How Many Americans Are Mandated to Take the Flu Shot?

I don't know but it's time to push back

With so much focus on COVID shot mandates over the past few years, it’s easy to forget that many Americans have long been and are still required (or coerced or compelled) to take the annual flu shot.

Age-group data show the highest proportions of U.S. flu-shot recipients among children & the elderly - the same groups (so we are told) to whom influenza poses a major threat. I have questions about the 2014-2023 rate data (below) but for this post I’ll limit myself to one…

How many of these flu shot recipients ⬆️ were under a mandate of some kind?¹

I don’t know but would like to know and would appreciate being directed to a good estimate.

If you don’t live in the U.S., the idea of a flu shot mandate may come as a surprise. An illustrative tour follows.

Military

Active duty, National Guard, and U.S. reserve members have been required for decades to take the flu shot — and continue to be the subjects of large multi-year flu shot studies. The Department of Defense helps distribute 3 million doses to the armed services and sets a yearly goal of 90% uptake by Jan 1.²

The Coast Guard’s September 2024 bulletin (excerpt below from here) is similar to what all branches say and is fascinating if only for its key claims.

Influenza is characterized as “highly contagious with the potential to significantly degrade operational readiness” and the shot is couched as “the most effective strategy” for combating flu, with mask wearing & social distancing as runners-up. It’s implied that a high uptake is needed to ensure the Coast Guard can do what it needs to do, i.e., low uptake would adversely and weaken U.S. military forces.

Reviewing relevant DoD studies and the history of the military’s influenza-related experiments is beyond the present scope, but any American who can admit the government told fibs about the COVID-19 event can hopefully agree the assertions in the press release above are unproven and exaggerated.

Colleges & Universities

Most U.S. colleges & universities don’t require the flu shot but some do - like the University of California system and Stanford Medical School.

The UC declination form makes clear the student is putting him/herself and others at risk by refusing to take the shot.

Stanford permits medical and religious exemptions but discriminates against those who don’t want to take it due to personal reasons, beliefs, or preferences. Presumably, that includes students who have done their own research & concluded the flu shot doesn’t work, isn’t necessary, and/or can be harmful.

Healthcare Workers

As of October 2020, seventeen states required hospital workers to receive the flu shot or provide record of shot status.³ Even where state-level mandates don’t exist, many hospital systems issue their own requirements.⁴

Illinois (where I live) requires hospitals to a) offer the flu shot, b) report uptake to the state, and c) permits only religious & medical exemptions.

Last October, an administrator in the Advocate Health system provided me with this description of requirements for employees:

“For Aurora Health in WI and Advocate Health in IL, the flu shot has been required since at least 2014 for all employees (patient care and non-patient care, on-site and remote employees). Exemptions given for religious or medical reasons, but you need to submit a form and a committee reviews whether to approve/deny exemption. If exemption is denied, must comply or be terminated. The practice/enforcement continued after their merger with Atrium Health (NC, SC, AL, GA and includes Wake Forest Medical School).”⁵

Advocate health no longer has a COVID shot mandate but “comply or face consequences” is still very much effect for another injection that doesn’t do what it is claimed to do — and never has.

Nursing Home Staff & Residents

Nursing homes are under similar compulsion. Per the CDC, 32 states require long-term care facility residents to receive the flu shot and 24 states have requirements for LTC staff.⁶

Again. using my state of residence as an example, here’s how the requirements sound in outbreak guidance issued by the Illinois Department of Public Health:

The sense of urgency in such guidelines is remarkable given that a comprehensive set of clinical practice guidelines for flu outbreaks published in 2018 by CDC researchers said,

"Residents of long-term care facilities and hospitalized patients are at high risk for complications of influenza, even if vaccinated, because influenza vaccine effectiveness may be low, particularly in elderly persons.”⁷

So, people in poor health are at high risk from testing positive for flu, even if they’ve had the flu shot, and the flu shot doesn’t work for them anyway, but Illinois and a slew of other states still mandate the flu shot in nursing homes.

Based on reading various nursing home “outbreak” reports involving flu or SARS-CoV-2, I am unpersuaded these things are contagious in the manners purported. I likewise fail to see why the government fears nursing home residents dying from influenza-positive pneumonia versus other causes and seriously doubt that any “focused protection” plan involving flu shots is protecting those compelled to take the injections, versus those who make & sell them.

Foster Parents

Foster parents are another population under flu shot mandates in some U.S. states. I haven’t delved into which ones but learned that some that put rules in place have since rescinded them. For example, in March 2015, Washington state amended requirements for foster parents caring for children younger than 2 years old to include the flu shot. It’s not clear how many placements this change affected, but the rule was changed in August 2021.⁸

Requirements for foster parents in Tennessee to receive whooping cough and flu shots are in the process of being amended.⁹

Missing in Action: Pushback on Flu-Shot Mandates

I’ve probably missed some groups who are required or strongly-pressured to take the flu shot as a condition of service, employment, or residence. If there’s a country besides China that pushes and compels the flu shot as much as the United States does, I’d like to know which ones those are.

