The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced sweeping changes to the pediatric vaccine schedule on Monday, sharply cutting the number of diseases U.S. children will be regularly immunized against.

Under the new guidelines, the U.S. still recommends that all children be vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella, polio, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), pneumococcal disease, human papillomavirus (HPV) and varicella, better known as chickenpox.

Vaccines for all other diseases will now fall into one of two categories: recommended only for specific high-risk groups, or available through “shared clinical decision-making” — the administration’s preferred term for “optional.”

These include immunizations for hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), bacterial meningitis, influenza and COVID-19. All these shots were previously recommended for all children.

Insurance companies will still be required to fully cover all childhood vaccines on the CDC schedule, including those now designated as optional, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine critic, said in a statement that the new schedule “protects children, respects families, and rebuilds trust in public health.”

But pediatricians and public health officials widely condemned the shift, saying that it would lead to more uncertainty for patients and a resurgence of diseases that had been under control.

“The decision to weaken the childhood immunization schedule is misguided and dangerous,” said Dr. René Bravo, a pediatrician and president of the California Medical Assn. “Today’s decision undermines decades of evidence-based public health policy and sends a deeply confusing message to families at a time when vaccine confidence is already under strain.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics condemned the changes as “dangerous and unnecessary,” and said that it will continue to publish its own schedule of recommended immunizations. In September, California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii announced that those four states would follow an independent immunization schedule based on recommendations from the AAP and other medical groups.

The federal changes have been anticipated since December, when President Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the health department to update the pediatric vaccine schedule “to align with such scientific evidence and best practices from peer, developed countries.”

The new U.S. vaccination guidelines are much closer to those of Denmark, which routinely vaccinates its children against only 10 diseases.

As doctors and public health experts have pointed out, Denmark also has a robust system of government-funded universal healthcare, a smaller and more homogenous population, and a different disease burden.

“The vaccines that are recommended in any particular country reflect the diseases that are prevalent in that country,” said Dr. Kelly Gebo, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. “Just because one country has a vaccine schedule that is perfectly reasonable for that country, it may not be at all reasonable” elsewhere.

Almost every pregnant woman in Denmark is screened for hepatitis B, for example. In the U.S., less than 85% of pregnant women are screened for the disease.

Instead, the U.S. has relied on universal vaccination to protect children whose mothers don’t receive adequate care during pregnancy. Hepatitis B has been nearly eliminated in the U.S. since the vaccine was introduced in 1991. Last month, a panel of Kennedy appointees voted to drop the CDC’s decades-old recommendation that all newborns be vaccinated against the disease at birth.

“Viruses and bacteria that were under control are being set free on our most vulnerable,” said Dr. James Alwine, a virologist and member of the nonprofit advocacy group Defend Public Health. “It may take one or two years for the tragic consequences to become clear, but this is like asking farmers in North Dakota to grow pineapples. It won’t work and can’t end well.”

Yes, Oprah Winfrey has discussed her weight loss and weight gain and weight in general before — many, many times before. The difference this time around, she says, is how little food noise there is in her daily life, and how little shame. It’s so quiet, in fact, that she can eat a whole croissant and simply acknowledge she had breakfast.

“Food noise,” for those who don’t experience it, is a virtually nonstop mental conversation about food that, according to Tufts Medicine, rarely shuts up and instead drives a person “to eat when they’re not hungry, obsess over meals and feel shame or guilt about their eating habits.”

“This type of obsessive food-related thinking can override hunger cues and lead to patterns of overeating, undereating or emotional eating — especially for people who are overweight,” Tufts said.

Winfrey told People in an exclusive interview published Tuesday that in the past she would have been thinking, “‘How many calories in that croissant? How long is it going to take me to work it off? If I have the croissant, I won’t be able to have dinner.’ I’d still be thinking about that damn croissant!”

What has changed is her acceptance 2½ years ago that she has a disease, obesity, and that this time around there was something not called “willpower” to help her manage it.

The talk show host has been using Mounjaro, one of the GLP-1 drugs, since 2023. The weight-loss version of Mounjaro is Zepbound, like Wegovy is the weight-loss version of Ozempic. Trulicity and Victroza are also GLP-1s, and a pill version of Wegovy was just approved by the FDA.

When she started using the injectable, Winfrey told People she welcomed the arrival of a tool to help her get away from the yo-yo path she’d been on for decades. After understanding the science behind it, she said, she was “absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself” after so many years of weathering public criticism about her weight.

“I have been blamed and shamed,” she said elsewhere in that 2023 interview, “and I blamed and shamed myself.”

Now, on the eve of 2026, Winfrey says her mental shift is complete. “I came to understand that overeating doesn’t cause obesity. Obesity causes overeating,” she told the outlet. “And that’s the most mind-blowing, freeing thing I’ve experienced as an adult.”

