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The Health Secretary pointed to his own experience with food allergies and why he thinks early exposure in childhood isn't the answer. (Rodriguez, 11/18)

Earlier this month, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine critic, urged countries around the world to follow the lead of the United States and disallow the use of the preservative thimerosal in vaccines. (Branswell, 11/19) 

Calley Means, a confidant to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is taking a permanent post in the Trump administration, where he is expected to serve as a bridge between the Make America Healthy Again movement and President Trump’s broader MAGA coalition. Means, who earlier this year served in a temporary role at the White House, has been tapped to be a senior adviser in the Department of Health and Human Services, charged with helping to ensure the success of the MAHA movement’s policy goals, according to people familiar with the matter. (Essley Whyte, 11/18)

A wave of Covid pandemic-era lawsuits that previously faced steep odds of success are gaining momentum under the Trump administration. (Cueto, 11/19)

Approximately 900 veterans who were discharged from service during the previous Biden administration for refusal to take the COVID vaccine are now eligible for GI Bill education benefits, with potentially thousands more getting the same opportunity. In January, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14184, "Reinstating Service Members Discharged Under the Military’s COVID-19 Vaccination Mandate," which called for a reversal of pandemic-era mandates put into effect Aug. 24, 2021, by former Secretary of State Lloyd Austin. (Mordowanec, 11/18)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: A Small Texas Think Tank Cultivated Covid Dissidents. Now They’re Running US Health Policy

Martin Kulldorff, chair of the Trump administration’s reconstituted CDC vaccine panel, made a shocking — and misleading — statement as the group met in September. Referring to a clinical trial, Kulldorff, a biostatistician and former professor at Harvard Medical School, said eight babies born to women who received Pfizer’s covid vaccine while pregnant had birth defects, compared with two born to unvaccinated women. “It is very concerning to have a fourfold excess risk of birth defects in these pregnant women,” Kulldorff then said. (Pradhan, 11/19)

Although a majority of Americans are confident that childhood vaccines are highly effective against serious illness, Republicans’ trust in vaccine safety and support of school requirements is dropping, according to new polling from Pew Research Center. (Rodriguez, 11/18)

The United States may be heading into its second severe flu season in a row, driven by a mutated strain called subclade K that’s behind early surges in the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan. (Goodman, 11/18)