WHO chief: US immunization changes 'not aligned with decades of evidence'

The head of the World Health Organization wants to lecture Washington about vaccine schedules. That's rich, coming from an organization that spent the early months of COVID parroting Beijing's line that human-to-human transmission was unlikely, then took weeks to call it a pandemic while people were dying in Italy. Forgive us if we don't treat every WHO press release as scripture handed down from a mountain.

None of that means the underlying policy questions don't matter. If HHS is changing dosing schedules or age recommendations for children, Americans deserve a plain explanation of the data behind it, not a tweet-length statement from Geneva telling us we got it wrong. But "decades of evidence" is exactly the kind of phrase that deserves scrutiny rather than deference. Medical consensus has been wrong before, revised before, and captured by institutional inertia before. Parents who ask questions about what's injected into their kids aren't conspiracy theorists, they're doing their job.

The bigger issue is who gets to set American health policy. It shouldn't be an unelected international body reacting on social media to decisions made by a democratically accountable agency. If the WHO has data showing real harm will come from these changes, publish it and let American doctors and parents weigh it. Scolding us from abroad isn't evidence. It's just the same old habit of assuming Washington should take its cues from Geneva instead of the other way around.