I’m told by citizens of other countries that the flu shot isn’t really a thing where they live, which is fascinating because it’s definitely a thing here and has been for a while. As I’ve mentioned previously, in cities like mine anyone who goes to a grocery store at this time of year sees flu shot promotions and hears constant announcements about it & other “vaccines” over the intercom.

It’s pervasive enough for a Chicago newspaper to leverage the name of Bears’ coach Matt Eberflus in the sports pages this week — which is a premier and eye-rolling example of public health propaganda working overtime. #punintended

The U.S. Supreme Court striking down the unholy, illegal, and inhumane OSHA mandate for the COVID shot was a glorious day — as is each time someone is awarded backpay or damaged over being unjustly fired for having refused it, whether nurses, transit workers, or anybody else.

Meanwhile, flu shot mandates exist and I don’t hear much outcry over those. I suspect part of the reason has to do with how subtle and successful the U.S. Flu Surveillance & Shot Racket has been.¹⁰

Consider:

• People view the flu shot as simply working/not working, versus being responsible for or linked to minor or major adverse effects.

• “Getting the flu shot and getting flu anyway” isn’t seen as the fault of the shot, but rather a “bad guess” or poor mismatch between the fortune-telling predictions about dominant circulating variants strains.

• Everyone knows flu shot “efficacy” is poor at best…yet can’t let go of the notion that it is protect and flu season would be worse were it not for flu shots.

• Flu shot formulation(s) change every year with not a lot of scrutiny. (If the COVID shot and histories of other vaccines are any indication, it is highly unlikely flu shot “trials” are scrupulously-conducted.)

• There are different types of flu shots and plenty of opportunities for differential batches.

• Recipients may not be adequately informed of the risks (i.e., informed consent isn’t actually informed and therefore consent not lawfully given).¹¹

• The cumulative/compounding effects on the immune system of receiving the seasonal flu shot are understudied, i.e.., the extent to which it may immunosuppressive is not known, or at least not well-publicized, if it is known.¹²

Just Say No

I said at the beginning of this article that I don’t know how many flu-shot recipients in the U.S. take the injection because it is required of them. Based on the mandates I’m aware of, it seems to safe to say that many millions of Americans are working in jobs or living in places where they are told they have to take it or accept a consequence of some kind.

Exemptions exist but no one should have to file a formal objection to keep their body free from a medical treatment they a) don’t want and b) doesn’t do what it’s claimed do it.¹³

Moreover, flu shot mandates & marketing schemes help perpetuate at least two unsubstantiated claims:

• Flu is a spreading (or circulating?) threat, especially for the young and the old,

• Without flu “vaccines” sickness and death from respiratory illness would be worse.

I suspect the opposite may be true:

• We have no idea what all causes respiratory illness, how influenza viruses “work,” or whether they or they alone cause illness.

• A “bad flu season” perhaps should be called “how bad the flu shots made things” season

The mandates should not exist at all, because neither the government nor a company has the God-given authority over a person’s body to make an injection or medical treatment a condition of daily life, schooling, employment, or existence. Case closed.

Our best “shot” at calling the bluffs and getting rid of flu-shot mandates is to do what my generation was taught to do with illicit drugs: Just Say No.

UPDATE

Per this Time magazine article, Loyola University Health System in Chicago has required all employees to receive a mandatory flu shot since 2009.

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Other Flu Posts

1. A related question would be how many received the flu shot (or consented for their child) under pressure in a doctor’s office. Pregnant women in America can expect pressure to get the flu shot to “protect” themselves and their baby; the same is true for anyone age 65+.

2. https://www.army.mil/article/280970/army_distributes_nearly_1_4_million_vaccines_to_combat_expected_annual_flu_spike

3. https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/infection-control/17-states-with-hospital-staff-flu-shot-requirements.html

4. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/06/240613140829.htm

5. Two other employees of the system I know in real life confirmed this for me, as did two followers (one about a friend and the other an employee saying those with exemptions must wear mask).

6. https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/php/publications/flu-vaccination-laws-state-ltc-facilities.html

7. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/68/6/e1/5251935

8. https://www.dcyf.wa.gov/services/foster-parenting/caregiver-flu-shot

9. https://www.wkrn.com/news/tennessee-politics/tn-senate-oks-bill-removing-vaccine-requirements-for-foster-families/

10. I initially mentioned some of the things listed here: https://x.com/Wood_House76/status/1710745807450784137

11. Independent researcher

Elizabeth Hart

has done outstanding work on the informed consent front. I recommend her Substack Vaccination is Political.

12. Based on this review, I think it’s probably known but not advertised well: https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/8/3/ofab069/6129135? (Also mentioned in this thread: https://x.com/Wood_House76/status/1729226934976999554)

13. Not wanting it should be enough but granting exemptions for any reason at all renders mandates superfluous. Federal/state governments know this, as do the companies that make the shots and other parties who benefit from the flu surveillance and shot racket. The same is true for other seasonal shots and vaccines recommended or required for babies and children.