According to a June 20 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of children who died during the 2024-2025 flu season, 250, is the most to have died in a nonpandemic influenza season since 2004. Alarmingly, 89% of those who died had not been fully vaccinated against influenza. National vaccination rates for the flu have been declining significantly, CDC statistics show. In September, 55.4% of children aged 6 months to 17 years were vaccinated against the flu, a significant drop from the nearly 64% who’d been vaccinated in the 2019-2020 pre-pandemic season.
National vaccination rates for the flu have been declining significantly, CDC statistics show.
Things are likely to get worse. In February, a week after the Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC halted its flu vaccination campaigns, which educated the public on the efficacy of flu vaccines and warned of complications associated with an influenza infection.
Ending such a successful public health campaign is unconscionable, but the consequences aren’t likely to be fully known given that it was ended in the middle of the 2024-2025 flu season.
The CDC’s finding that 89% of children who died this flu season weren’t vaccinated means that those deaths could have been largely prevented with vaccines. Although they’re not perfect — a vaccination doesn’t guarantee one won’t catch the flu — flu vaccines still count as one of the most effective lifesaving public health tools we have. When kids get vaccinated, they reduce medical visits by two-thirds and hospitalizations by half. Influenza is not just the common cold; it can result in serious complications like pneumonia or infection of the lung, ear and sinus infections, multiorgan failure and — as Friday’s report reminds us — death.
Yet, according to the statistic from September mentioned above, nearly half the children were unprotected against a virus known to kill.
The science is clear: Vaccination saves lives, yet more parents are deciding not to vaccinate their children. Parents are choosing sickness and death over health and life. Not because they are trying to put their children in harm’s way but because of misinformation, politicization of vaccines, hesitancy for vaccine uptake and fringe theories being promoted by a group of people that includes Kennedy himself.
Unfortunately, the flu isn’t our only concern. Measles was declared eradicated by the World Health Organization in 2000, but, because of vaccine hesitancy and decreasing herd immunity, a resurgence has occurred in America. There’ve been over 1,200 reported cases of measles this year alone, and two children have died, according to the CDC. These cases were all entirely preventable with the MMR vaccine as well, with two shots offering 97% protection against the disease.
How many children need to die before government officials promote promote sound, evidence-based science again? Kennedy has not only argued against the safety of vaccines, but has also helped promote the fringe theory that parents can potentially forgo having their children vaccinated against measles and use vitamin A to treat them if they become infected. It’s not surprising, then, that some children in Texas were admitted to hospitals and even treated in intensive care units due to vitamin A toxicity. Our children are suffering as a few people promote baseless theories that have no foundation in science or evidence. Vitamin A has not been shown to prevent measles infections, only vaccines have. How many children need to die before parents, educators, teachers and government officials collectively promote sound, evidence-based science again? The politicization of vaccines is costing us the lives of innocent children who rely on their parents to make the decisions for them. And now the country has a health secretary we can generally expect to recommend parents not to vaccinate their children. Because most people survive it, Americans may be tempted to minimize the damage the flu can cause. It might not seem like such a big deal not get one’s child vaccinated, but as the 250 pediatric deaths this flu season attest, the flu vaccine is an opportunity for parents to save their child’s life. And parents should gladly take it.
Dr. Omer Awan
Dr. Omer Awan M.D., MPH, CIIP, is a practicing radiologist physician in Baltimore, Maryland, who writes about the most pressing issues in healthcare and public health. 
