CDC Embraces ‘Individual-Based Decision-Making’ for Coronavirus Shots: ‘Informed Consent Is Back’

The Trump-era U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is embracing “individual-based decision-making” for coronavirus shots, it announced in an update on Monday.

The updated coronavirus shot schedule for both children and adults now reflects what the CDC described as “individual-based decision-making to COVID-19 vaccination,” embracing decisions made by an individual and their healthcare provider rather than a blanket mandate or recommendation. The recommendations adopted were made by the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

According to the press release:

The immunization schedules adopt recent recommendations by the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which were approved last week by Acting Director of the CDC and Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O’Neill. The schedules will be updated on CDC.gov by October 7, 2025.

The CDC emphasizes the importance on making these decisions on a case-by-case basis, allowing individuals to have the total information on possible benefits and risks before moving forward with their decision:

Individual-based decision-making is referred to on the CDC’s immunization schedules as vaccination based on shared clinical decision-making, which references providers including physicians, nurses, and pharmacists. It means that the clinical decision to vaccinate should be based on patient characteristics that unlike age are difficult to incorporate in recommendations, including risk factors for the underlying disease as well as the characteristics of the vaccine itself and the best available evidence of who may benefit from vaccination.

O’Neill said in an accompanying statement that “informed consent is back.”

“CDC’s 2022 blanket recommendation for perpetual COVID-19 boosters deterred health care providers from talking about the risks and benefits of vaccination for the individual patient or parent,” he continued. “That changes today.”

Further, the CDC announced that it is now recommending that toddlers receive their varicella (chickenpox) vaccination “as a standalone immunization rather than in combination with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination” for safety reasons.

This reflects a dramatic turn from the Biden coronavirus era, where unvaccinated individuals were told by the leftists — and the president himself — that they were unpatriotic and selfish and should be barred from various public places if they refused to get the jab.

Former President Biden also spread vaccine misinformation at the time, asserting that the coronavirus jab — which he tried to force on millions of Americans via the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) — stopped transmission of the virus.

“Everybody talks about freedom about not to have a shot or have a test,” Biden said at the time. “Well guess what? How about patriotism? How about you make sure you’re vaccinated, so you do not spread the disease to anybody else? What about that? What’s the big deal?”

He also told News19, “[T]hose who aren’t vaccinated are the ones that continue to spread the diseases.”
Biden also told the country that the coronavirus vaccine was “not about freedom or personal choice,” warning unvaccinated Americans that their “patience is wearing thin” with them.