No, the US vaccine schedule doesn’t call for babies to get ’72 injections’
To defend recent changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, the Trump administration compared shots for American babies with babies in an unspecified “European Country.”
The Jan. 5 White House graphic showed two babies, each surrounded by needles, with the text: “European Country: 11 injections. United States: 72 injections.” It cited a recent U.S. Health and Human Services report on the 2024 U.S. childhood and adolescent immunization schedule, which shows Denmark is the graphic’s “European country.”
Related Knowledge Center: Fact-checking and its detractors
Fact-checking has become a familiar tool for political reporters to hold office-holders and candidates accountable. But critics ask if fact-checkers sometimes miss the forest for the trees, and if the practice often struggles with false equivalency the way conventional political coverage does.