BREAKING: Trump Upends the Vaccine Schedule!

~2,800–3,300 identifiable acute vaccine-attributable reactions per U.S. birth cohort, or roughly 1 child in 1,100–1,300.

So, today it finally happened. Trump just signed an executive order spacing out the childhood vaccine schedule. In my book, it couldn’t have happened soon enough.

The executive order has been signed but isn’t up on the whitehouse.gov website yet, so we don’t know exactly what is in the document.

"So we're reducing them, we're changing it to visits over the period of a year, a year and a half, so they get 20% of what they would have gotten in one big shot."

President Trump

As previous speakers have indicated, this is going to establish essentially a new vaccine schedule that is fully informed by the research and data that we have from HHS and NIH and other aspects of the government.
It also takes a very hard line on some of the more paternalistic issues that we’ve been talking about here, sir, in terms of infringing on parents’ religious liberty or really just parents’ ability to make decisions for their children.
So as Heidi said, this is a very big deal. We’re not waiting for anyone else to take action as you do so often, sir. We’re just going ahead and doing the right thing based on all of the best available research to ensure that America’s parents and children are being as best protected by the federal government as they can be.

One doesn’t have to evoke autism for there to be a very good reason for this change.

But first, one must acknowledge that the US government doesn’t track vaccine injury well (that is an understatement). Unless there is a self-report/physician report to VAERS, it never shows up.

Over the past five years, since we began speaking out about the mRNA vaccine, we have met countless parents who have children with severe vaccine injuries. Permanent injuries. Sure, there are those with autism, and I am not discounting that, but there are so many with children who had swelling on the brain that caused permanent brain damage, others who trace developmental delays to febrile seizures or hypotonic-hyporesponsive episodes after vaccination.

So, even if we take the issues of vaccines and autism off the table, acute vaccine injury in young children is not rare and not uncommon.

I got Chat-GPT to do a VERY conservative estimate of severe adverse events from vaccines each year. Below is the analysis:

From CHAT:

If we restrict ourselves to reasonably well-supported vaccine-attributable acute events and avoid double counting, one birth cohort could plausibly experience approximately:

~900–1,200 MMR febrile seizures
~90 MMR-associated ITP cases
~1,600 DTaP-associated HHE episodes
~70–110 anaphylactic reactions across the core vaccine series

That gets us to roughly 2,700–3,000 clinically significant vaccine-attributable events per 3.6-million-child birth cohort, before adding rotavirus intussusception, influenza-associated seizure risk, COVID-associated myocarditis, or other shared-decision vaccines.

If rotavirus vaccination were universal, add roughly 36–180 intussusceptions. If one also includes the attributable infant febrile-seizure signal, perhaps another ~140, although I would want to inspect overlap before putting it into the final total.

So a reasonable first-pass estimate becomes approximately:

~2,800–3,300 identifiable acute vaccine-attributable reactions per U.S. birth cohort, or roughly 1 child in 1,100–1,300.

If that number can be reduced by spreading out the vaccine schedule, then why not?

JGM

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The data from CHAT (Again, these are very conservative estimates - references follow):

“The anaphylaxis number depends on how combination vaccines are counted and which optional vaccines a child receives. The VSD estimate is 1.31 confirmed vaccine-triggered cases per million doses, with no significant age difference.

The MMR seizure estimate is quite strong. CDC’s Pink Book gives approximately one febrile seizure for every 3,000–4,000 MMR doses, normally 6–14 days after vaccination. Applied to 3,606,400 first doses, that’s about 902 to 1,202 vaccine-attributable febrile seizures in one birth cohort.

ITP is also reasonably well quantified. A Vaccine Safety Datalink study concluded that MMR causes approximately one case of immune thrombocytopenic purpura per 40,000 doses, with 76% of ITP cases occurring in 12–23-month-olds during the risk window attributable to MMR. That gives approximately 90 cases per fully vaccinated U.S. birth cohort.

DTaP produces an interesting number

A much less frequently discussed outcome is the hypotonic-hyporesponsive episode, or HHE. The child becomes pale or cyanotic, limp and poorly responsive after vaccination. It is generally transient, but it is exactly the sort of event a parent would reasonably describe as a severe vaccine reaction.

