Last week, news broke that an influenza outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas had caused around 160 people to become sick.
The timing was both bizarre and not. On one hand, the U.S. armed forces ended its flu vaccine mandate in April. On the other, a flu outbreak in June is unusual.
Indeed, after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the policy, an influenza outbreak in military barracks seemed inevitable. But so soon? That may have surprised some. But, in retrospect, it shouldn't have.
Military officials in the Army, Navy, and Air Force reportedly took action this week to once again require flu shots for basic trainees, but it's worth taking a closer look at what happened. The math on this is beautiful. The results are not. In short, Hegseth did not break epidemiology. He merely stumbled into the mathematically inevitable "find out" phase of his "FAFO" approach to vaccinating our nation's newest influx of Air Force recruits.
The Epidemiology of an Outbreak
