How Next Year’s Flu Epidemic Might Affect Our Military
An unvaccinated military will likely be hit hard by the flu next year.
You don’t need a crystal ball or time machine to know that flu will hit epidemic levels next year. Flu acts as a worldwide, seasonal epidemic each and every year!
Sure, some years are worse than others, but with few exceptions, we always have a flu epidemic.
And typically, we face that flu epidemic with a nearly half of us vaccinated and protected.
How Next Year’s Flu Epidemic Might Affect Our Military
Of course, many more of our military get vaccinated, as flu vaccines are mandated.
Or at least they used to be.
Pete Hegseth has discarded the mandatory flu vaccine requirement for the US military.
A mandate that has been in place since 1954!
“The context of the influenza vaccine for military personnel is rooted in World War I. The pandemic of 1918 was tremendously devastating to troops, with 20–40 % of U.S. Army and Navy personnel getting ill, leading to about 8,743,102 lost duty days. The toll would amount to over 26,000 deaths among American soldiers.”
A historical analysis of vaccine mandates in the United States military and its application to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate
A mandate that has likely helped protect military personnel from getting sick with the flu!
“Only nine influenza-associated deaths among US military personnel have been documented during the past 16 years (1998–2014), three of these nine occurred during the 2009–2010 pandemic period (Potter R, personal communication).”
Influenza in the US Military: An Overview
After all, you can expect more than nine influenza-associated deaths among non US military personnel of the same ages each and every week during a typical flu season!
And that’s because more non-US military personnel get sick with the flu and are more likely to require hospitalization!
Hopefully most will still choose to get vaccinated and protected!
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That dullard Pete Hegseth has to stick with his buddy RFK Jr. No vax for the troops. I'd bet Xi Jinping doesn't allow that nonsense in the People's Liberation Army.