An active-surveillance study found approximately 22.8 HHE cases per 100,000 acellular-pertussis vaccine doses, corresponding to about 45 episodes per 100,000 vaccinated children in the population studied. Applied to one contemporary U.S. birth cohort, that is approximately 1,623 children.

That number deserves a qualifier: HHE generally resolves without permanent neurologic damage, so I would classify it as an acute serious reaction, not a permanent vaccine injury. CDC also lists collapse or a shock-like HHE following DTaP as a recognized post-vaccination clinical event.

Rotavirus gives us another genuine hospital-level event

This one is unusually clear because the outcome, intussusception, is an intestinal obstruction frequently requiring hospitalization and sometimes surgery.

CDC estimates approximately one additional intussusception case per 20,000–100,000 vaccinated infants, usually after the first or second rotavirus dose.

If all 3,606,400 children received rotavirus vaccine, that mathematically becomes:

36–180 excess intussusception cases per birth cohort.

CDC’s empirical national estimate, accounting for actual vaccination patterns, is about 40–120 U.S. infants annually.

Interestingly, the January 2026 HHS review itself describes the current rotavirus vaccines as carrying an intussusception risk of roughly 1–2 per 100,000 vaccinated children, somewhat toward the low end of CDC’s older range.

Febrile seizures are probably around 1,000+, not dozens

I would revise my earlier rough estimate downward somewhat if we are talking about the current 2026 universal schedule, because influenza is no longer universally recommended.

For routine MMR alone, we’re at approximately:

902–1,202 attributable febrile seizures per birth cohort.

There is also evidence of febrile seizure attributable to vaccination during infancy. A VSD study examining children 3–5 months old identified an attributable risk of 3.92 febrile seizures per 100,000 vaccination visits, which corresponds to about 141 cases in a cohort this size if every child had such a visit.

However, I would not simply add those figures blindly, because some studies examine vaccine combinations and different age windows, and double-counting is possible.

If influenza vaccine is added, CDC reports that giving inactivated influenza vaccine simultaneously with PCV or DTaP can increase febrile seizure risk. CDC says the excess risk from these combinations is at most about 30 per 100,000 children vaccinated.

MMRV is especially revealing

CDC now recommends giving first-dose MMR and varicella separately in children 12–47 months rather than routinely using the combined MMRV vaccine.

The reason is measurable.

The febrile-seizure rate is approximately:

8.5 per 10,000 after MMRV

versus

4.2 per 10,000 after separate MMR + varicella.

That amounts to about one additional febrile seizure for every 2,300–2,600 children given MMRV instead of the separate shots.

Applied to our hypothetical 3.606-million-child cohort, universal first-dose MMRV would therefore generate approximately 1,400–1,570 additional febrile seizures compared with separate vaccination.

That is probably one of the clearest demonstrations that vaccine formulation and simultaneous administration matter. It is also why simply saying that “vaccines cause febrile seizures at X rate” isn’t particularly informative.

What about encephalitis, encephalopathy and “brain swelling”?

Here the analysis hits a hard scientific boundary.

CDC recognizes encephalopathy within seven days of a pertussis-containing vaccine as a contraindication to subsequent pertussis vaccination, which means the clinical syndrome is certainly recognized.

But modern DTaP studies have generally not demonstrated an increased population risk of neurologic disease or seizures from DTaP itself, apart from the known interaction involving simultaneous influenza vaccination.

Older studies of the whole-cell DTP vaccine, which is no longer used routinely in U.S. children, found attributable serious neurologic-event rates around 1 per 110,000–140,000 doses. Those figures should not be applied to today’s acellular DTaP vaccine.

So I cannot defensibly turn “brain swelling” into something such as “37 American children per year.” The evidence simply does not support that precision.

That is itself an important finding.

One qualification to the above answer: I would not yet cite the ~1,623 HHE figure as confidently as the MMR, intussusception, ITP and anaphylaxis numbers. I want to go back to the underlying HHE study and verify that the 45/100,000 figure can legitimately be extrapolated to an entire modern U.S. birth cohort before treating it as part of the ~2,800–3,300 subtotal. The other estimates above have much cleaner primary-source support.”

