1. Secretary Kennedy fights with Pennsylvania on measles-associated deaths
As of October 23, the Pennsylvania Department of Health reports a total of 1,338 cases of measles, including 247 people who were hospitalized and 5 measles-associated deaths (with a potential sixth currently under investigation).
In contrast, as of October 23, the CDC website reports only three deaths from measles. Sec. Kennedy reportedly directed CDC not to post the state's total, a first for the agency, and to instead reconsider the definition of "measles-associated death." CDC now says the agency is working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists to develop a standardized case definition for measles death. While this work is pending, the CDC is not following its standard practice of using the state's figure for its website.
Measles-associated deaths have spawned a significant back-and-forth between Governor Shapiro and Sec. Kennedy. Sec. Kennedy suggested that the initial deaths reported in Pennsylvania may have been “fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers.”
Editors’ note: There is always a time and place to review definitions. What's unnecessary are the distrust of a state health department and accusations that deaths have been fabricated. Any new standardized definition adopted by CDC should be science-based and consistent with how the agency approaches other diseases.
2. Guinea-Bissau hepatitis B study is back. Or is it?
CDC leaders continue to try to fund a study in Guinea-Bissau of the hepatitis B vaccine birth dose. Many experts consider this study unethical because it would withhold the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine from some of the study participants, leaving them unprotected. The birth dose is still recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and by the World Health Organization, and will soon be standard of care in Guinea-Bissau. Proponents of the study say that the children would not have received the birth dose under current national standards in Guinea-Bissau. Will the study happen? The University of Southern Denmark has confirmed that it has approved the study following an ethical review, but the government of Guinea-Bissau now appears to have shut it down.
Editors’ note: Despite the existing evidence to support universal newborn vaccination against hepatitis B, Sec. Kennedy long ago revealed he does not believe in this policy. The repeated attempts to support this study appear to be an attempt to justify this position.
3. HHS launches vaccine injury initiatives
Sec. Kennedy has begun a diverse set of projects in the name of better understanding vaccine injuries. These include a new vaccine injury clinic at the NIH clinical center and a billing code that physicians can use to get paid for filing reports of vaccine adverse events. In response to Sec. Kennedy’s announcement, the board of the NIH Clinical Center voted unanimously to support a statement by the Center’s chair that Sec. Kennedy was “undermining trust in science and politicizing the Center’s work.” HHS has also announced it will require electronic health records to capture “vaccine-related adverse events” and is “modernizing” the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
Editors’ note: If Sec. Kennedy wanted a credible effort to improve vaccine safety, he would work with leading experts in the field. Paying doctors for vaccine adverse reports is something that does not happen for drugs and risks inundating the agency with reports with unclear relationships to the vaccines—and making it more difficult to identify true vaccine safety issues.
4. CDC's Vaccine for Children program delays access to updated COVID-19 vaccines
The federal Vaccine for Children (VFC) program supplies approximately half of all the vaccine shots administered in the United States. Although the FDA had approved new COVID-19 vaccines in August 2026, it took nearly a month for the VFC program to authorize their use. As a result, children with private insurance were able to receive the vaccine for a time while children on Medicaid were not. The reason for the delay was unclear, but may have been related to the absence of a functioning Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Editors’ note: As is so often the case, low-income children are the ones who are disproportionately affected when the government fails to take appropriate action.
5. Sec. Kennedy gives keynote to anti-vaccine group
Sec. Kennedy on Sep. 17, 2026, gave the keynote address to the Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group that he founded a decade earlier. A notable moment in the speech came when he assured the group that they would have “a strong and steadfast friend at the White House.”
Editors’ note: Fact check: True.
6. President Trump endorses breaking up vaccines
The day after Sec. Kennedy announced to Children’s Health Defense that they “have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House,” President Trump made impromptu comments about vaccines at a press conference regarding drug pricing. His comments included announcing we should break a vaccine (he did not say which, but presumably the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine) into multiple separate doses. This would require single-disease vaccines that are not currently available in the United States or recommended by any nation in the world. He also insinuated a link between vaccines and autism. His comments are reproduced below:
“We're also going to be, uh, recommending, not recommending, demanding the drug companies, uh, with respect to, uh, a certain situation, maybe you want to mention, discuss it uh, but the autism, that they make their doses in 20 percent, uh, shots. So you have shot one, shot two, shot three, shot four, shot five. So instead of having a massive dose of 82 or 88 different vaccines pumped into your arm, uh, we'll take out certain vaccines that people are a little worried about and that have not—I mean, we would never even think about the polio vaccine. It's been amazing, and so many others that have been so good. But we're going to break it into 20 percent doses, so that instead of a child going in and having a tremendous amount of different vaccines pumped into his arm, so big—a big proportion of the body, and then they wake up the next day and they've got a 109 temperature and then the worst thing happens that can happen to a parent. The worst, actually, and I've seen it. I've seen it happen. So we're going to recommend that they do five doses marked one, two, three, four, five, and that they be given in six month intervals so that a small amount of the vaccine gets pumped into the body. And we're going to be splitting up some of the vaccines. They'll get everything that they want, everything that is recommended. We're going to go a little bit with some of the European system in terms of the vaccines, but the biggest thing is, uh—and certain vaccines were taken out because they're not needed until the child would be much older. No reason to do it so early. But the vaccine size will be much, much less, and I think you're going to see a massive reduction in autism, and that's a big deal. That's a very big deal. So we're going to be recommending that and actually demanding it. Uh, you're going to have one, two, three, four, five. It'll be spread out over six months, every six months. They'll be fully vaccinated in much smaller doses. So I think it's going to have a huge—a huge impact and you'll see that in the years to come. You have to actually see it, but you'll see it in the years to come.”
Editors’ note: Where does one even start? Pres. Trump's errors are particularly unfortunate amid a massive measles outbreak. It is ironic that an administration claiming to align the US with the vaccine schedules of other countries would recommend a "single antigen" approach to measles vaccination that no other nation in the world has implemented.
7. Department of Defense launches investigation into alleged COVID-19 deaths
The Defense Department, working with Sec. Kennedy, has started an investigation into whether Army troops died after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. The doctor overseeing the investigation, who has no specialized training in viruses or vaccines, has made a number of inaccurate statements regarding the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine and links between vaccines and autism in the past. She also drew comparisons between a physician administering COVID-19 vaccines and Nazi physicians experimenting on prisoners.
Editors’ note: This is another example of the administration choosing an approach that appears designed to give the answers it is seeking rather than an expert review of the facts.
8. Vaccines take center stage at the federal autism advisory committee meeting
Many newly appointed members of the federal Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee brought up vaccines as a potential cause of autism at the August meeting of the committee.
Editors’ note: This is what happens when the advisory committee process is used as a tool to advance an anti-vaccine agenda.
9. CDC ignores states’ request to assess new measles test
In May 2026, health officials in Washington and California requested that CDC assess the quality and performance of a new assay that would help them test for cases of measles in greater numbers and more quickly. CDC officials did not answer for two months, at which point they finally responded that they had “competing priorities” and could not assist.
Editors’ note: Given the sprawling measles outbreak, helping state public health departments identify cases more quickly and easily should be a top priority of the administration. Less testing means fewer cases might be identified.se feel free to alter my coding if you disagree with any particular item.
