Doctors say to ignore Trump as he cites hearsay to upend vaccines amid historic measles outbreak

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday seeking to remake the nation’s childhood vaccination recommendations, calling for vaccines to be administered during separate medical visits and for the eventual breakup of the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine — while making unsupported claims that the MMR shot could be “quite lethal” and “explosive.”The order drew immediate condemnation from pediatricians, infectious disease specialists and other physicians, who said the changes lack scientific justification and could make vaccination more difficult as the United States experiences its worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years.Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, an infectious diseases and immunizations expert who previously led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told The Advocate that the change amounted to public health policy by vibes.Related: Dr. Demetre Daskalakis on leaving the CDC and calling out RFK Jr.“The new vaccine order from on high created through hearsay and based on the bad advice from the health Secretary and his conflicted advisors feels like Groundhog Day,” Daskalakis said Monday night.“This is the same vaccine schedule reversed by the court, but is now chiseled on stone tablets,” he continued. “But this commandment only causes confusion since it is not real, implementable, or science-based. It reads as if it was written by someone who doesn’t know anything about public health or vaccines.”The CDC center Daskalakis led was responsible for major federal immunization programs and vaccine-preventable disease work.Trump’s order builds on earlier administration efforts to narrow universal childhood vaccine recommendations. The administration now recommends routine vaccination against 11 diseases while placing several others into categories for people at elevated risk or for “shared clinical decision-making,” in which a clinician and family