New York Said It Would Stand Up for Science-Based Vaccines. Then It Actually Did.

Last year, Indivisible Ulster County asked me to do a series of videos on the impact of Trump’s policies on me, my business, and my patients.

Around vaccines, I proposed a specific solution: New York State’s Department of Health needed to stand up, join with medical societies and other state health departments, and keep science-based vaccine guidance going regardless of what happened federally.

I’m updating this post because that’s exactly what happened — and because of what just happened in Washington, it matters more now than when I first wrote it.

In This Article:

• What NY said it would do
• What NY actually did
• Where the thimerosal story landed
• Why this suddenly matters a lot more

NY DoH Reaffirms Commitment to Science-based Immunizations

Back in the summer of 2025, after the reconstituted federal vaccine advisory committee held its first meeting, every New York practitioner got an email from the Department of Health. The relevant part:

“Following the June 25–26 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the New York State Department of Health and the New York City Health Department reaffirm our commitment to science-based immunization policy and recommendations.

While ACIP has not taken actions that significantly change current vaccine recommendations, the meeting raised concerns that future decision-making processes could be compromised, and that more consequential vaccine recommendations that do not follow the science may be forthcoming. We are closely monitoring developments and will address any future changes as appropriate to ensure evidence-based immunization policy remains the standard in New York.“

At the time, that read as encouraging but non-committal. Departments of health reaffirm commitments all the time. The question was whether anything would follow.

It’s worth pausing on the middle sentence, though, because it turned out to be an accurate forecast. They said more consequential recommendations that don’t follow the science may be forthcoming. They were right.

What NY Actually Did

Here’s the sequence, because I think it’s genuinely impressive and most people haven’t tracked it:

September 2025 — Executive Order 52. When federal approvals narrowed COVID vaccine eligibility, and no federal recommendation followed, Governor Hochul declared a disaster emergency and authorized pharmacists to prescribe and administer COVID vaccines to anyone 3 and older, no separate prescription needed. New York was among the first states in the country to act.

September 2025 — State guidance, regionally aligned. NYS issued its own COVID vaccine guidance recommending vaccination for children 6 months to 18 years, all adults, and higher-risk individuals — coordinated through the Northeast Public Health Collaborative, a coalition that now includes 16 public health agencies across the region.

Through the winter — repeated extensions. EO 52 got renewed again and again. It worked, but it was a patch. Every few weeks, my ability to vaccinate you depended on a signature.

January 2026 — endorsing AAP over CDC. When the federal childhood immunization schedule was rewritten, NYS and NYC formally endorsed the American Academy of Pediatrics schedule instead. So did the rest of the Collaborative.

May 2026 — the permanent fix. Two bills signed into law. The first requires insurers to cover vaccines recommended by New York’s Commissioner of Health, not just those blessed by the federal committee. The second strips ACIP references out of Public Health Law, Education Law, and Social Services Law entirely, and authorizes pharmacists to vaccinate children ages 2 through 18 against COVID under state law.

August 2026 — maternal schedule. NYS and NYC endorsed ACOG’s 2026 maternal immunization schedule, which continues to recommend routine flu and COVID vaccination during pregnancy along with Tdap and RSV protection for infants.

That fifth item is the one that matters most to my pharmacy. New York’s vaccine access no longer depends on a functioning federal advisory committee, or on an emergency order getting renewed on time. It’s law now.

I asked for this in a video in a small room in Ulster County. I’m not claiming credit — plenty of people much more consequential than me were pushing the same thing. But it happened, and it’s worth saying out loud when advocacy works.

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Where the Thimerosal Story Landed

The original DOH email flagged the ACIP vote against thimerosal-containing flu vaccines as, in their words, an outdated issue with little real-world impact. Their numbers at the time: only about 4% of the U.S. flu vaccine supply contained thimerosal, and thimerosal-free options were already widely available. They also noted the presentation didn’t follow the normal Evidence-to-Recommendation framework.

Here’s where it went. HHS adopted the recommendation in July 2025. Then, in March 2026, a federal court stayed the underlying committee votes entirely, on the grounds that most of the committee members had been appointed improperly.

And in practical terms? Almost nothing changed at my counter, because the supply had already converted. For the 2026-2027 season, essentially every flu vaccine in the U.S. is single-dose and thimerosal-free.

So a manufactured controversy got “resolved” in a direction the supply chain had already gone on its own. Nobody was protected from anything. What was accomplished was the message that there had been something to worry about.

There wasn’t. The mercury in thimerosal is ethylmercury, which your body clears quickly — chemically distinct from the methylmercury that accumulates in fish and causes actual mercury poisoning. Decades of study have found no link to autism or neurodevelopmental disorders. The American Academy of Pediatrics said it well at the time: banning vaccine ingredients without solid scientific reasons sets a dangerous precedent and ultimately makes children less safe.

I wrote about thimerosal in an old rant on my website, and I still think it holds up.

Learn More: CDC Overview of Thimerosal | NYS DOH on thimerosal | CHOP Vaccine Education Center

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Why This Suddenly Matters a Lot More

I’d planned to leave this post as a modest good-news story. Then August happened.

On August 10, 2026, the President signed an executive order titled “Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans.” What it actually does:

• Cuts the childhood schedule from vaccines against 17 diseases down to 11 recommended for all children, moving others — including hepatitis B, hepatitis A, and RSV protection — to high-risk groups or shared decision-making.
• Calls for splitting the MMR vaccine into three separate single-disease shots, once such products exist. They don’t currently exist in the United States. Manufacturing them could take years.
• Urges that childhood immunizations be given at separate visits wherever feasible. At the signing, the President suggested a one-year-old might make five separate visits instead of one.
• Directs HHS to produce implementation plans within 90 days, and pressures states to revisit school vaccination requirements and exemption rules.

No new scientific evidence accompanied any of it.

I want to be careful here, because I’m a pharmacist and not a pundit, so let me stick to what I know professionally.

Splitting MMR is not a safety improvement. There’s no evidence that separating or spacing these vaccines reduces risk. There is evidence about what happens when you add visits and shots: more missed doses, longer windows of vulnerability, higher cost, and more kids who simply don’t finish the series. In 25 years, no reputable scientific body has endorsed separating MMR.

The timing is the part that concerns me most. The United States is having its worst measles year since 1991 — over 2,300 confirmed cases, more in the first half of 2026 than in all of 2025, which was itself the worst year in three decades. Our measles elimination status, held since 2000, is under formal review. That review was pushed to November.

Undermining public confidence in the MMR vaccine during the largest measles outbreak in a generation is not a neutral act.

The Northeast Public Health Collaborative responded on August 18, reaffirming its endorsement of the AAP schedules and saying essentially that. Sixteen agencies. New York among them.

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Which Brings Me Back to Where I Started

A year ago I made a video asking my state health department to build something that could stand on its own if federal vaccine guidance stopped being trustworthy.

They built it. Then the thing I was worried about happened, and the structure held.

That’s what functioning public health looks like — not a dramatic confrontation, but a set of boring legal and administrative decisions made a few months before they were needed. New York’s insurance mandate doesn’t reference ACIP anymore. My authority to vaccinate you doesn’t reference ACIP anymore. Our childhood schedule follows the AAP.

None of this makes us immune to what happens federally. Funding, supply, and national messaging still run through Washington, and an executive order pressuring states on school requirements is aimed squarely at places like New York.

But if you’re a patient of mine wondering whether all this affects whether you can walk in and get a vaccine: right now, in this state, you can. That’s not an accident. People asked for it, and the state did it.

Keep asking for things. It occasionally works.

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