For decades, the American public, the federal government, and the medical community have been nearly unanimous: Vaccines are important because they save lives. Today, after years of escalating attacks, that consensus has irrevocably shattered.

The rupture has centered around, what else, the Covid vaccines. Yesterday, a British cardiologist allied with US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told the Daily Beast that the Trump administration would soon pull Covid-19 vaccines off the market. Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics said that the group would continue to recommend Covid vaccines for kids under the age of 2 — openly defying Kennedy’s move this May to end the recommendation for both healthy children and pregnant people.

The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology followed suit, saying on Friday that it would also continue to advise pregnant people to get a Covid shot. In both cases, some of the country’s leading medical organizations said they wanted to maintain access to protection for the very youngest children, either directly or through vaccinating their mothers, because of the evidence that the population is at a higher risk of serious illness from Covid-19 compared to older children.

Kennedy, in response,

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