Brian there on WNYC.

So yesterday, in case you missed it, with all the Venezuela news and maybe a lot of Momdani news,

and we'll get to Mom Donny News later, U.S. Health Secretary,

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

has cut a slew of routine shots from its recommended vaccine schedule for American children.

Until yesterday, the CDC recommended 17 vaccines for kids between the ages of zero and 16.

Now it's down from 17 to just 11.

Among the cuts, children under one year old are no longer recommended, at least universally,

to receive hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotovirus, or RSV vaccines.

They've also scrapped recommendations for meningitis and

HPV vaccines that 11-year-olds typically receive, and they've nixed COVID-and-flu vaccine

as universal recommendations for kids of any age. And these changes are immediate, posted on the CDC

website as of yesterday.

Now, health experts say this may be the most significant public health change yet under

RFK Jr., who, of course, has been a leading voice in vaccine skepticism since his presidential

candidacy in 2024 and way before that, and has promoted the idea that vaccines cause autism,

some of them anyway, a claim that has been debunked by extensive research.

He and President Trump both say the new guidelines are actually in line with vaccine

recommendations from other wealthy nations, including Denmark, Japan, and Germany. But we should note that most

other peer countries, Canada, the UK, Australia, do have vaccine guidelines that look almost

identical to those that have been in place in the U.S. So to help us unpack the science,

politics, and economics behind these different guidelines

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