Childhood Vaccine Schedules
Childhood Vaccine Schedules
The set of vaccines recommended for all children and the timing of doses. In the US the CDC issues the recommendation; states set school-entry requirements, which is why federal changes have limited direct force. This page keeps the evidence; the political sequence lives on the source pages.
What the evidence says
- No evidence links vaccines to autism, and no evidence that spacing doses out is beneficial; spacing extends the window in which a child is unprotected.
- Vaccination has cut infectious-disease incidence "by a miraculous degree" (the Economist's chart); this is the basis on which most US states keep schedules intact.
- Measles herd-immunity threshold: ~92–94% of a community immune.
- US kindergarten measles coverage: 95.2% (2019) → 92.5% (2026); many areas below threshold; 2026 cases exceeded all of 2025 by August.
- Public confidence remains high: ~80% of Americans say vaccines are safe (Economist/YouGov, 2026), so the coverage decline is being driven by official doubt rather than by a shift in broad opinion.
- Professional consensus: the American Academy of Pediatrics called the August 2026 order "dangerous"; the AMA said it endangers children.
The 2026 US changes (for context)
- August 2026 executive order: split MMR into three separate shots; separate visits for other jabs; universal recommendations cut from 18 diseases to 11, with the rest reclassified as high-risk-only or doctor-discretion.
- Earlier: a January CDC schedule reduction halted by a judge (on appeal); a May order to copy countries with leaner schedules; funding cuts for next-generation mRNA vaccines.
Why it connects to covid
The same administration's ambivalence about covid vaccines (claiming Operation Warp Speed's success while denying transmission benefit) is the template; the covid retrospective's finding that low vaccine uptake was the largest avoidable driver of US excess mortality is the warning. See Covid-19 Policy Retrospective.
Open questions
- How far coverage falls before outbreaks become sustained rather than episodic.
- Whether state requirements hold if federal recommendations formally shrink.
- Supply-side fragility elsewhere: Africa imports ~99% of its vaccines (African Health Sovereignty).
Related
Research notes, not medical advice. Findings are reported with the population, dose and duration they were measured in; whether they transfer to you is a question for a clinician.