is. Another reason I talked about with Jens for like why they might not recommend a vaccine for every kid is about how deadly the disease is. So an example of this would be rotavirus.

• 14:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, what is that, by the way? I've only heard it in this context. I have never heard of that disease.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  I had no idea either before this episode. But yeah, it's, first of all, it is really, really common. So in the US before the vaccine, basically every kid was getting rotavirus by the time they were five years old.

• 15:09Speaker 07

  Ah.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  And this one, it infects your GI tract and can cause really bad diarrhea. And it can get so bad that it will land kids in the hospital. And so, yeah, I asked Jens about why they don't recommend vaccinating against this. And he said, a lot of factors go into it, but one thing is that it is treatable.

• 15:30Speaker 08

  It's not something, at least in all contexts, that we see as a terribly serious disease.

• 15:37Speaker 07

  Again, they're confident that a kid who has a bad case of rotavirus can get to a hospital and be treated.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, the healthcare system really matters for that too, right? And then, you know, if you look at the numbers in the US, vaccinating has kept a bunch of kids out of the hospital. So the CDC has calculated that the vaccine prevents 62,000 emergency department visits and 45,000 hospitalizations every year from rotavirus. Which to me does make me glad that like, my kids are vaccinated against it. Like even if it's not going to kill them, I don't want them to go to the ER.

• 16:14Speaker 07

  Well, yeah, I mean, that's the thing with kids and getting sick. Kids get sick a lot and you just hope that your kid is gonna have an okay case and get over it. And this is part of life, but you don't know if your kid's gonna be the one that gets really, really sick from something. And if someone in the family has to go to the hospital, that's really disruptive and scary for the kid. Like, I'm thinking about vaccines for childhood diseases that are typically fairly not life-threatening, but very unpleasant.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:44Speaker 07

  So one that comes to mind for me is the chickenpox vaccine, which did not exist when I was little.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  Me neither, yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 07

  One of my earliest memories is like being in the bathtub and some kind of weird solution they give for being covered in sores, you know, pox. And being in the bathtub, my mom next to me and me just crying because I was so miserable. I feel awful and I got it, both my brothers got it and the whole family was just like. So we were all fine and we got through it, but it's like, it'd be nice to not have that happen. Like, I don't see, like, that's good that you don't have to, like, be sick and covered in pox, scar you too, so like.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  Right. Where now it's just this vaccine, which by the way, is still recommended for everyone.

• 17:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, and I'm jealous. I'm like, you kids today, you don't even know what we had to go through.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  It, what it makes me think of is just how many sicknesses my, my young kids are already getting every single winter. It's so brutal. It's just like one after another, after another, after another.

• 17:43Speaker 07

  Yeah, everyone on the team who has little kids is like constantly like, someone's kid is always sick at Science vs.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  And I'm just sort of imagining a parallel universe where rotavirus was also this one that like all the moms would like complain about on the group chat, like, oh, my kid has like diarrhea for like a week. And like, that sounds like a bad alternate universe. Like, I'm glad we opened this one where they got some stuff, like, it's like oral vaccines. So my kids got something squirted into their mouths. I kind of barely even remember this happening. But yeah, now it, it does sort of feel like we're going backward with this rotavirus vaccine to this time where some kids might now be missing out on it.

• 18:19Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  But yeah, just to go back to the idea that, you know, we want to just be, um, like, emulating another country's vaccine schedule. A lot of the people we talked to said that it just doesn't make sense to do this, like plop one country's vaccine schedule into another's. Here's David.

• 18:37Speaker 09

  You can't copy and paste vaccine schedule from another country and, and expect it to work in the same way that it does in a different context, like the US.

• 18:44Speaker 07

  Why, Merrill? Because diseases are diseases. It's just biology.

• 18:50Speaker 07

  Borders are made up.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Stop trolling me.

• 18:52Speaker 07

  Convince me.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  Well, like for one, which country do you pick then, right? Because this idea that we need to align with other countries that do fewer vaccines has been around for a while.

• 19:04Speaker 09

  One of the things that's brought up is like, okay, the US is an outlier, right? We have vaccines for 18 diseases. Denmark has vaccines for only 10, and Japan 14, and Germany only 15. So we are an outlier, and we need to align with peers? Not only are those countries cherry-picked, because I can count other countries that have a very similar schedule to ours, like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, but also the fact that we have coverage for more diseases is not evidence of a problem. That's backward. It's not a competition to see how few diseases we can prevent.

• 19:47Speaker 07

  I don't know, some people seem to think that.

• 19:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:50Speaker 07

  But no, I mean, another way to, I'm thinking back to that baby surrounded by the needles infographic we talked about in the beginning, like, the baby on the left with fewer syringes around it had a lot of, like, gaps in its shield, and the baby on the right was, like, fully shielded. So you could completely switch how you look at that.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. We should make our own infographic.

• 20:15Speaker 00

  And so, and then to pick, you know, Denmark and then ignore, you know, Canada and Australia and New Zealand is a little, you know, is a little random.

• 20:25Speaker 07

  Other peer countries.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and then, of course, there are countries that are adding vaccines to their schedule, including, dun-da-da-da, Denmark.

