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Child Flu Deaths Highest Since Swine Flu Outbreak: CDC

Health and Human Service Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an ardent vaccine skeptic.

The pediatric death toll from the flu this season is the highest it’s been since the 2009-2010 swine flu pandemic, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The 216 deaths may even be an undercount, Dr. Sean O’Leary of the American Academy of Pediatrics told the Associated Press. One reason for the uptick, O’Leary said, is that fewer children are receiving flu shots; the rate this season is 49 percent compared with 64 percent five years ago. The CDC report didn’t mention how many children who died had been vaccinated, if any. Other possible factors, according to O’Leary, include understaffed pediatricians’ offices, fewer vaccination clinics, and some pharmacies not vaccinating children. Hovering over all this, of course, is how Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fueled conspiracy theories about vaccines, in particular ones for measles during a deadly outbreak of the highly infectious disease.