Dr. Contacessa to Newsmax: Medicine, Science Have Become Political Since COVID

The fiercest arguments over vaccines today have less to do with medical evidence and more to do with politics, Dr. Frank Contacessa told Newsmax.

Speaking with Newsmax's "Greg Kelly Reports" Tuesday evening, the physician argued that the COVID-19 pandemic permanently altered the public conversation around health, turning routine clinical guidance into ideological flashpoints.

"Medicine has become political," Contacessa, an internist at Custom Care Medical, said. "Since COVID, medicine and science have become political."

His comments came amid discussion of recent changes to pediatric vaccine recommendations, which Contacessa described as modest, practical, and widely mischaracterized. He emphasized that the updates do not prevent parents from vaccinating their children and do not eliminate insurance coverage.

"What this change is not saying," he explained, "is that if a parent wants to give their child a particular vaccine, they can still do that, and insurance will still cover it."

According to Contacessa, the shift is about restoring physician discretion, especially when treating healthy children with low-risk profiles.

"This is telling doctors that you don't have to recommend every single vaccine for every single healthy child," he said. For children who are at higher risk, because of medical conditions or environmental exposure, the recommendations remain largely intact, with only minor adjustments.

Contacessa also raised concerns about what he described as over-vaccination for illnesses that some children are unlikely to encounter early in life.

He pointed specifically to the hepatitis B vaccine, which is routinely administered on the first day of life. The primary risk factors for hepatitis B, he noted, include intravenous drug use and high-risk sexual behavior, risks that do not apply to newborns.

"Why does a one-day-old need that?" he asked.

He argued that delaying certain vaccines until later childhood, when the immune system is more mature, may be a reasonable option in some cases.

"Why are we bombarding their immune system when it's immature?" Contacessa said, adding that waiting does not mean refusing. Parents, he stressed, still have the final say.

"These changes are not radical," he said. "If a parent wants to give a kid a vaccine, they certainly still can."

But Contacessa acknowledged that even discussing moderation has become controversial. He suggested that resistance to scaling back or re-timing vaccines is often driven by politics rather than medicine.

In the post-COVID environment, he said, scientific discussions are frequently treated as political statements.

His message to parents was blunt and old-school: talk to your doctor, assess real risk, and ignore the noise.

Medicine, Contacessa argued, works best when decisions are made in exam rooms, not on social media timelines or cable news panels.

The U.S. took the unprecedented step on Monday of cutting the number of vaccines it recommends for every child — a move that leading medical groups said would undermine protections against a half-dozen diseases.

The change is effective immediately, meaning that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will now recommend that all children get vaccinated against 11 diseases. What's no longer broadly recommended is protection against flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis, or RSV.

Instead, protections against those diseases are only recommended for certain groups deemed high risk, or when doctors recommend them in what's called "shared decision-making."

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