• 20:35Speaker 07

  What?

• 20:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, they just added RSV during pregnancy, this awful respiratory virus. You know, the UK just added varicella, chickenpox, to their list. So this idea that the US needs to, like, match up with some other country, it's a moving target, anyway.

• 20:51Speaker 07

  Some of them are trying to match up with us, at least previous us.

• 20:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, actually, we heard that, too. And, and we, yeah, so we actually reached out to experts in other countries to ask them what they thought of these changes in the US, and they all told us that it was surprising. One of them told us, quote, "It is like watching a train wreck in slow motion." Unquote.

• 21:13Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's kind of what it feels like, for sure. From the inside, too. Being in a train wreck in slow motion.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you know, we did reach out to the Health and Human Services Department. They basically defended this decision. They said in a statement that, quote, "Evidence from peer-developed nations shows high vaccination rates can be achieved through trust and public health, education, and strong doctor-patient relationships," unquote. And they also pointed out the access thing, saying that, quote, "Insurance will continue to cover more vaccines for children in the US than in peer nations," unquote.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  All right, so after the break, what's next? What's gonna happen from here?

• 21:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, we're all gonna be staggering around with our rotavirus.

• 22:01Speaker 07

  Coming out our buttholes.

• 22:02Speaker 00

  After the break.

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• 24:31Speaker 00

  Welcome back. This is Meryl. I'm here with Rose. Hi, Meryl. So we're talking about this big change in vaccine recommendations. And we just heard some reasons why experts don't think it makes sense for us to cosplay as Denmark. They're like, black licorice is gross.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  But the other thing we wanted to know is like, how much do these changes actually matter? Like, how big a deal is this? I talked about this with David Higgins, who you heard from before. So on a scale from 1 to 10, how big of a vaccine emergency is this?

• 25:05Speaker 09

  Well, I would say that this is an 8. An 8 or 9.

• 25:12Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 25:13Speaker 09

  Now, here's why. I think that a 10 would be the no access to some lifesaving vaccines that parents want to choose for their children or that we want to get as patients. This, in some ways, does still preserve some choice.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  Because your parents still can get these if they want them, is that right?

• 25:38Speaker 09

  That's right, except, except it is a big deal, and here's why. Because over time, this is likely to decrease the availability and access for parents who want to vaccinate their children.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  So yeah, David's worried that even if parents still technically have access to these vaccines, these changes have injected some confusion into the system. Since, you know, it's a lot easier to just say, like, here's your list of shots, go and get them, than to have people figure out, like, is my kid high risk? Or should we do this thing where I need to talk to my doctor? So one example where this does get really confusing is RSV, which is really terrible. Here's David.

• 26:20Speaker 09

  RSV is just a horrible nasty virus that every pediatrician, every winter, we're just swimming in RSV. Kids get super snotty with it, and like, we, I have admitted, more kids at the hospital, put more kids on oxygen, it had more complications than any, any other disease, by far. And these are in healthy kids, right? We had a particularly bad RSV season several seasons ago, and I remember walking into the emergency department for a shift several times, and walking in, I mean, the waiting room is filled with kids on oxygen that hadn't even been seen yet.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  And so, yeah, it's, it's terrible, and one thing that's exciting is that we do have these new ways of protecting babies against it. But it's, so let me tell you about how it works, because it is really complicated, and it's taken me forever to wrap my head around it. You mean how the vaccine works? Yeah, for starters, the vaccine itself is kind of a weird one. So the vaccine was approved in 2023 for pregnant people. But then, at the same time, we got a separate treatment, not a vaccine, but something called monoclonal antibodies that babies can get after they're born. So if the mom didn't get the shot when she was pregnant, then the babies can take the Antibodies and these both work pretty well.

• 27:42Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Okay, so in the old recommendations, you had RSV at the top of the list. You know, primo placement, saying babies should get these antibodies right away when they're born. Specifically if the mom hadn't been vaccinated or they didn't know her vaccine status. But now, when you look at the new recommendations and you look at like where RSV is listed, it's in this whole new category that's further down of kids who are quote, "high risk." And this could mean that the kid has chronic health problems. But it could also mean that your mom didn't get the vaccine. Like, that makes you high risk, too.

• 28:18Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  And that actually could be a lot of kids because the vaccine is only recommended if you're in a certain stage of pregnancy at a certain time of year.

• 28:27Speaker 07

  Well, so it sounds like what you're saying is because the vaccination of people during pregnancy is not universal by any means. A lot of kids are going to be born without having been vaccinated while in the womb, which makes them a candidate for like a high risk.

• 28:46Speaker 00

  But yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 07

  It's not clear maybe that your kid is high risk just because you didn't get the vaccine. You have to kind of, you have to know that.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  It's tricky, yeah. And, you know, David pointed out that this detail is kind of tucks into a footnote in this new schedule.

• 29:02Speaker 09

  Parents are going to look at the schedule and say, they're not going to read the footnote. The, how this is described is in a footnote, they're going to see the schedule, the nice colors, and say, "Oh, my child's not high risk."

