Military recruits are at very close range of each other. Some share the same beds and bedding on board ships. The military traditionally has tried to avoid being accused of spreading disease among recruits by vaccinating them for just about everything possible.
But flu shots barely work. The most favorable, cherry-picked studies (funded and chosen by CDC) say they prevent flu in 40% of recipients, and probably do nothing for people over 65.
So in April, probably as a sop to soldiers after they were forced to take COVID shots that injured many of them (and the CHD movie Duty to Dissent about this subject is premiering next Tuesday, and I am told I am in it), Sec Hegseth made the flu shots, AND ONLY THE FLU SHOTS, voluntary for US servicemembers.
I guess that was a slippery slope that someone (a pharma company making campaign donations perhaps) decided must not stand. And so a very rare event occurred during summer: a flu outbreak. VERY RARE indeed.
Here’s what the media say about it, now that there is a requisite death. But we are actually not sure why the recruit died. Could it be from his COVID shot and not flu?
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/20/nx-s1-58 ... ine-policy
So of course the hammer comes down and recruits will need to get mandatory flu shots.
And no, it was not bird flu, since CDC had the following to say:
But here’s the thing:
Flu barely occurs in the summer. Here are the flu stats from CDC for the previous 2 weeks.
Right now is the lowest flu shot incidence since last October 1. And way less than one in a million people are being hospitalized for flu. So why did Lackland have (allegedly) 4 flu hospitalizations in young, healthy recruits? Might that be a function of the immune suppression caused by COVID shots? Is it real? Was some weaponized strain spread at the base?
Here is why this has nothing to do with making the flu shots voluntary—because flu shots are NOT ADMINISTERED between April 1 and the start of fall, because there is virtually no flu then and the shots’ protection only lasts a few months, at best, when it is effective. Below is what I told Michael Nevradakis for a piece he is preparing for the Defender:
The normal time to get a flu shot is Sept-Oct. In fact, they are not supposed to be used after April 1 each year, until the next year’s version is available.
The protection they offer, if any, generally is only believed to last several months. So there would not be much protection now, if any, from a shot 8-9 months ago.
Last year’s flu shot only provided protection to 36% of recipients, according to a French study reported in the heavily pro-vaccine U Minnesota CIDRAP, leaving nearly 2/3 of recipients unprotected last fall--and so protection now would be considerably less than that 36%.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/influenza-va ... se-interim
Flu (Influenza A and B) is pretty rare in summer. Maybe this outbreak is due to a non-influenza, flu-like illness for which a flu shot would provide zero protection?
Sec Hegseth’s recent order making (only) flu shots non-mandatory has absolutely nothing to do with this outbreak, since no flu shots should be given this time of year, and the shots were mandatory last fall and through April 1!