After the Trump administration announced that it’s decreasing the number of vaccines in the childhood immunization schedule, President Donald Trump took to social media to share what doctors call “fictitious,” “not accurate” and “purposely misleading” vaccine information.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump shared a long message consisting of phrases like “America will no longer require 72 ‘jabs’ for our beautiful, healthy children” and “we are moving to a far more reasonable schedule, where all children will only be recommended to receive vaccinations for 11 of the most serious and dangerous diseases” and “this updated schedule finally aligns the United States with other developed nations around the world.”
The post is shared alongside an illustration of a happy-looking European baby surrounded by 11 syringes and a sad-looking American baby surrounded by 72 syringes. The U.S. childhood vaccine schedule now looks more like the schedule in Denmark, which HHS looked to for inspiration.
The vaccine imagery Trump shared seems intimidating and scary, and experts say that’s the point. “They’re obviously purposely misleading the public,” said Dr. Anita Patel, a pediatric critical care doctor in Washington, D.C.
Children in the U.S. aren’t getting 72 individual shots. “This is a standard manipulation of truth that the anti-vax movement has coined,” said Dr. Lauren Hughes, a board-certified pediatrician, owner of Bloom Pediatrics in Kansas and a medical communicator on social media.
To get to the 72 number, those behind the childhood vaccine schedule change likely counted the individual components in combination vaccines as separate injections, according to Patel.
For example, to get to 72, they’re saying the DTaP vaccine, which is a combination vaccine that protects against three diseases — diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis — counts as three “jabs,” even though it’s one combined shot.
“What they are describing are the total number of doses of every vaccine you are vaccinated against,” Hughes said. “He is entirely full of shit. He is counting MMR, which is one injection, as three. This is entirely untrue.” (The MMR vaccine protects against measles, mumps and rubella.)
“And if you actually compare the number of vaccinations that infants receive, they’re very comparable, even between Denmark in the United States,” Patel noted. “In Denmark, from what is publicly available, it looks like they receive [roughly 21 to 25] individual vaccinations below the age of 15 months.”
In the U.S., children under 2 receive between 28 and 30 individual vaccinations, Patel added.
More, Trump’s message on Truth Social isn’t comparing the same things, experts told HuffPost.
“This post compares apples to oranges,” explained Dr. Ross Newman, a pediatrician based in Oregon and a medical communicator on social media. “He says there’s 72 jabs, and now we’re protecting with the new schedule against 11 diseases — and those are two such different things.”
Even if Trump were to compare apples to apples, so to speak, “he would say, ‘well, with our new vaccine schedule, we’re protecting against 11 diseases, and that makes 30 to 40 shots,’” Newman said. “But he’s not saying that. What they’re saying is we’re protecting against 11 diseases instead of 72 shots.”
When asked for comment, the Department of Health and Human Services focused on the number of vaccine doses children typically receive in the U.S. versus how many of them children in “peer nations,” including Denmark, receive.
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Denmark is an “outlier among developed nations” when it comes to its vaccine schedule.
The Trump admin “cherry picked” Denmark as a vaccine role model, Patel said, but “we are not Denmark.” Vaccine schedules should be based on a country’s patient population, disease burden and other unique-to-the-country factors.
“The U.S. is highly heterogeneous with high travel and a lot more people than most European countries. Denmark’s total population isn’t even equivalent to NYC,” Hughes explained.
“Taking a [vaccine schedule from a] country that has 1/200 of our population and is smaller than some of our smallest states, and then applying it to a country that’s so much bigger with such a broader population is just asinine, to be frank,” Newman added.
It’s worth knowing that Denmark is “an outlier among developed nations” when it comes to its vaccine schedule, according to Patel. The country has “probably one of the smallest vaccine schedules out of even the European Union,” Newman said.
“And it doesn’t follow the World Health Organization vaccine recommendations, which, our schedule is more in line with the World Health Organization as well as these other giant countries that have some of the best infant mortalities and life expectancies,” Newman added.
The fact that Denmark’s vaccine schedule isn’t as comprehensive as other countries is evident in its disease burden. “They also have hundreds, if not thousands, of kids hospitalized for [diseases] routinely that we just don’t see in the U.S. — like rotavirus,” Hughes explained.
Unlike the U.S., Denmark also has universal health care, which allows its citizens to more easily get medical attention.
“To follow their schedule, which has far fewer vaccines than any other European country, while simultaneously ignoring their universal healthcare system, parental leave policies, efficient and detailed healthcare tracking, etc., is just ridiculous,” Hughes said. “If Trump and this administration actually cared about protecting kids and following European guidelines, we’d follow European gun laws and not have 75 school shootings like we did in 2025.”
These changes are intended to “sow distrust and create confusion.”
These childhood vaccine schedule changes aren’t based on science, all three doctors said.
“None of these changes were made with any scientific change, input or transparency,” Hughes added. “There was no new data published, no new studies, no new information. This was entirely to sow distrust and create confusion … And cherry picking a vaccine schedule, but disregarding everything else about European health care, isn’t caring about kids, isn’t about protecting children — it’s about ideology and political gain.”
Patel added that pediatricians are already seeing “increased under and unvaccinated children, and these children are already coming in with vaccine preventable illnesses.”
“And kids deserve better than to be used as a pawn because kids are the ones who will suffer,” Hughes said.
“I think it just points to the dangers of having politicians dictate scientific principle,” Newman noted. “When you have, really, politicians that are being influenced more by social media than good evidence, and politicians that put people in power that agree with them instead of keep them in check, this is what we end up with, is subpar science being applied inappropriately in a way that will cause harm to families and children and likely will take twice as many years, if not more, to undo.”