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Trump’s Ignorance, Deceit Is Sure To Lead To More Deaths From Fewer Vaccinations

Trump’s dithering, political grandstanding and irresponsible claims of false, wildly outrageous, unproven treatments led to the deaths of more than 400,000 Americans during the COVID 19 pandemic in trump’s first four years in office.

He is taking the same dangerous path with his latest, generally unscientific executive order regarding the use of vaccines in children. His fact-challenged plan seems to ignore research that shows the existing US vaccine schedule has prevented more than 1 million deaths and tens of millions of hospitalizations in the past 20 years alone.

In March, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the government from implementing a series of decisions on vaccines made over the last year by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The ruling also reversed all decisions made by the panelists that Kennedy appointed to the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, which makes recommendations on which vaccines Americans should take.

Mark Del Monte, chief executive of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the goal is “to stop dangerous vaccine policies and to restore science to our nation’s vaccine decision making.”

The pediatrics academy said the court’s ruling “effectively means that a science-based process for developing immunization recommendations is not to be trifled with and represents a critical step to restoring scientific decision-making to federal vaccine policy that has kept children healthy for years.”

Undeterred, trump has responded by filing an executive order to bypass the court ruling. In an executive order he signed on Aug. 10, trump said he is “reaffirming his commitment to gold standard science, ensuring Americans receive the best possible medical advice, and empowering patients and doctors with maximum flexibility.”

It is not the first time trump has issued an executive order to try to avoid the inconvenience of a Supreme Court ruling. In June, the Supreme Court ruled against trump’s effort to overturn birthright citizenship, determining that anyone born in the US has the constitutional right to automatic citizenship. Trump’s reaction was to issue an executive order to stop birthright citizenship. It remains to be seen if he will succeed in slapping the High Court in the face.

Of course, it’s a “gold” standard order which includes recommendations that states are free to embrace or ignore of set their own schedules. But a presidential recommendation can be influential; it resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking in the Oval Office after announcing the order, trump said, “I think you’re going to see some amazing results.” The “amazing results” are a rehash of claims made before by trump and anti-vaccine, conspiracy-minded Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy has denied the efficacy of vaccines and has pushed for greater parental choice in their children’s required inoculations.

Vaccines are required for public school attendance in all 50 states. New laws allow parents to opt out of routine vaccines for their kids without a documented medical reason. Families in California, Connecticut, Maine and New York can not opt out of vaccines through religious or personal-belief exemptions.

States without personal-belief exemptions consistently have higher vaccination rates, as is being seen with the increase in measles cases.

The order directs the Attorney General to take legal action against states that “violate children’s rights to religious or medical vaccination exemptions.”

“Parents can still choose to give their children all of the vaccinations if they wish, it’s up to the parents — we’re making recommendations that are strong — but it’s up to the parents if they wish and they will be covered by insurance,” he said. “However, this updated recommendation finally aligns the United States with other advanced and developed nations around the world. More importantly, it aligns us with common sense and knowledge.”

Trump has never been swayed by the scarcity of facts and the lack of common sense and his actions regarding vaccinations are no different. His claims have been overwhelmingly debunked by medical experts. When facts are unavailable, trump refers to unidentified, misleading sources to substantiate his claims.

The order even disputes the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Trump is recommending all children get immunizations to provide protection for 11 diseases and not from the 18 diseases recommended by the CDC.

Trump’s longtime questioning of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) is based on a fraudulent and disproven 1990 study on the link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Independent researchers in seven countries have conducted more than 40 studies involving over 5.6 million people to conclude that there is no link between vaccines and autism

Regardless, trump has commonly and greatly exaggerated the extent of the increase in autism.

“It used to be 1 in 20,000, then 1 in 10,000. And I would say that’s probably 18 years ago. And now it’s 1 in 31, but in some areas it’s much worse than that, if you can believe it; 1 in 31,” trump said.

The CDC reported in 2022 that autism affects 1 in 31 in children age 8. The rate was much higher than 1 in 10,000 “18 years ago.” The known prevalence of autism was 1 in 125 in 2004 and 1 in 110 in 2006; even in 2000, it was 1 in 150.

Trump said that, “based on what I feel,” children should get separate vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella rather than the “MMR” combination shot that has been used in the US since the 1970s.

“Together there could be a possibility they’re quite lethal, and separately it looks like they are not at all lethal but just very effective,” he said.

“Break up MMR, break it up. It’s practically a known fact that if you break it up, you’re not going to have a problem. But for years, we’ve been hearing how bad MMR is as a combination,” trump said.

Trump is wrong. Even the CDC website notes that the combination vaccine has proven “very safe” and has been highly effective since it was approved in the US in the early 1970s; it is used today in dozens of countries.

Whatever trump has been hearing, it is not based on science. Additionally there are no separate shots available in the US for measles, mumps and rubella.