She isn’t even sharing her current weight with the public.

Winfrey did take a break from the medication early in 2024, she said, and started to regain weight despite continuing to work out and eat healthy foods. So for Winfrey the obesity prescription will be renewed for a lifetime. C’est la vie seems to be her attitude.

“I’m not constantly punishing myself,” she said. “I hardly recognize the woman I’ve become. But she’s a happy woman.”

Winfrey has to take a carefully managed magnesium supplement and make sure she drinks enough water, she said. The shots are done weekly, except when she feels like she can go 10 or 12 days. But packing clothes for the Australian leg of her “Enough” book tour was an off-the-rack delight, not a trip down a shame spiral. She’s even totally into regular exercise.

Plus along with the “quiet strength” she has found in the absence of food noise, Winfrey has experienced another cool side effect: She pretty much couldn’t care less about drinking alcohol.

“I was a big fan of tequila. I literally had 17 shots one night,” she told People. “I haven’t had a drink in years. The fact that I no longer even have a desire for it is pretty amazing.”

So back to that croissant. How did she feel after she scarfed it down?

“I felt nothing,” she said. “The only thing I thought was, ‘I need to clean up these crumbs.’”

Former residents of the Palisades Bowl Mobile Home Estates, a roughly 170-unit mobile home park completely destroyed in the Palisades fire, received a notice Dec. 23 from park owners saying debris removal would start as early as Jan. 2.

The Bowl is the largest of only a handful of properties in the Palisades still littered with debris nearly a year after the fire. It’s left the Bowl’s former residents, who described the park as a “slice of paradise,” stuck in limbo.

The email notice, which was reviewed by The Times, instructed residents to remove any burnt cars from their lots as quickly as possible, since contractors cannot dispose of vehicles without possessing the title. It followed months of near silence from the owners.

“The day before Christmas Eve … it triggers everybody and throws everybody upside down,” said Jon Brown, who lived in the Bowl for 10 years and now helps lead the fight for the residents’ right to return home. “Am I liable if I can’t get this done right now? Between Christmas and New Year’s? It’s just the most obnoxious, disgusting behavior.”

Brown is not optimistic the owners will follow through. “They’ve said things like this before over the years with a bunch of different things,” he said, “and then they find some reason not to do it.”

Earlier this year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency denied requests from the city and the Bowl’s owners to include the park in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cleanup program, which FEMA said was focused on residential lots, not commercial properties. In a letter, FEMA argued it could not trust the owners of the Bowl to preserve the beachfront property as affordable housing.

The Bowl, which began as a Methodist camp in the 1890s, was purchased by Edward Biggs, a Northern California real estate mogul, in 2005 and split between his first and second wives after his death in 2021. The family has a history of failing to perform routine maintenance and seeking to redevelop the park into a more lucrative resort community.

After FEMA’s rejection, the owners failed to meet the City of L.A.’s debris removal deadlines. In October, the city’s Board of Building and Safety Commissioners declared the park a public nuisance alongside seven other properties, giving the city the authority to complete the debris removal itself and charge the owners the bill.

But the city has yet to find funds to front the work, which is expected to cost millions.

On Dec. 10, City Councilmember Traci Park filed a motion that would order the city to come up with a cost estimate for debris removal and identify funding sources within the city. It would also instruct the city attorney’s office to explore using criminal prosecution to address the uncleared properties.

The Department of Building and Safety did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Despite the recent movement on debris removal, residents of the Palisades Bowl still have a long road ahead.

On Wednesday, numerous burnt out vehicles still remained at the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates. The owners instructed residents they must get them removed as quickly as possible.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

In mobile home parks, tenants lease their spaces from the landowners but own the homes placed on the land. Before residents can start rebuilding, the Bowl’s owners need to replace or repair the foundations for the homes; fix any damage to the roads, utilities and retaining walls; and rebuild facilities like the community center and pool.

The owners have not responded to multiple requests for comment, but in February, Colby Biggs, Edward Biggs’ grandson, told CalMatters that “If we have to go invest $100 million to rebuild the park and we’re not able to recoup that in some fashion, then it’s not likely we will rebuild the park.”

Mobile home law experts and many residents doubt that the Biggs family would be able to convert the rent-controlled mobile home park into something else under existing law. The most realistic option, should the Biggs decide against rebuilding, would be to sell the park to another owner — or directly to the residents, a course of action the residents have been actively pursuing.

The lack of communication and action from the owners has nonetheless left the Bowl’s eclectic former community of artists, teachers, surfers, first responders and retirees in limbo.

Many are running out of insurance money for temporary housing and remain unsure whether they’ll ever be able to move back.