Top medical leaders urge Americans to get their flu and COVID shots in lieu of CDC vaccine campaign
The Trump administration has remained silent so far on vaccination recommendations as flu season approaches. But leaders of some of the country’s largest medical organizations are urging Americans to get their shots to avoid serious illness.
On Wednesday the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, as well as the University of Minnesota’s Vaccine Integrity Project, released recommendations indicating that the vast majority of people should get vaccinated against influenza, COVID and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
“Unfortunately, today the federal government is not fulfilling that responsibility in the way that it historically has. But the need for that work has not disappeared,” said Bruce Gellin, a member of the Vaccine Integrity Project’s board of advisers and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, during a press briefing on Tuesday.
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“Americans should have access to the best available scientific evidence and recommendations from the physicians and medical experts who care for them so they can make informed decisions about vaccination. Whatever happens to the federal vaccine policy process, we cannot lower that scientific standard,” Gellin said.
The recommendations come as an increasing number of people opt not to get themselves or their children vaccinated for various diseases. Nodding to data showing that the nation’s medical institutions are suffering from a crisis of confidence among a growing number of Americans, the consortium released summaries of research into the shots’ safety and efficacy in the Journal of the American Medical Association and online to accompany the new guidelines.
The group’s guidance acknowledges the fact that COVID is less dangerous today than it was at the height of the pandemic. But during the 2025–2026 respiratory virus season in the U.S., an estimated 15,000 to 42,000 people still died of the disease, while up to 240,000 people were hospitalized and millions more experienced less severe illness. The consortium’s research review for the COVID shots finds that they cut the risk of hospitalization for adults older than age 65 by 53 percent and reduce that risk for pregnant women by 58 percent. There are also signs that the vaccines’ benefits are passed on to the latter’s babies, who tend to have fewer COVID-related hospital visits than children of unvaccinated mothers. Adults who are immunocompromised see their risk of being put into intensive care or of dying from COVID cut by the vaccines by between 32 and 53 percent.
Influenza is the leading cause of vaccine-preventable respiratory illness. Vaccines against the illness reduce its hospitalization rate among adults older than age 65 by 31 percent and cut deaths among infants and children by 80 percent, according to the group’s research review for these shots. Meanwhile the consortium’s review of RSV vaccines finds that they reduce hospitalization rates by up to 83 percent among people older than 60, while vaccination during pregnancy reduces hospitalization for infants by up to 70 percent.
Despite the evidence showing the vaccines are safe and effective, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which usually produces an annual campaign to push people to get vaccinated against respiratory illnesses, has yet to roll out a similar effort this year. The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The CDC recommends vaccinations against the flu and COVID for most Americans, including pregnant women and healthy children. Still, those guidelines are at odds with vaccine-skeptic statements and positions taken by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and other members of the administration.
Kennedy’s apparent opposition to vaccines could make access to the shots more difficult for some parents, said AAP president Andrew Racine at the same press event. Racine said it’s also unclear at this time if the CDC’s Vaccines for Children Program, which provides shots for families that can’t afford them, will cover the cost of the recommended vaccines.
“Last year Vaccines for Children covered all of the recommended vaccines that we had put in our vaccine schedule,” Racine said. “I can’t say necessarily what’s going to happen going forward, but it’s our anticipation that the federal government, with Vaccines for Children and other programs that they run, have a responsibility and an interest in making sure that children of any income get all of the care that they need in order to keep them healthy and safe.”
Still, Racine pointed out that, while there is a decline, most U.S. children are vaccinated and that polling data indicate that most families prefer to get medical information from their pediatricians.
“I’m not saying this to say that we don’t have work to do,” he said. “We do have work to do. Certainly, the trends are not moving in the direction we would like, but I do think that we have lots of advantages in our day-to-day work.”
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