From the MAGA death chronicles: MAGA attacks infant HBV vaccination, babies will die

The NYT reports (not paywalled) that Dr. Brainworm's (RFK Jr) politicized, pseudoscience CDC (Centers for Disease Control) has changed the science-based standard recommendation to get infants vaccinated against HBV (hepatitis B virus). The new magic and crackpottery based recommendation is shown below. The vaccinations at birth and 1 month are no longer recommended despite data proving that lives are saved using the current vaccination schedule.

A modeling study released in December 2025 by researchers in partnership with HepVu, the Hepatitis B Foundation, and the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable projected that delaying the birth dose to 2 months for infants whose mothers test negative could result in at least 1,400 preventable hepatitis B infections among children, 304 excess cases of liver cancer, and 482 preventable deaths for each year the revised recommendation remains in place, along with over $222 million in excess healthcare costs.​ If the vaccination schedule is delayed to a first vaccination at 12 months of age, the projections increase to 2,700 preventable infections and over $313 million in excess healthcare costs annually.

Infants face catastrophic outcomes if infected. Ninety percent of infants infected at birth develop chronic infection, and one in four chronically infected children will die prematurely from liver disease or liver cancer. Children infected between ages 1-5 have a 25-50% chance of developing chronic infection.

A comprehensive review by the CIDRAP Vaccine Integrity Project examining more than 400 studies spanning 40 years found no evidence that delaying the universal hepatitis B birth dose improves safety or effectiveness. The review found that birth dose vaccination does not cause any short- or long-term serious adverse events or deaths.

The NYT article commented:

Dr. Noele Nelson, a hepatitis expert at Cornell Public Health and a senior author on the C.D.C.’s previous guidelines for the vaccine, said the advisers did not “follow the scientific evidence, and risk undoing decades of progress in hepatitis B prevention, eroding vaccine confidence, and causing confusion among parents and health care providers.”

Mr. Kennedy fired all 17 previous members of the vaccine panel in June, replacing them with people who largely share his [pseudoscientific] skepticism about vaccines. Meetings of the new members, most of whom have no experience in vaccine research or clinical practice, have been marred by disorganization and intense disagreements, sometimes devolving into shouting matches. (emphasis added)

CDC vaccine experts 

Q: Once there is solid evidence of an increase in infant deaths from HBV infections under the new recommended HBV vaccination schedule, does that make Dr. Brainworm, his crackpot experts and his boss evil people who have committed Trump homicide, i.e., killers, or are they (a) merely good people doing what they think is best for us, or (b) something else, e.g., ignorant but making excusable honest mistakes?

Qs: Killer or not, or do we need to wait for the mortality data to accumulate? Is it responsible or not to suggest he and his crackpot pseudoscience cadre and his boss Trump are killers?

Dr. Brainworm - a killer?

Q: Does being deceived and manipulated by MAGA crackpottery absolve parents of the deaths, harms and costs of them being deceived and manipulated?

Clueless, therefore not responsible 

for their actions?