Focal Points
Pharma Bombshell: President Trump Orders Complete Childhood Vaccine Schedule Review
After unnecessary hepatitis B vaccine dropped for 3.6 million annual healthy live births, POTUS calls for entire ACIP schedule to better align with other countries
After the CDC ACIP panel voted 8-3 to drop the hepatitis B vaccine for millions of healthy babies born from seronegative mothers, President Trump who has previously said the ACIP schedule is a “disgrace” has ordered a review of the US vaccine schedule in relationship to the countries. Alter AI assisted in this review.
Based on the 2025 immunization schedules published by health authorities worldwide — including the CDC/ACIP (U.S.), Public Health England/UKHSA, Health Canada, Australia’s Department of Health, and the EU’s national public health programs — there are significant differences in how intensively children are vaccinated from birth to age 18.
Although all developed countries recommend broadly similar vaccines (targeting diphtheria, measles, polio, etc.), the United States stands at the top in total injections and doses, followed by Canada, France/Germany, the UK, Australia, Sweden, and Japan.
United States — Approx. 30–32 vaccine doses (counts combination products as single dose) before age 18
The 2025 CDC/ACIP schedule (see CDC PDF schedule, 2025) remains the most aggressive among Western nations.
By age one, a typical American baby receives 20+ doses spanning nine diseases (Hepatitis B, Rotavirus, DTaP, Hib, Pneumococcal, Polio, COVID‑19, Influenza, RSV). By age two, 32 individual antigens including monoclonal antibodies have been received in utero and after birth.
By age six, most children have accumulated around 27 to 29 doses, and around 30–32 total doses by age 18 (including HPV, meningococcal, Tdap boosters, annual flu shots, and now COVID boosters). Doses include combination products, so the number of antigens is much greater approximately 72-93 depending on maternal injections and other factors.
The U.S. uniquely begins vaccination at birth with Hepatitis B (now restricted to ~25,000 seropositive/carrier mothers) and adds multiple annual vaccines regardless of local exposure risk. It also promotes simultaneous injection of up to six vaccines at once (“combination vaccines” or same-visit stacking), magnifying early childhood exposure to adjuvants and preservatives.
Canada — ≈ 25–28 doses
Canada’s national and provincial schedules (see Health Canada) mirror the U.S., but some provinces delay or skip optional vaccines (like flu or COVID‑19 for healthy children). Fewer boosters are required for diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis after age seven, and not all provinces include HPV for boys.
Canada therefore averages 2–4 fewer total doses than the United States.
France /
Germany — ≈ 22–25 doses
European Union countries vary widely:
- France mandates 11 childhood vaccines (including Hep B and Hib), but does not recommend early COVID‑19 or influenza vaccination for all children.
- Germany (STIKO guidelines) offers a schedule very similar to the U.S. through age 2 but limits repeated influenza and COVID vaccination to high-risk groups, capping childhood totals around 22–24 doses.
European nations also tend to delay vaccination start ages to 8–12 weeks instead of giving Hep B or other shots at birth, resulting in fewer injections during infancy and more gradual immune stimulation.
United Kingdom — ≈ 20–21 doses
The UK’s NHS and UKHSA recommend a smaller, slower schedule than North America’s. Infants receive about 16–18 doses by age 5, increasing to 20–21 by age 18.
Notably:
- The UK still does not include chickenpox (varicella) as a routine childhood vaccine (unlike the U.S.).
- No routine flu or COVID vaccination for healthy children under school age.
- Uses combined 6‑in‑1 (DTaP/Hep B/Polio/Hib) and MMR vaccines, minimizing injections.
Australia — ≈ 20 doses
Australia’s National Immunisation Program (NIP) mirrors the UK more closely than the U.S.
Infants start at 6–8 weeks, not at birth (Hep B exception). Only one influenza vaccine per year is recommended, and chickenpox is given later. No universal COVID vaccine for healthy under‑5s.
Total injections: about 20 by adulthood.
Sweden /
Norway — ≈ 16–18 doses
Nordic countries follow some of the world’s most minimalist Western schedules:
- No routine chickenpox, no birth shots, no annual flu or COVID for healthy kids.