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Primary studies

1. France EK, Glanz J, Xu S, et al. “Risk of Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura After Measles-Mumps-Rubella Immunization in Children.” Pediatrics. 2008;121(3):e687–e692. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2007-1578.
   This is the Vaccine Safety Datalink study underlying the MMR-associated ITP estimate.
   PubMed record

2. McNeil MM, Weintraub ES, Duffy J, et al. “Risk of Anaphylaxis After Vaccination in Children and Adults.” Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 2016;137(3):868–878. DOI: 10.1016/j.jaci.2015.07.048.
   Among 25,173,965 vaccine doses, investigators confirmed 33 vaccine-triggered anaphylaxis cases: 1.31 per million doses (95% CI 0.90–1.84).
   PubMed record

3. Duffy J, Hambidge SJ, Jackson LA, et al. “Febrile Seizure Risk after Vaccination in Children One to Five Months of Age.” Pediatric Neurology. 2017;76:72–78. DOI: 10.1016/j.pediatrneurol.2017.08.005.
   Vaccine Safety Datalink study finding an attributable risk of 3.92 febrile seizures per 100,000 vaccinated infants aged 3–5 months.
   PubMed record

4. Duffy J, Weintraub E, Hambidge SJ, et al. “Febrile Seizure Risk After Vaccination in Children 6 to 23 Months.” Pediatrics. 2016;138(1):e20160320.
   The study estimated a maximum excess risk of 30 febrile seizures per 100,000 children when influenza vaccine was administered concomitantly with PCV and a DTaP-containing vaccine rather than separately.
   Full study

CDC sources

5. CDC. “Prevention of Measles, Rubella, Congenital Rubella Syndrome, and Mumps, 2013.” MMWR Recommendations and Reports.
   CDC estimates approximately one additional febrile seizure per 3,000–4,000 MMR doses, usually 6–14 days afterward. CDC also notes that these febrile seizures have not appeared to produce long-term sequelae.
   CDC MMR recommendations

6. CDC. “Use of Combination Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Varicella Vaccine.” MMWR. 2010.
   Also gives the MMR estimate of approximately one excess febrile seizure per 3,000–4,000 vaccinated children.
   CDC MMWR report

7. CDC. “Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Varicella (MMRV) Vaccine Safety.”
   Current CDC summary: first-dose MMRV produces approximately one additional febrile seizure for every 2,300 doses compared with giving MMR and varicella vaccines separately.
   CDC MMRV safety page

8. CDC. “Update: Recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices Regarding Administration of Combination MMRV Vaccine.” MMWR. 2008.
   This is useful historically because CDC explicitly states that MMR causes approximately one additional febrile seizure per 3,000–4,000 children and discusses the increased risk with MMRV. It also reports that 16% of the identified post-vaccination febrile-seizure cases with hospitalization information were hospitalized.
   CDC MMWR report

9. CDC Pink Book, Chapter 19: Rotavirus.
   Post-licensure U.S. surveillance estimates one excess case of intussusception per 20,000–100,000 vaccinated infants following rotavirus vaccination.
   CDC Pink Book: Rotavirus

10. CDC. “Contraindications and Precautions.”
    This is the source supporting my discussion of encephalopathy. CDC lists encephalopathy such as coma, decreased consciousness or prolonged seizures within seven days of DTP/DTaP, when not attributable to another cause, as a contraindication to subsequent DTaP vaccination.
    CDC contraindications and precautions

Birth-cohort denominator

11. Hamilton BE, Osterman MJK, Gregory ECW. “Births: Provisional Data for 2025.” National Center for Health Statistics, Vital Statistics Rapid Release, Report No. 43, April 2026.
    The provisional 2025 U.S. birth count was 3,606,400, based upon 99.95% of birth records received by NCHS. That’s the denominator I used to construct the hypothetical annual birth cohort.
    NCHS report

2026 schedule

12. CDC. “CDC Acts on Presidential Memorandum to Update Childhood Immunization Schedule.” January 5, 2026.
    This documents the 2026 federal schedule revision I used when distinguishing universally recommended vaccines from vaccines handled differently under the revised schedule.
    CDC 2026 schedule announcement