The Florida Department of Health announced Monday that a child who hadn’t received a flu vaccination was the first confirmed fatality of flu season in the United States.
The unidentified child was said to be healthy before testing positive for influenza, according to the state’s Bureau of Epidemiology.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that a shot reduces the likelihood of flu-related illness by 40 to 60 percent. The CDC recommends the flu vaccine for most people over the age of six months.
Thanks to Obamacare, most Americans can get flu shots for free. CDC studies have shown the vaccine prevented millions of illnesses and thousands of hospitalizations over a decade.
Roughly 80 percent of the nearly 80,000 Americans who died of the flu during the previous season, which was the deadliest in 40 years, did not receive a vaccination, per the CDC.
Despite the clear research regarding the effectiveness of the flu vaccine, misinformation has continued to spread in recent years, thanks to places like Facebook and Fox News.