CDC study finds big declines in hospitalizations—and they may be underestimates.
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Baby hospitalizations from RSV fell up to 71% with new vaccine, treatment
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Dont worry, RFK And the fasc team delight in killing children (see school shootings). There literally won't be RSA/flu vaccines this year.
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We vaccinated for our preemie infant almost right after it was approved, and it was such a relief mentally. I have terrible discipline at my workspace and being able not to worry that much about masking and stuff was a big boon.
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One wonders how many steps the CDC researchers had to take to get this report out the door before it could be crushed underfoot by Grima Wormbrain.
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Gotta say, I very much enjoy and appreciate the journalistic yeoman's work Dr. Mole brings to Ars in the translation of scientific reports for the layman. Having recently retired from the CDC (after 30 years), I have to commend her attention to clarity and detail. Plus, I am always in awe of the comments section. Sometimes ROTFL...
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Are other countries rolling out the rsv vaccine or other new vaccines?
Our new medical knowledge will slow down, but instead of following US research, can we get articles on global research in the future?
How can we continue to get this information once the US scientific research has been gutted?
Our new medical knowledge will slow down, but instead of following US research, can we get articles on global research in the future?
How can we continue to get this information once the US scientific research has been gutted?
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In the near future:
Researchers at the CDC were fired today for releasing "false and inflammatory" information regarding a study that concluded RSV vaccines were extremely effective in reducing hospitalizations, contrary to the ideology of a worm-eaten delusional fucktard in charge of the HHS whose beliefs trump science and won't stand for facts.
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Great stuff. Now, if we could just get something approved for those that need it between the ages of 2 and 65. Our insanely medically complicated 12-year old has had it three times since 2018. It sucks.
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For some reason, the news has not followed the recent findings that early vaccinations in life dramatically lowers dementia risk, as well as Alzheimer's. The largest study that I saw was done in Finland where they used the data of the entire country. In that study, they found that respiratory vaccines seem to have the strongest impact (like this story here about RSV). Here is another paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08800-x
They don't know the actual cause of the improvements, but one paper I saw said that they believe that since viruses damage DNA, there are long term effects of early lifetime DNA damage. The body's DNA repair or cell culling cannot keep up with all of the viral damage. Another scientist also pondered if vaccinations would also have another beneficial side effect of reducing cancer. Same idea: reduced DNA damage.
And as far as the risk of dying from a vaccine: you are MANY times more likely to die going to the grocery store than to die from a vaccine shot (isn't it like x100K?). And most of us don't even think of going to the store as a danger - as we bring our kids right along with us.
So for 99.99999% of us, vaccines protect us and give us a better quality of life. In a few decades, this will become very clear as the data accumulates. With the control group being called the Darwin group.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08800-x
They don't know the actual cause of the improvements, but one paper I saw said that they believe that since viruses damage DNA, there are long term effects of early lifetime DNA damage. The body's DNA repair or cell culling cannot keep up with all of the viral damage. Another scientist also pondered if vaccinations would also have another beneficial side effect of reducing cancer. Same idea: reduced DNA damage.
And as far as the risk of dying from a vaccine: you are MANY times more likely to die going to the grocery store than to die from a vaccine shot (isn't it like x100K?). And most of us don't even think of going to the store as a danger - as we bring our kids right along with us.
So for 99.99999% of us, vaccines protect us and give us a better quality of life. In a few decades, this will become very clear as the data accumulates. With the control group being called the Darwin group.
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“New RSV vaccine, treatment linked to dramatic fall in baby hospitalizations”
Wish this existed about 2 years ago. My daughter spent 2 days in the PICU over an RSV infection the progressed to a secondary bacterial infection and pneumonia. She is fine now, but I would’ve liked to not have to expended 20 years of my life over those 2 days.
She subsequently caught COVID about 3 weeks after she got out of the hospital, but since she had been vaccinated against it she threw a fever for one night and was fine the next morning pretty much.
Vaccines work.
Wish this existed about 2 years ago. My daughter spent 2 days in the PICU over an RSV infection the progressed to a secondary bacterial infection and pneumonia. She is fine now, but I would’ve liked to not have to expended 20 years of my life over those 2 days.
She subsequently caught COVID about 3 weeks after she got out of the hospital, but since she had been vaccinated against it she threw a fever for one night and was fine the next morning pretty much.
Vaccines work.
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45 years later, doctors can still hear the damage to my lung from my childhood pneumonia. I want ALL the vaccines so that I don’t get this shit again, and so that nobody else has to explain to every fucking doctor for their entire life that yes, they had pneumonia as a kid.