- Combined vaccines reduce needle count.
- Emphasis on fewer but spaced doses (e.g., 3‑dose DTaP schedule instead of 5).
Children typically receive around 16–18 total injections before 18 — roughly half the U.S. burden — without suffering higher rates of “vaccine‑preventable” illness, challenging the dogma that more vaccines equal better outcomes.
Japan — ≈ 14–16 doses
Historically the most cautious industrialized nation, Japan delayed and later reduced its vaccine schedule after serious adverse events in the 1990s.
Although it now recommends many standard vaccines, lower frequency, single-antigen use, and minimal early‑life stacking mean the total doses remain lowest in the developed world, around 14–16 through adolescence.
Japan’s infant mortality and autism rates are lower than in the U.S., prompting renewed scientific interest in whether slower schedules might lower iatrogenic risk.
Summary — Total Vaccine Doses (Ages 0–18 Years)
Rank Country Approx. cumulative doses Notes on schedule intensity 1
United States 30–32 Most intensive; starts at birth; annual flu + COVID 2
Canada 25–28 Slightly milder than U.S.; fewer mandatory boosters 3
France /
Germany 22–25 Similar core vaccines; delayed start; selective flu use 4
United Kingdom 20–21 No varicella or universal flu/COVID; efficient combinations 5
Australia ≈ 20 Spaced schedule; limited COVID coverage 6
Sweden /
Norway 16–18 Simplified; no birth or seasonal routine vaccines 7
Japan 14–16 Most delayed; minimal birth and combination doses
Interpretation
The data show a clear gradient: the United States vaccinates children more frequently and at earlier ages than any other Western nation, often stacking combinations before immune maturity. Nations with slower, smaller schedules — Sweden and Japan most notably — maintain equal or superior child health metrics, casting doubt on the premise that maximal dosing guarantees better outcomes.
The U.S. model prioritizes population‑wide compliance and theoretical herd immunity, while Europe and Japan incorporate a more individualized risk‑based approach. Given the expanding scientific literature on rising childhood allergic and neuropsychiatric illnesses, these cross‑national differences underscore the need for independent, transparent studies comparing long‑term health outcomes by cumulative vaccine burden — something major regulatory agencies have conspicuously avoided.
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Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
Focal Points
STUDY: TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts Induce Measurable “Brain Rot”
Nicolas Hulscher, MPH
In 2024, “brain rot” went from an online meme to the Oxford Word of the Year.
Doomscrolling, zombie scrolling, and dopamine-driven streams of low-quality content are producing measurable cognitive impairment across an entire generation.
‘Brain rot’ is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.”
Our experts noticed that ‘brain rot’ gained new prominence this year as a term used to capture concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media. The term increased in usage frequency by 230% between 2023 and 2024.
The first recorded use of ‘brain rot’ was found in 1854 in Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden, which reports his experiences of living a simple lifestyle in the natural world. As part of his conclusions, Thoreau criticizes society’s tendency to devalue complex ideas, or those that can be interpreted in multiple ways, in favour of simple ones, and sees this as indicative of a general decline in mental and intellectual effort: “While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot – which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”
Now, a peer-reviewed paper titled, Demystifying the New Dilemma of Brain Rot in the Digital Era: A Review, confirms that brain rot is real: the digital environment is chemically, cognitively, and psychologically degrading the developing human brain. And the damage is measurable.
According to the study, brain rot isn’t a meme. It’s a documented state of cognitive atrophy, driven by overstimulation, dopamine feedback loops, and nonstop exposure to low-quality digital content.
The authors conducted a rapid review, systematically analyzing 381 studies, filtering to 35 high-quality papers published between 2023–2024. Here’s what they found:
The Core Mechanism: Overstimulation + Dopamine Feedback Loops
The review shows that young people now average 6.5 hours per day online — primarily on algorithm-driven platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and endless-scroll feeds engineered for split-second novelty.
Most of the content involves rapid, low-information stimuli: ultrashort videos, memes, reaction clips, and trivial entertainment fragments that provide novelty without cognitive substance.
