Scientific American – These graphics will guide you through science-based vaccine guidelines for children and adults – “Vaccines are a marvel of modern medicine: the carefully tested and regulated technologies teach people’s immune systems how to fight off potentially fatal infections, saving both lives and health care costs. But for as long as vaccines have existed, people have opposed them, and in recent years the antivaccine movement has gained visibility and power. Now the Department of Health and Human Services is led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—an environmental lawyer with no medical training and a history of antivaccine activism. And these lifesaving medical interventions are coming under threat. Access to COVID vaccines this fall is already expected to be limited to people aged 65 years or older and to those with underlying health conditions that make them more vulnerable to severe disease. And in June Kennedy dismissed all 17 sitting members of a crucial vaccine oversight group, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which, in the past, has made independent, science-based recommendations on vaccine access for people in the U.S. The dismissals came just weeks before the panel’s next scheduled meeting; Kennedy appointed eight new members in advance of the meeting, which is still set to begin on June 25. As a public resource, Scientific American has created graphics outlining the vaccines recommended by ACIP as of its final meeting in 2024. Vaccine recommendations have always been in flux as new products have been developed and continuing research has suggested better practices: The COVID pandemic required brand-new vaccines for a novel virus, for example. And in the U.S., the stunning success of the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine led to its recommendation for everyone aged 26 or younger, meanwhile the oral polio vaccine was discontinued in favor of the inactivated injected vaccine…”

See also The New Yorker [no paywall] Calculating the Damage of Vaccine Skepticism. It’s clear that we’re on the precipice of a surge in preventable diseases. But how bad will it get? ince its inception, in 2000, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which works with local governments to bring vaccines to low-income countries, has helped administer 1.9 billion vaccines and reached a billion children. Global vaccination work has nearly halved the global infant-mortality rate, saved more than a hundred and fifty million lives, prevented innumerable costly hospitalizations and long-term disabilities, and strengthened local health services in many remote places. “I can’t imagine a more successful, cost-effective public-health organization than the Gavi alliance,” Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and vaccine researcher at Texas Children’s Hospital, told me. “I mean, you had close to half a million kids dying of measles every year when Gavi was launched, and they got it down to less than fifty thousand deaths…”