> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.newmexicomadness.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # New Mexico Broke With Washington on Your Child's Vaccines. It Still Hasn't Explained Why. - URL: https://www.newmexicomadness.com/nmdoh-covid-vaccine-schedule-show-your-work/ - Published: 2026-08-12T15:04:59.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-12T15:04:59.000Z - Author: Duke of New Mexico - Tags: State Two federal changes in eight months have altered what the United States government recommends for a child's immunizations. New Mexico has rejected both. The state may well be right. But it has not made the case — and after the pandemic, "trust us" is no longer a policy. It is a request for something many parents no longer have to give. In January, federal health officials narrowed the routine childhood immunization list, shifting COVID-19, hepatitis B, rotavirus, influenza, and meningococcal vaccines out of the universal category and into risk-based or parent-and-doctor decision categories. The New Mexico Department of Health answered with a brief release: recommendations unchanged, follow the American Academy of Pediatrics schedule, school requirements unaffected, coverage intact through Vaccines for Children and Medicaid. Then, on August 10, the President signed a broader order — universal recommendations trimmed to eleven diseases, the MMR shot to be split into three separate injections if single-disease products become available, and immunizations spread across separate visits wherever feasible. Santa Fe has said nothing. A parent in Roswell filling out a school form this month is working from two governments with two different answers, and one of them has not explained itself since winter. ### Why COVID Is the Test Case Every vaccine in this dispute deserves its own analysis. But COVID-19 is where the state's credibility will be won or lost, because it is the one where the public was told the most and reconciled with the least. Parents were told the shots would end the pandemic. They did not. They were told vaccination would stop transmission. It reduced infection for a period and then did not hold as variants moved. They were told the questions they raised were fringe. Some of those questions were later answered in their favor, quietly, without acknowledgment. None of that means the vaccines were worthless. The evidence that they reduced severe illness, hospitalization, and death during the initial waves is substantial and remains so. But a parent is not being irrational when they notice the distance between what was promised and what arrived — and then decline to extend blind trust the next time an agency says the matter is settled. That is the ground the Health Department is standing on now. It should stop pretending otherwise. So the COVID questions must be answered specifically, not folded into a general defense of childhood immunization: **What is the recommendation actually for?** Is New Mexico recommending COVID vaccination for children to prevent infection, to reduce transmission, to prevent hospitalization, or to protect a defined high-risk group? These are different claims with different evidence behind them. Parents were burned once by the conflation. **What is the benefit for a healthy child, by age?** Not a category — a number. What reduction in serious outcomes does the department expect for a healthy six-year-old with prior infection? For an infant? For a fourteen-year-old? If the honest answer is that the absolute benefit is small in some groups, say so, and explain why the recommendation still holds. **What are the risks, stated openly?** Myocarditis rates by age and sex. Reactogenicity. What New Mexico's own adverse-event monitoring has recorded since 2021, and what the department does with those reports. **Where does the state disagree with federal reviewers, and on what evidence?** Federal officials moved COVID vaccination for children into individualized decision-making. New Mexico apparently does not concur. Which studies does the department find persuasive that the federal reviewers dismissed — and vice versa? **Does prior infection change the calculation?** Most New Mexico children have had COVID. Does the department's recommendation account for that, and if not, why not? **Who decided?** Did the state's Vaccine Advisory Committee meet on this? When? What was the vote, what dissent was recorded, and where can the public read the minutes? A referral to an association in Illinois is not a New Mexico evidence review. **What would change the department's mind?** Any recommendation that no evidence could revise is not a medical position. It is a posture. ![Vax header2.png](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d9/e3/d9e3fcca-9108-4a38-9d42-561f64d55de1/content/images/2026/08/Vax-header2.png) ### The Rest of the Schedule Is Not the Same Question The state's blanket approach papers over real distinctions. Hepatitis B at birth is not the same clinical question as an annual COVID booster for a healthy teenager. Rotavirus is not influenza. Splitting the MMR into three shots raises different concerns — more injections, more visits, more chances for a dose to be missed in a state with real access gaps. Treating all of it as one bloc to be defended or rejected tells parents nothing they can use. And two facts deserve stating plainly, because a striking number of families do not know them: COVID-19 vaccination is recommended in New Mexico, not required for school or daycare entry. The state's required list is separate, and it did not change because of anything Washington did this month. Confusion on that point does more damage to public health than any executive order. ### The Opportunity Officials Are Missing Here is what the department seems not to grasp: the skepticism it resents is the opening it needs. An agency that published its reasoning — the studies, the dissent, the uncertainty, the numbers, the names of the people who reviewed it — would be doing something no federal or state health authority did well between 2020 and 2022\. It would be modeling the behavior that rebuilds trust: showing the work, owning the limits, and treating parents as adults capable of weighing a risk. Instead New Mexico issued a one-page release in January and has been silent through the largest federal shift yet. Silence is not neutrality. In a state where confidence is already thin, silence is read as an answer. ### What We Are Asking Not agreement with Washington. Not a change in policy. A document. Tell New Mexicans which federal changes this state rejects and which it accepts, vaccine by vaccine. Name who reviewed the evidence. Publish the numbers. Distinguish what is required from what is recommended. Confirm what remains covered and available, and under what authority. Say what would cause a revision. New Mexico has chosen to stand apart from the federal government on the medical care of children. That is the state's right, and it may be the right call. A state confident in its reasoning publishes it. --- **Endnotes** 1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and CDC childhood immunization schedule revisions, January 5, 2026 — [cdc.gov](https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2026/2026-cdc-acts-on-presidential-memorandum-to-update-childhood-immunization-schedule.html?ref=newmexicomadness.com) 2. New Mexico Department of Health, "New Mexico maintains full childhood vaccine recommendations," January 7, 2026, and accompanying provider guidance — [nmhealth.org](https://www.nmhealth.org/news/awareness/2026/1/?view=2309&ref=newmexicomadness.com) 3. Executive Order, "Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans," August 10, 2026 — [whitehouse.gov](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/08/delivering-gold-standard-childhood-vaccine-recommendations-for-americans/?ref=newmexicomadness.com) 4. Contemporaneous fact-checks and reporting on federal officials' public statements regarding COVID-19 vaccine effects on infection and transmission — [apnews.com](https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-covid-mRNA-vaccine-fauci-387418337013?ref=newmexicomadness.com) 5. New Mexico 2026–2027 school and childcare entry immunization requirements — [nmhealth.org](https://www.nmhealth.org/about/phd/idb/imp/sreq/?ref=newmexicomadness.com)