These platforms deliver rapid bursts of artificially rewarding stimuli, creating a cycle of:
- Constant cognitive overstimulation
The brain never enters a “rest” mode or deeper thought state.
- Weakening of working memory
Information is consumed too quickly to be consolidated.
- Fragmented attention networks
Short-form content trains the mind to expect constant novelty.
- Difficulty processing long or complex information
Deep reading and sustained focus become neurologically harder.
- Mental fatigue & reduced executive function
Chronic overstimulation taxes the prefrontal cortex — the center of planning, reasoning, and self-regulation.
The study describes this as a shift from healthy, top-down cognitive control to bottom-up, dopamine-seeking impulsivity.
Doomscrolling: Chronic Exposure to Negative, Threatening, or Grotesque Content
Many people casually use the term, but the study provides a precise functional definition:
Doomscrolling = the compulsive consumption of emotionally negative or threat-based content.
Doomscrolling produces:
- Persistent anxiety and hypervigilance
The brain remains locked in a threat-detection mode. - Rumination loops
Negative information gets replayed mentally. - Physiological stress responses
Chronic cortisol elevation impairs cognition. - Reduced memory formation
Stress disrupts hippocampal consolidation. - Attentional fragmentation
The brain becomes primed for scanning, not focusing.
According to the review, doomscrolling directly impairs working memory, emotional regulation, and sustained attention, accelerating cognitive wear-and-tear.
Zombie Scrolling: The Dissociative “Mindless Drift” That Damages Cognition
Doomscrolling is emotionally intense. Zombie scrolling is emotionally empty.
Zombie scrolling = passive, intentionless, dissociative swiping through content with no goal, awareness, or engagement.
Zombie scrolling is associated with:
- Dissociation
The mind drifts, reducing present-moment awareness. - Working-memory depletion
Mindless consumption offers no cognitive stimulation. - Reduced attentional control
The brain becomes conditioned to effortless, low-value input. - Emotional numbing & detachment
Pleasure/reward pathways become desensitized. - Diminished cognitive engagement
The brain stops initiating deeper thought patterns.
The review notes that zombie scrolling may be even more insidious because users don’t feel stressed, so they underestimate the damage — yet the cognitive decline accumulates quietly over time.
Preclinical Dementia Signatures Are Appearing in Younger Generations
A striking findings of the review is that digital-era cognitive decline now mirrors several early dementia–like neurobiological patterns. Across neuroimaging and behavioral studies, excessive digital exposure is linked to reduced hippocampal engagement, producing shallow, fragmented memory formation rather than durable consolidation.
At the same time, prefrontal cortex function—which governs planning, inhibition, and decision-making—shows measurable degradation under chronic multitasking and rapid-fire media input.
This constant overstimulation imposes a chronic cognitive load on the neocortex, creating patterns consistent with accelerated cognitive aging. Notably, several longitudinal findings suggest an elevated lifetime risk of cognitive decline, indicating these effects may not be transient. These changes are well-documented through fMRI and controlled studies included in the review, demonstrating that preclinical neurodegenerative signatures are already emerging in younger populations.
Brain Rot: A Real Neurocognitive Syndrome
The study shows a clear, repeatable pattern: excessive digital exposure to low-quality content degrades working memory, sustained attention, executive function, problem-solving, and emotional regulation. Constant notifications and rapid content switching impair information holding and focus, while overstimulation weakens planning, self-control, and cognitive flexibility.
Both doomscrolling’s emotional overload and zombie scrolling’s emotional emptiness destabilize the central nervous system, producing a more rigid, impulsive, and cognitively inefficient brain. Adolescents exhibit the most severe deficits, underscoring the risk of long-term impact.
The evidence confirms brain rot is a real, emerging early, accelerating quickly, and consuming a generation.
This is one of the core reasons why cognitive disability is now a public health concern in the United States. Cognitive impairment is skyrocketing with no end in sight:
|
Widespread cognitive decline before adulthood may soon become the norm as AI-generated “brain rot” content begins to drastically proliferate.
Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation
Support our mission: mcculloughfnd.org
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Courageous Discourse
No Exit Wound – EITHER there was a very public “miracle” OR Charlie Kirk’s murder is not as it appears
By John Leake
Turning Point Spokesman: “No Exit Wound a Miracle”
Charlie Kirk Show producer Andrew Kolvet repeats extremely dubious claim purportedly made by “the surgeon who operated on Kirk.”