When a reporter asked trump whether there is any evidence of vaccine lethality, he said he had none, but that, “What I’ve heard is that there are some people (????) that say it is that way.”

The recommendation is sure to confuse many parents while others may fail to get the three individual inoculations for their young children. At the 4-year-old well child visit, doctors typically give kids two shots: MMRV, which protects against measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox; and a shot that protects against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and polio. If the shots came separately, as trump recommends, parents would be giving kids five to nine shots instead of two, and they’d be returning to the doctor every two weeks to get another dose.

Trump has said newborns should not be vaccinated for hepatitis B because the virus is sexually transmitted and called to delay the first dose until age 12. But there is a very good reason to give a newborn baby a dose of the hepatitis B vaccine within 24 hours of birth, as CDC and the World Health Organization recommends.

The vaccine is critical for babies because the virus can also be transmitted from mother to child at birth and through contact with small amounts of blood on common household items.

Among the more outrageous exaggerations, trump has claimed that babies receive “80” shots, and that different vaccines are drawn from the same “vat.”

“And they pump so much stuff into those beautiful little babies, it’s a disgrace … I think it’s very bad. They’re pumping — it looks like they’re pumping into a horse. You have a little child, a little fragile child, and you get a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess, 80 different blends, and they pump it in,” said trump.

Babies do not receive “80 different vaccines” or even 80 total shots. Babies receive roughly 20 to 30 shots from birth to 15 months of age.

The CDC recommends childhood vaccination schedules, based on such factors as the different vaccine formulations available, state and local requirements for daycare and school, and whether or not the child gets regular shots for the flu or COVID-19.

Needless to say, vaccines are not blended in a vat but are packaged in sterile procedures.

As far as spreading out vaccines to numerous visits, experts said it is important to provide protection as early as possible, without potentially deadly delays.

Who Needs Facts

Trump has never been swayed by the scarcity of facts and his actions regarding vaccinations are no different. His claims have been overwhelmingly debunked by medical experts. His way is to fall back on a ploy of referring to unspecified, misleading sources to substantiate his claims. And he never backtracks or admits he was wrong.

On Sept. 27, 2025, trump said he has “been hearing” that the MMR vaccine is “bad” and called to split it up into separate shots. That is unnecessary because the combination has proven safe and effective since it was approved in the 1970s, and it has no link to autism.

When a reporter asked trump whether there is any evidence of vaccine lethality, he said he had none, but that, “What I’ve heard is that there are some people (????) that say it is that way.”

“But for years, we’ve been hearing how bad MMR is as a combination,” trump said, while he conveniently failed to say his source.

Referring back to the disproven links between Tylenol and autism, he spoke of a “rumor” that in Cuba, “they don’t have Tylenol because they don’t have the money for Tylenol. And they have virtually no autism, okay. Tell me about that one.”

And frequently he has his old fallback explanation of “based on what I feel.”

If the past is any guide, trump’s recommendations will have dire effects like during the COVID-19 pandemic in his first four years in office. Trump repeatedly minimized the seriousness of the pandemic, mocked masks and distancing, fought against lockdowns, promoted unproven and unsafe treatments and undercut scientific experts.

In 2021, multi-disciplinary experts of the Lancet Commission examined trump’s public health policies during the COVID-19 pandemic and concluded that about 40 percent of the deaths of more than 400,000 Americans under trump’s watch “could have been averted.”

“He (trump) expedited the spread of COVID-19 in the US,” the authors wrote. “Many of the cases and deaths were avoidable. Instead of galvanizing the US populace to fight the pandemic, President Trump publicly dismissed its threat (despite privately acknowledging it), discouraged action as infection spread, and eschewed international cooperation.”

Like his words on vaccines many of trump’s irresponsible 2020 comments had strong effects on the behavior of Americans facing the pandemic.

Feb. 27, 2020: “It’s (COVID-19) going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”

April 3, 2020: The CDC recommended that people begin “wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.”

Trump responded, “So it’s voluntary; you don’t have to do it. They suggested for a period of time. But this is voluntary. I don’t think I’m going to be doing it. … So with the masks, it’s going to be, really, a voluntary thing. You can do it. You don’t have to do it. I’m choosing not to do it, but some people may want to do it, and that’s okay.”

April 23, 2020: At a task force briefing on efforts to fight the virus, Trump spoke of unproven remedies.

“So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting, right?” he said.

Trump went on to spout off another phony cure: “disinfectant.”

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it’d be interesting to check that. So that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.”

April 24, 2020: “This is where they’ve come in with a final report that sun has a massive impact, negatively, on this virus. In other words, it does not live well with humidity, and it doesn’t live well with sun, sunlight, heat. It doesn’t live well with heat and sun and disinfectant. And that’s what I brought out. And I thought it was clear.”

On April 28, 2020, confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. hit 1 million. More than 57,000 people in the country had died from the virus.