(Also so my parents didn’t freak out that their toddler was on death’s door. Pre childhood amnesia, so I don’t remember anything, but I’m sure they were sweating bullets.)
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I’m in agreement with @dr_fish. Everyone catches this every 1-4 years throughout their life. Until recently we weren’t testing enough to ‘see’ that in near real-time. It would reduce missed school and work days and strain on families if we could prevent RSV infections in children and adults. A friend of mine has an otherwise healthy toddler who gets sick with cough and wheeze about every 6 months. It’s always RSV. The child averages 2-3 ER visits per illness, so 4-6 ER visits a year and a dozen or so trips to the pediatrician’s office. That’s a lot of stress for the kiddo and the family. And a lot of interactions with the healthcare system.
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ColdWetDog
Ars Legatus Legionis
You could always off-label the maternal vaccine. It ought to work on a 12 year old - there isn't anything magic about being pregnant (immune system wise). You obviously wouldn't have the benefit of an actual study but that is going to take a while. RSV typically is dangerous for people at both ends of the life spectrum. Otherwise it is considered a nuisance and thus might not get the research dollars you would like.
And, to be clear, I agree that such a study is warranted for a number of reasons. Just not sure if it will happen in any reasonable time frame.
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I believe there is starting to be evidence that dementia might actually be the result of viruses and bacteria getting into the brain. If so more respiratory illness= more chance of that happening since the sinus area directly connects to the brain and bypasses the blood brain barrier to some extent.
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It's news like this that give me hope that anti-vax nutters will eventually be a self-correcting problem.
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It's not just infants, it's seniors as well. My wife and I both got ours, mine pretty much as soon as it was out, hers as soon as eligibility changed to include her relative youth. (She's several years younger than me.)
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ColdWetDog
Ars Legatus Legionis
Yeah, well, you're preaching to the choir here. Most posters here agree that more vaccines are better and we can back up that warm fuzzy with real data. But Repubs aren't interested in anything that doesn't get them money and / or power so here we are.
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Thankfully we eradicated smallpox, or else we'd have it come back from time to time as survivors age out and aren't around to tell us how important the vaccines are, then we'd get outbreaks and outright epidemics, then we'd get scared straight again.
Unfortunately we didn't lick measles when we had the chance.
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I cannot imagine anyone being willing to give off-label vaxes to children in the USA since 1/20/25. DoJ will be on the office doorstep. The FBI will provide the armed manpower. And soon after that doctor is going to be on a flight to Libya.
/only exaggerating a little
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The very last line of the piece:
"That suggests that the latest RSV season was more severe, and the drops in infant hospitalizations may be underestimates."
...check for typo.
Great piece, Ms. Mole.
"That suggests that the latest RSV season was more severe, and the drops in infant hospitalizations may be underestimates."
...check for typo.
Great piece, Ms. Mole.
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And, other than straight cash to some private clinic, what are the procedures for getting this vaccine (and others) in the countries US residents (if they have or can get passports) might visit?
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In the US smallpox vaccination ended in 1972 and it looks like globally since 1977.
Except for a case where someone broke into a lab holding smallpox samples in 1978, the last known case is from 1977.
Also this is highly infections and deadly disease. Without action it's not going to stay subdued.
Which is why the WHO was confident to declare it eradicated in 1980.
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Smallpox is a strictly human disease, so there's no animal reservoir. Limited survival time outside a host and we're long past that without a documented case. The chances are very, very small that there's any smallpox virus outside of the couple of known biolabs.
That may not last. I believe the genome has been sequenced and published, so once the synthesizers are good enough someone can manufacture it from scratch.
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David Mayer
Ars Centurion
There are several things that bug me about this attitude (not necessarily you).
1. Nuisances are a bad thing and eliminating them would be good.
2. Every infection in a person only mildly affected increases the likelihood of a life threatening infection in someone else.
3. The economic damage that comes from having millions if not tens of millions of sick days used up every year is non trivial.
Didn't we render some strains of some viruses extinct during COVID lockdowns? If we all just wore masks a lot, like as much as we wear hats and sunglasses, we'd be much better off.
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David Mayer
Ars Centurion
I give it 50:50 odds that deportees will start to end up fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
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With our luck Putin will defrost some samples from old Soviet labs and send some agents to US airports to spread it around just to cause chaos now that the antivaxxers are in charge at the CDC.
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There are only so many dollars to invest in research so you do have to prioritize.
That being said, likely we will see a broadening of the approval over time as further testing is done to show efficacy. They just started with the absolute highest risk group first and are likely to work their way down.
At the very least I would expect that research will happen for the entire age range due to potential complications.
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