Monday Blaze Media (relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey) reported the following:
Turning Point USA spokesman and executive producer of the “Charlie Kirk Show” Andrew Kolvet revealed new details about the shooting that even doctors are calling a miracle. According to Kolvet, the surgeon who operated on Kirk claimed that the high-velocity bullet was powerful enough to kill multiple large animals — and “should have gone through” his body. But for some reason, Kirk’s body was able to stop it.
“I want to address some of the discussion about the lack of an exit wound with Charlie,” Kolvet wrote in a post on X.
“The fact that there wasn’t an exit wound is probably another miracle, and I want people to know,” Kolvet continued, explaining that he had spoken with the surgeon who worked on Charlie in the hospital.
“He said the bullet ‘absolutely should have gone through, which is very very normal for a high powered, high velocity round. I’ve seen wounds from this caliber many times and they always just go through everything. This would have taken a moose or two down, an elk, etc,’” he recalled.
“But it didn’t go through. Charlie’s body stopped it,” he added.
When he mentioned to the doctor that there were “dozens of staff, students, and special guests standing directly behind Charlie” when he was shot, the doctor reportedly replied, “It was an absolute miracle that someone else didn’t get killed.”
“His bone was so healthy and the density was so so impressive that he’s like the man of steel,” Kolvet recalls the doctor saying.
This is not a credible statement, and it raises a number of concerns.
It strikes me as very perplexing that a “surgeon operated on Kirk,” because in the video of the shooting, Charlie reacted with a decorticate posture—that is, an abnormal body posture characterized by flexion of the upper limbs—caused by severe trauma to the central nervous system. This indicates that the bullet either directly struck his cervical spinal cord, or the shock wave of the supersonic bullet passing near his spinal cord traumatized it.
A 150-grain, .30-06 bullet’s energy at 150 yards from the muzzle varies by ammunition, but a common hunting cartridge has an estimated value of approximately 1,800-2,000 foot-pounds (with the bullet traveling at about 2500 feet per second). In other words, the .30 caliber (.30 inch diameter) metal projectile struck his neck with sufficient kinetic energy to move a 2,000 pound mass a linear distance of one foot.
If the bullet that struck Charlie’s cervical spinal cord was a .30-06 fired from 150 yards away, it would have:
1). Severed his spinal cord, killing him instantly.
2). Passed through his neck.
Note that the cervical vertebrae are supported by strong muscles and have high compressive strength, but are far too delicate to stop a .30-06 bullet traveling at 2,500 feet per second.
If ALL of the kinetic energy of the bullet was absorbed by Charlie’s neck, it would have done spectacular trauma to his neck, as distinct from producing the clean bullet hole visible in the video footage that ruptured his Carotid artery.
Though I appreciate that some may find a supernatural explanation to be consoling, it seems to me that the investigation should not rest on the this explanation.
As I wrote a few weeks ago: If I were investigating the murder, I would consider the hypothesis that Charlie was shot with a weapon equipped with a suppressor and loaded with a subsonic cartridge to further reduce the sound. I have seen footage of someone firing a rifle with this setup, and the shot was amazingly quiet. The effective range of such a weapon is about 100 yards or less, and the shooter must be very skilled.
However, such a setup could fire a subsonic projectile that would penetrate a human neck without passing through it. In this scenario, the actual assassin (firing the suppressed rifle) hypothetically coordinated the timing of his shot with someone else firing a normal (supersonic and loud) rifle cartridge into the air at the same time to create a distraction or red herring.
In a functioning society in which the people trust their authorities—including their medical examiners—it would be easy to discover what happened and to disclose at least a preliminary report that would satisfy most reasonable people. The trouble our Republic is facing now is that so many of us no longer trust our federal and state authorities to tell us the truth.
For example, we have strong grounds for suspecting that medical examiners are not diligently investigating (with the proper analytic methods) unexpected, fatal cardiac arrests in young people to determine if they were caused by vaccine-induced myocarditis.
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