Vaccine Shortages. Viral Outbreaks. Widespread Illness. More Death.
I’m not the first to try to gaze into a crystal ball about the future of vaccines in America. In January 2025, at Kennedy’s confirmation hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren began rattling off the actions he could take as secretary, given his history of profiting from lawsuits against vaccine makers:
You could publish your anti-vaccine conspiracies, but this time on U.S. government letterhead, something a jury might be impressed by. You could appoint people to the CDC vaccine panel who share your anti-vax views and let them do your dirty work. You could tell the CDC vaccine panel to remove a particular vaccine from the vaccine schedule. You could remove vaccines from special compensation programs, which would open up manufacturers to mass torts. You could make more injuries eligible for compensation, even if there is no causal evidence. You could change vaccine court processes to make it easier to bring junk lawsuits. You could turn over FDA data to your friends at the law firm, and they could use it however it benefited them. You could change vaccine labeling, you could change vaccine information rules, you could change which claims are compensated in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
The bottom line, Warren added: “Kennedy can kill off access to vaccines and make millions of dollars while he does it. Kids might die. But Robert Kennedy can keep cashing in.”
Sure enough, some of this has come to pass. In an X video in May, Kennedy announced that the CDC was changing its recommendations for the Covid vaccine. The agency turned the childhood recommendation from “should” to “may” and called the process “shared clinical decision-making,” while eliminating the recommendation entirely for pregnant people, who are at significantly higher risk for severe illness and death.
I asked the experts: Could other vaccine recommendations be softened like this? “I think it’s a real possibility—I think in many ways it’s a goal,” said Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for the second Trump administration, specifically called for eliminating the CDC as a recommending body. If a vaccine is no longer recommended, “that means that it couldn’t be required for school entry.” (School mandates have long been a target of anti-vaccine activists.)
Others thought it might be even worse. “[Kennedy’s] end goal is to remove most or all childhood vaccines—to make them inaccessible, is my view,” said Dorit Reiss, professor at UC Hastings College of Law. “So your scenario is plausible, although you’re being very cautious in saying they might move to shared clinical decision-making. They could say ‘this is no longer recommended.’” The new ACIP advisers could stop recommending some vaccines entirely: HPV, influenza, and hepatitis B shots have all been targeted by anti-vaccine activists. They could also vote to end Vaccines for Children, a $5 billion program covering the vaccinations of nearly half of all children in the United States.
