The federal rollback of COVID-19 vaccine recommendations is fueling skepticism for vaccines in general and chipping away at trust in the health care system, said emergency medicine physician Dr. Dara Kass.

“We’re seeing vaccine rates drop across the country for MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella), and it’s interesting because this is the collateral damage of vaccine skepticism,” Kass told Baltimore Fishbowl. “When you tell people vaccines are suspicious, and you tell them that they can’t trust what’s in a vaccine … you undermine the confidence in our entire public health system and in vaccines writ large.”

This year, the Food and Drug Administration restricted its approval of the updated 2025–2026 COVID-19 vaccines to high-risk individuals, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevent

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