Vaccination Status Should Be in the Headline of Every Pediatric Flu Death Story

It’s flu season, and I’m confident you or someone you know has or has had the flu. Of the 15 people we had around the dinner table on Christmas, nine had it or were recovering from it.

Not everyone recovers from the flu. Many people die from the flu each year, including children. In fact, 280 children age 17 or younger died from the flu last flu season, which ran from Sept. 29, 2024, through Sept. 13, 2025, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC said it was the highest number of pediatric seasonal flu deaths since the CDC began collecting and reporting pediatric flu deaths in 2004. That’s even before the CDC updated the figure to 289.

Given the dismantling of our public health system by our anti-vax HHS Secretary RFK Jr., I was curious to know how many of the kids who died from the flu were vaccinated for it. Turns out, 89% of the kids who died during last year’s flu season and for whom the CDC had vaccination records for didn’t get a flu shot. Nearly nine out of 10.

Funny, I don’t remember reading many headlines about the record number of kids who died from the flu last year. And I certainly don’t recall any headlines about most of those kids not getting their flu shots.

That appears to be the case this year, too.

Here’s a Jan. 1, 2026, headline about a 16-year-old girl in Ohio who died from the flu: “Ohio teen dies from the flu, marking state’s first pediatric death this season.” You have to read down into the story to find out that she didn’t get a flu shot this season.

Here’s another one from Jan. 4, 2026, about a 5-year-old boy in Texas who died from the flu: “Catholic influencer shares death of 5-year-old son from ‘severe’ flu.” The story and no other story on the boy’s death mentioned whether he was vaccinated from the flu.

As a journalist, I started to think about my profession’s responsibility in reporting pediatric flu deaths. A basic question that reporters need to ask is whether the child was vaccinated or not. It’s a foundational question like age, gender, city of residence, etc. In the time of RFK Jr. and the anti-vax disinformation he and others are peddling to a gullible public, the answer to that question is critical to our public health.

Let me take the liberty to rewrite those two headlines:

• “Unvaccinated otherwise healthy Ohio teen unexpectedly dies from the flu, marking the state’s first pediatric death this season.”
• “Catholic influencer shares death of 5-year-old son from ‘severe’ flu but refuses to disclose son’s flu vaccination status.”

We have a responsibility as journalists to disclose to the public whether healthy kids who died from the flu got their flu shots, and if they didn’t, raise the possibility that RFK Jr. and his anti-vax supporters were culpable for their deaths.

Per the CDC’s FLUVIEW interactive dashboard, nine kids have died from the flu so far this flu season as of Jan. 5, 2026. We have an obligation to report in the headlines and in the lede of those stories the vaccine status of these likely preventable deaths.

Build a better healthcare system.