A preventable flu outbreak at a U.S. military base underscores the real-world consequences of turning evidence-based vaccine policy into a political battleground.
Few medical advances have improved human health more than vaccines. The World Health Organization estimates vaccines save 3.5 million to 5 million lives globally each year, through the more than 30 vaccines available that prevent life-threatening diseases and infections.
Yet, the Trump administration continues to march ahead on its mission to discredit and politicize this overwhelming success story.
The latest example is alarming: A flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, has sickened nearly 300 service members and recruits, hospitalized four, and may have contributed to one death. This comes less than two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ended an 80-year-old flu vaccination requirement.
Hegseth announced on April 21 service members would no longer be required to receive the annual flu vaccine. Since the policy change, only 40 percent of Air Force trainees have opted for the shot. That decline is hardly surprising when Hegseth himself called the requirement an “absurd, overreaching mandate that only weakens our warfighting capabilities.”
“Ander the disastrous Biden administration, this Pentagon waged an unrelenting war on our warriors on many fronts, including when it came to denying them simple medical autonomy and the freedom to express their religious convictions,” Hegseth boasted in a social media video. “Your body, your faith and your convictions are not negotiable.”
Even some Republican lawmakers saw the danger of Hegseth’s decision. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee and an Air Force veteran, noted that the vaccine was mandatory in order to enhance the readiness of the armed forces and called the change in policy a mistake. “You know, you do give up certain rights when you take the oath.”
History has long shown the importance of vaccines to the readiness of our troops.
- The 1918 influenza pandemic—widely associated with an early outbreak at Fort Riley, a sprawling U.S. Army base in Kansas—went on to kill an estimated 50 million to 100 million people worldwide, including roughly 600,000 Americans.
- An estimated two-thirds of deaths during the Civil War were from infectious diseases.
- In 1777, General George Washington mandated smallpox inoculation for soldiers in the Continental Army to improve readiness.
In response to the Lackland outbreak, the Air Force has already reversed course at the base, once again requiring mandatory flu vaccinations for trainees—a welcome return to common sense public heath practices.
But the Trump administration overall continues to undermine other sensible vaccine policies.
Under Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has been decimated. Now filled with vaccine skeptics who are determined to ignore medical evidence, the committee has already voted to ended recommendations for the Hepatitis B vaccine for newborns and childhood vaccines for flu, Hepatitis A, rotavirus and meningococcal disease.
Though polls show strong bipartisan support for routine childhood vaccines, a Washington Post investigation reveals that, outside the public eye, a small circle of Kennedy’s allies continues to work to reshape federal vaccine policy.
This politicization of science is having a disastrous impact on health, well beyond the Lackland flu outbreak. The CDC reports more than 2,100 confirmed cases of measles in the U.S., putting the nation on track to exceed 2025’s decade-high 2,288 cases. Around 93 percent of the of the cases involve unvaccinated individuals. This backslide is particularly tragic considering U.S. health officials in 2000 declared measles had been eradicated nationwide.
As for the flu, the national vaccination rates for 2025-2026 flu season continued a multiyear downward trend, with only 49.3 percent of children and teens, and 46.5 percent of adults, receiving the flu shot. The CDC reports that pharmacies administered more than 1.3 million fewer doses compared to the previous season.
Vaccine skepticism and distrust have a long history in the United States, but the anti-science policies, politicization of public health, and disinformation spread by the Trump administration have created medical crisis after medical crisis, all preventable.
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