Decline in Flu Vaccinations Raises Public Health Concerns

The number of influenza vaccine doses distributed has been steadily decreasing, according to the CDC. In 2022, during the first week of the flu season, roughly 173 million doses were distributed. In the first week of the 2024 season, a little more than 145 million doses were distributed.

Tara Smith, a professor of epidemiology in the College of Public Health at Kent State University, said part of the reason for the decline is misinformation pushed by those with a large platform. This can lead the public to think it’s not important to get vaccinated against the flu or other infectious diseases. Or that vaccines are worse than the disease itself and can cause harm to the individual. Another common misconception is that vaccines aren’t studied. “I mean, hundreds of thousands of papers published on all sorts of vaccines, but somehow this idea that vaccines are not studied or only studied for like five days in a clinical trial or something. Um, that’s a very common one that’s out there,” Smith said. According to the CDC, vaccines have been under laboratory research for 10-15 years, and before they can be tested in people, they undergo immune response testing in small animals like mice. After this stage, if the Vaccine shows promising results, it will then go through a clinical trial to be tested in people. 

Smith explained the impact of COVID on vaccine hesitancy and how, before COVID, hesitancy was more evenly distributed across the political spectrum. She mentioned that those on the left would be hesitant about vaccines. 

Because of the impure chemical compounds in the vaccine, those on the right were hesitant because they didn’t want the government intruding on their lives, or that some of the vaccines had been developed in the 1950s from an aborted fetus. 

“ It was pretty, you know, pretty even across the spectrum, but now, it has become almost a political issue that, there’s still people on the left, you don’t like vaccines, but it has become almost kind of infused with the identity on the right that, since COVID, that they don’t like mass mandates, they don’t like vaccines. And now that’s become almost part of the like party platform,” Smith said. 

Smith emphasized the importance of getting the influenza vaccine every season. “ We suggest a vaccine every year, to update your body’s instructions to know to look out for this virus now,” Smith said. 

According to Smith, the influenza vaccine is about 50% effective. However, if you do get infected, vaccinated people will have a milder case. As individuals age, the risk of hospitalization and death increases. If the flu reaches the lungs, it can cause damage, and the individual may develop a secondary infection. She encourages younger people to show empathy for older and immunocompromised people, as they can still unintentionally spread influenza.

“ So usually bacteria that get into those damaged lungs and can cause all different types of pneumonia can put especially older people in the hospital and can cause death. So the flu vaccine protects against hospitalization and death as well,” Smith said 

Ameah McVan, a graduate from the University of Dayton with a bachelor’s in premedicine and a minor in neuroscience, explains that having worked in medicine. During her time at Dayton, she worked as an EMT.  “You see people that don’t get vaccines for all sorts of diseases get sick, and I think it really truly changes your perspective on it,” McVan said. She agrees with Smith that even if it might not affect younger teens and adults, it does affect older adults, immunocompromised individuals, and younger children with a weaker immune system. 

According to the  CDC  Pneumonia and Influenza Mortality Surveillance from the National Center for Health Statistics Mortality Surveillance System, during week 8 of Ohio’s 2023-2024 flu season, 24 people died. In the same week during the 2024-2025 season,  114 people died. 

Kaitlin Glover, an Intern at Kent City Public Health and a graduate student in  Clinical epidemiology at Kent State, said,  “If you do come down with the flu and you already did get the vaccine, the vaccine will help make your symptoms not as severe,” Glover said.

Smith said that health professionals who are talking with someone hesitant about vaccines should ask them questions to identify their specific concerns, and the best approach is to turn it into a conversation. Smith provided the questions she will start out asking the patient. What concerns do you have with vaccines? What specifically have you heard about them?  What’s keeping you from taking the vaccine? Smith explains that, hopefully, the patient will share information about their hesitancy, which will allow Smith to offer explanations of their concerns in a conversational way.

For those clinicians that only see a patient for 25 mins and have tight schedules to turn it into an ongoing conversation across appointments “ if it can be part of, you know, a real conversation, um, where there’s trust on both sides, that is really the best way to ideally change things or at least to start to maybe break down some of those barriers,” Smith said.  Smith advises those hesitant to “ You know, talk to a health professional, you know, you get an appointment with, with a pharmacist, with a nurse, with a doctor who, who you trust,”