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Childhood Vaccination Rates Were Falling Even Before the Rise of R.F.K. Jr.
Nationwide, the rate of kindergartners with complete records for the measles vaccine declined from around 95% before the pandemic to under 93% last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Immunization rates against polio, whooping cough and chickenpox fell similarly.
Average rates remain high, but those national figures mask far more precipitous drops in some states, counties and school districts. In those areas, falling vaccination rates are creating new pockets of students no longer protected by herd immunity, the range considered high enough to stop an outbreak. For a community, an outbreak can be extremely disruptive. For children, measles and other once-common childhood diseases can lead to hospitalization and life-threatening complications.
States, not the federal government, create and enforce their own vaccine mandates, but the incoming Trump administration could encourage anti-vaccine sentiment and undermine state programs. The president-elect’s nominee for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has spread the false theory that vaccines cause autism, among other misinformation. But immunization rates had been falling for years before Mr. Kennedy’s recent political rise.
There are now an estimated 280,000 kindergartners without documented vaccination against measles, an increase of some 100,000 children from before the pandemic.
California Child Is Presumed Positive for Bird Flu
A child in San Francisco who had red eyes and a fever had a probable case of H5N1 bird flu, according to the city’s Department of Public Health. The case was caught by routine surveillance. When the child developed symptoms, they were checked for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, COVID-19 and the flu, and they tested positive for influenza A.
Across the U.S., labs are sequencing all influenza A viruses to learn their subtypes. This enhanced testing is a safeguard to ensure that H5N1 is not spreading widely in humans. Sequencing of the child’s sample determined that it was H5N1, and the sample will now go to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for confirmation. The child did not need to be hospitalized, and they have recovered from their illness.
Disease detectives don’t know how the child was exposed to the virus. They say there’s no evidence that the infection spread to anyone else, and the risk to the general public remains low. There have been 66 other human cases of bird flu reported in the U.S. in an ongoing outbreak in wild animals, poultry and dairy cows, according to the CDC.
Most Antiviral Drugs Showed Limited or No Effects Against Flu
Antiviral drugs commonly used to treat non-severe influenza appeared to have little or no effect on key clinical outcomes, except for baloxavir (Xofluza), according to a systematic review and meta-analysis of 73 randomized trials.
Compared with standard care or placebo, all antiviral drugs had little or no effect on mortality for low- and high-risk patients (all high certainty), but baloxavir likely reduced risk of hospital admission in high-risk patients (risk difference [RD] -1.6%, 95% CI -2.0 to 0.4; low certainty) and probably reduced symptom duration (mean difference -1.02 days, 95% CI -1.41 to -0.63; moderate certainty), reported Qiukui Hao, M.D., of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and colleagues.
However, baloxavir may have resulted in treatment resistance in approximately 10% of those treated, the authors noted in JAMA Internal Medicine, which means that monitoring for drug resistance may be needed.
Even Adults May Soon Be Vulnerable to ‘Childhood’ Diseases
There were more than 32,000 cases of whooping cough in 2024, the highest tally in a decade. In California alone, the disease struck 2,000 people between January and October last year.
More than 60 infants younger than 4 months were hospitalized in the state. One died.
Whooping cough, or pertussis, is just the most stark example of what happens when vaccination rates decline. But it is far from the only one.
The pandemic interrupted childhood immunizations across the country, and rates have not yet recovered. As a result, hundreds of thousands of children are increasingly vulnerable to diseases once largely relegated to history books. Most of them predominantly affect young children, like measles, mumps and rubella. But if immunizations continue to fall over the next few years — because of rising distrust, or more restrictive federal policies — preventable infectious diseases will resurface in all age groups, experts say.
“It might take a year or two, but there’s no question,” said Pejman Rohani, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Georgia. “We will have outbreaks,” he said. It’s not just the unvaccinated who will have to worry. Even adults who were vaccinated decades ago may find themselves vulnerable to what are now considered childhood diseases.
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Bird Flu Could Merge With Seasonal Flu To Make Mutated Virus That Could Spread Among Humans, CDC Warns
If taking charge of your health is among your New Year’s resolutions, you might consider getting your 2024–25 seasonal influenza shot if you haven’t already. While it won’t protect you from H5N1 bird flu per se, immunization could play a pivotal part in warding off a bird flu pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The current avian influenza outbreak led to the infection of 66 people in 10 states in 2024, CDC records show. Most cases, 36, were in California and tied to dairy cattle exposure. Washington and Colorado reported 11 and 10 human infections, respectively, primarily linked to poultry farms.
One person has died, the Louisiana Department of Health confirmed on Jan. 6. The deceased, an adult over 65 with underlying medical conditions who had been hospitalized after exposure to wild birds and a non-commercial backyard flock, remained the sole H5N1 case in the state.
‘Ozempic’s Biggest Night’: Glp-1s Back in Hollywood Spotlight at 2025 Golden Globes
As the 2025 Hollywood awards season kicked off with the Golden Globes on Sunday night, so too did another round of jokes, speculation and sponsorships linking the industry to the use of GLP-1 medications for weight loss.
Comedian Nikki Glaser, host of the 2025 Golden Globe Awards ceremony, dove right in at the start of her opening monologue: “Good evening, and welcome to the 82nd Golden Globes — Ozempic’s biggest night,” she began.
The wisecrack, of course, is a nod to the rumors of the rampant off-label, purely cosmetic use of drugs like Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy, and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound by celebrities hoping to slim down for roles or red carpet appearances, contrary to the meds’ approved uses to treat only those who are clinically overweight or obese, or who have Type 2 diabetes.
In Debate Over Obesity Medications, FDA Shifts Toward Importance of Drugs in Subtle Ways
For years now, companies behind weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound have been trying to convince the medical community and the public that obesity is a disease and that medications are the answer. It seems the Food and Drug Administration has now shifted its perspective, too.
This week, amid a slew of new recommendations that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, released ahead of President-elect Trump’s inauguration, the agency posted draft guidance on obesity clinical trials, the first time it has done so since 2007. The new draft calls obesity “a chronic disease,” whereas the previous guidance called it “a chronic, relapsing health risk.”
It mentions the importance of lifestyle interventions less than the previous guidance, omitting a reference to lifestyle modification being seen as “the cornerstone of overweight and obesity management.” It also takes a less conservative view of how companies should test drugs in the pediatric population, removing recommendations that drugmakers should first conduct studies in higher-risk adolescents than other children.
Patient Care Declines After Private Equity Buys Hospitals, Study Finds
In a paper published in JAMA, health policy experts at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) report that patient care experience worsened after private equity (PE) acquisition of U.S. hospitals, as did patient-reported staff responsiveness.
Rishi Wadhera, M.D., MPP, Anjali Bhatla, MD, and colleagues demonstrated that patient care continued to worsen at PE-acquired hospitals with each additional year following acquisition relative to non-acquired hospitals, suggesting that profit-driven changes made by PE may have downstream effects that accumulate over time.
“Patients provide the most important perspective on whether a hospital is providing good or bad care, as they have a 360-degree view of the entire care experience,” said Wadhera, Associate Director of the Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Center for Outcomes Research at BIDMC. “After private equity takes over a hospital, patient care experience significantly worsens. That’s very concerning, given the surge in PE acquisitions of health care facilities over the past decade.”
