You’re not imagining it that the flu spread fast and wide this year. It’s a nasty one, and slippery.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic we’ve all become conversant in the strange morphing of “variants,” and according to the experts the flu shapeshifted in a rather more dramatic way this time. As The New York Times reported in December, “The variant has several mutations that differentiate it from previous versions, making it a ‘cousin of what we’ve always had,’ said Dr. Scott Roberts, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at the Yale School of Medicine. ‘I wish it were a sibling,’ he said. ‘But it’s not.’ ”
This cousin-but-not-sibling strain means that the current flu vaccine is less of a perfect match than had been hoped. Still, according to the experts, the flu shot can help reduce the severity of the illness: “The vaccine is your armor,” Seema Lakdawala, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the Emory University School of Medicine, told The Times. “It’s going to prevent you from getting badly beaten. But it’s not going to get you to win the war.”
What you may not know is that the 2025-26 season’s bad bug comes immediately after a flu season that was particularly deadly for children. According to a Centers for Disease Control, “The 2024-25 influenza season had the highest number of pediatric deaths reported (280) since child deaths became nationally notifiable in 2004, except for the 2009-10 influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 pandemic.” According to the report, “approximately one half of children who died from influenza had an underlying medical condition and 89 percent of the children who died were not fully vaccinated.”
The C.D.C. was blunt in its recommendations: “All persons aged under 6 months who do not have contraindications should receive an annual influenza vaccination to prevent influenza and its complications, including influenza-associated death.”
Right in the middle of this double-whammy of deadly flu seasons comes the bombshell news that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will no longer recommend a third of the vaccines previously recommended for children, including that for influenza. Daniel Jernigan, the former director of the National Center for Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, told The Guardian newspaper that this decision was not just “astounding” but “made without scientific evidence or public input.”
The panel led by R.F.K. Jr. that made this decision claimed that it would put the U.S. in line with other “developed countries,” and pointed to policies in Denmark, specifically. But Denmark has six million inhabitants; the U.S. has 330 million. Fewer than 6.5 percent of Denmark residents live in poverty; to our shame, more than 17.8 percent of Americans do. Denmark provides universal health care to its people, funded by tax dollars, while the U.S. allows many Americans — around 8 percent, according to the Census Bureau, to live without health insurance at all. We are not “peers.” And, please note, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan, and most European countries all still recommend childhood vaccinations for influenza, rotavirus, and hepatitis B.
Dogma should not drive medical decisions; science should drive medical decisions. The scientists are astounded. And right now, the scientists are saying that we, the American public, are allowing the federal government to drive our children’s health safety right off a cliff.
Please listen to the scientists and the C.D.C., talk to your doctor, and get your children — and yourself — vaccinated.