• 29:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:15Speaker 09

  "I had a normal pregnancy. I had, you know, we left the hospital after two days and everyone said, "Your baby's healthy and great." Why should they be getting this? So that's my concern with that one.

• 29:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, that is really confusing.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you know, this point about confusion, we're already seeing this play out. Like, for me, Rose.

• 29:37Speaker 07

  Even you?

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I am one of these confused parents, not because of RSV, but actually a different vaccine. So, okay, so last week, I took my son to the pediatrician, he's two, and the doctor was basically like, "Good news, you don't need any vaccines today." So he would have needed the hepatitis A vaccine, but now that's not on the schedule for everyone. And she told me, you know, "That's fine because there's barely any hep A in the US anyway."

• 30:05Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  And in the moment, I was relieved because I didn't have to like watch my toddler scream cry. But then I left the appointment not really sure what to think. So I asked David about about Hep A.

• 30:17Speaker 09

  Hepatitis A is a good example where prior to using the vaccine, especially kind of through the 90s, it was spreading through our communities. Now, what the vaccine has done is it stopped that spread.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  Just as recent as the 90s, though. It was it was out there.

• 30:34Speaker 09

  That's right. That's right. And so we now, we because so many people in the community, especially kids, are protected with the vaccine, we don't see it spreading routinely through the community. That doesn't mean that it's not out there. It is still out there and can still absolutely come right back. So vaccines are victims of their own success.

• 30:56Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 30:57Speaker 09

  Right? We we use it, it works. And then people start questioning why it's necessary.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:04Speaker 09

  Because they don't see anymore because the vaccine worked. And unfortunately, these diseases will come back when we stop vaccinating. They're they're being held at bay with vaccines. They're not eradicated.

• 31:21Speaker 07

  So what does that mean for your two year old Merrill? Are you gonna go and get him the shot?

• 31:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, actually, I'm like, okay, I need to put this on my to do list for the next time we go back, especially because hepatitis A is still really common in other parts of the world. And I don't want to have to worry about him like getting a shot later if he's traveling. It just makes it more messy.

• 31:39Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 31:40Speaker 09

  We are a very interconnected world where one of these diseases is only a plane flight away and can be introduced to a community that has a vaccination rate that's way too low. And what's gonna happen? Well, I think of it like a dry forest and sparks being thrown into the dry forest. Eventually, that spark's gonna land in the wrong place, and it's gonna start a wildfire.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  And, you know, going to a different disease now, we are seeing some of this with resurgence with measles in the US right now, right? Like, we've got that spreading, especially in these unvaccinated communities. And it's happening in other countries, too, like Canada. They've lost their status as a country that's eliminated measles, and we might, too. And that's going on, even though the official recommendations still tell you to get your kid vaccinated for it. And so, yeah, you know, with these new recommendations, there's this concern that parents won't know what to do, that a lot of the vaccines sort of feel optional. So I asked David, should parents still get all of these vaccines for their kids?

• 32:49Speaker 09

  I still recommend all of the vaccines that are on the American Academy of Pediatrics vaccine schedule. That is what I'm looking to, that is what I am recommending for my families, that is what I'm telling other clinicians and vaccination providers to look at.

• 33:05Speaker 00

  And so that hasn't changed with these new recommendations from the federal government? Yeah, so the AAP still basically abides by the old schedule that the CDC used to have before this recent change. David says that, you know, best-case scenario is that people do that, they keep following that old schedule. But that's not necessarily what he thinks is most likely.

• 33:27Speaker 09

  Oh, I wish I had a crystal ball, and I don't. Right? I am concerned that this is one step among more steps to come that are going to continue to erode trust or availability of vaccines. I don't think we're done here. I think in this next year, we're going to see more and more things happen that are going to make parents question, that are going to make parents hesitant, not because the science changes. And unfortunately, I think what we're going to see is when parents want to vaccinate, it's become harder and harder.

• 34:12Speaker 09

  There are going to be more barriers, more things that they have to overcome to get their kids vaccinated when they want to.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  That's Science Versus.

• 34:28Speaker 00

  We have 61 citations in this week's episode. Check out our transcripts if you want to see all of them. You can find the link in our show notes. And if you have questions or thoughts about vaccines, we want to hear them. Our email is sciencevs team at gmail dot com. And our Instagram is science underscore VS.

• 34:52Speaker 00

  This episode was produced by Blythe Terrell. With me, Merrill Horn, with help from Rose Rimler, Michelle Dang, and Akedi Foster Keys. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Additional research help from Erica Ikiko Howard. Our executive producer is Wendy Zukerman. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Emma Munger, So Wiley, Peter Leonard, Bumi Hadaka, and Bobby Lord. Thanks very much to the Unbiased Science Network, who connected us with David Higgins. They've been doing some amazing work on trying to explain what's going on with the US and vaccines. Unbiased Science, check out their podcasts and their socials. Thanks very much to all the scientists we spoke to and emailed with about these changes. And special thanks to Bernadette Shandra and Lawrence Horn. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original.

• 35:35Speaker 00

  Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you do listen on Spotify, follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. Back to you next week.

• 35:52Speaker 12

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