“The former U.S. childhood vaccine schedule called for babies to get 72 injections.”

Senate Finance Committee hearing testimony by HHS Secretary Kennedy (echoed by Trump in subsequent remarks)

The "72" is not a count of injections given to babies. It is the number of vaccine doses a child would receive by age 18 if given every recommended vaccine, including annual flu and COVID-19 shots, and "some of these are combination (or oral) vaccines, so the number of actual shots is much less," as UC Davis Health explains. Pediatricians said the figure counts the components of combination vaccines such as MMR and DTaP as separate jabs, and that U.S. children under 2 receive between 28 and 30 individual vaccinations. The administration's strongest point is real: the CDC says that in 2024 the U.S. recommended more childhood vaccines than any peer nation, and more than twice as many doses as some European nations.

"Ideally, we want to use combination vaccines, because that reduces the number of shots." — Dr. Flor Munoz-Rivas, pediatric infectious disease specialist, Baylor College of Medicine