Wayne Rohde

The @nytimes and @apoorva_nyc owe parents the facts behind their alarming hepatitis B reporting. The paper they discuss is a “modeling study” or simulation based on assumptions, not a study of evidence or outcomes. The model assumes allowing parents and doctors to decide when or whether to vaccinate would drive vaccine completion down to just half of children. The researchers did not observe that decline or establish that our policy would cause it. Yet the Times obscures that assumption while amplifying the alarming prediction it produces. At its December meeting, ACIP recommended that parents and doctors decide whether and when to begin hepatitis B vaccination. CDC’s January update to the childhood vaccine schedule carried forward that approach. Yet the researchers assigned sharply different vaccination rates to the two, producing different infection projections. The Times should explain what justifies that difference before attributing its alarming 83% figure to the January update. The article also gets the recommendation wrong. The recommendation did not tell parents to wait until two months to decide. Parents could choose vaccination at birth. The two-month suggestion applied to administering the first dose if parents deferred the birth dose. The recommendation retained birth-dose vaccination for babies whose mothers have hepatitis B or whose status is unknown. For babies whose mothers test negative, it gave parents and doctors a choice about when or whether to begin vaccination. I reject the idea that respecting parents’ choices means abandoning children’s health. Under my leadership, HHS puts informed consent, individual medical circumstances, and conversations between parents and doctors at the center of health decisions. I welcome rigorous scrutiny of our policies. But scrutiny demands accurate reporting, defensible assumptions, and evidence. The Times should correct its error and explain the assumptions behind its headline. Parents deserve the full story. nytimes.com/2026/10/19/healt…