I mean, who would want to intentionally join
a service that doesn't feed them or take care
of their health?

affecting the fighting ability of armies

At the beginning of the Civil War thousands of soldiers gathered in camps young and old, urban and rural. While soldiers from cities were not as strong as those who grew up working on a farm, they lived in densely populated areas and had a stronger immune system due to exposure of different diseases. Many soldiers from rural communities lacked this exposure to various illnesses such as smallpox and measles, causing a high rate of infection.

There were several epidemics (defined as a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time) that spread throughout the armies during the Civil War. Many history enthusiasts may have heard of the smallpox epidemics that took place during the American Revolution. These epidemics were so deadly, killing 3 out of 10 Continental soldiers, that Washington ordered all troops inoculated in 1777. The process of inoculation involved taking a scab that had fallen off a smallpox patient and rubbing it into a cut on a healthy patient’s arm. The patient would get sick, but not as sick as contracting the virus naturally and one they recovered they would to be immune to the disease. By the 19th century, smallpox vaccination was discovered by giving patients cowpox, a similar virus found in animals that gave immunity to smallpox. This reduced the amount of smallpox cases. From May 1861 to June 1866, there were only 12,236 recorded cases of smallpox in the U.S. Army which numbered millions.

Much more prevalent during the Civil War was measles, which was often ignored since it was considered a childhood disease. The symptoms of measles are like smallpox. Victims had a fever, cough, runny nose, and eventually a rash of red spots that could cover the entire body. With camps teaming with people never exposed to measles, many soldiers were highly susceptible to the disease. By the end of the Civil War, 67,000 Union soldiers contracted measles and more than 4,000 died.

joined the army as a nurse in WWI. She died of the flu before going overseas. We put a flag on her grave on Memorial Day.

I bet a lot of families can trace back to someone who died of the flu, if they care to look.

Peons don’t count.
- we are expected to fight for their interests.

That will "Liberate" them from their tyrannic regime...

WTF

So we can draft your ass and send you to die in the Middle East like Franklin Graham foretold when asking for money on television.

I don’t care if people want to vaccinate themselves for flu, but for the military, it seems like a bad decision to expose people in such important roles to contagious illnesses like the flu.

Asking for young men and women

Did he give a good reason?

...do we accept, address, and take action on these asses for sabotage?

This directive is just too fucking dangerous.

The enlisted sign a contract for terms of 2 to 6 years. They can apply to be released early but those applications would mostly be denied.

The FREEDOM to die from easily preventable,
common illnesses so you can display your small dick stupidity to the entire world.
We get it Petey
The stupid!…….
It burns!!!………

If you add up all the numbers of people who have died since 9/11 - all were the direct cause of Fox somehow:

- 9/11 - 4,000
- Hurricane Katrina - 4,000
- War on Terror - 6,000+
- COVID - 1,000,000+
- Mass shootings - 200,000+

So yeah most of this shit has been them.

Since 1966 (so 60 years versus your 25 year window) there have been 1,728 total fatalities in the US due to mass shootings.

Even allowing for all 60 years to be counted, your claim of 200,000+ mass shooting US deaths is at least 116 times too high.

ignorant viewers for the cause of spreading more lies and misinformation.
On a certain level, I’m fine with that if they want to believe known lies. But it’s still abhorrent.
FOX NEWS: We lie, you die

. . . this is the same fool who recently dropped the prohibition on carrying weapons on military bases.

It is hard to describe how sick I got: high fevers, intense muscle aches, extreme fatigue. Flu is a killer. I'm lucky I was young and healthy at the time. I don't think I'd survive an infection like that now.

Imagine half a unit out of commission with symptoms like the ones I had.

Hegseth is an idiot.

One of my personal pet peeves is when someone says, "I had the flu", when they had a bad cold of some other respiratory infection.

I too had the flu when i was in my mid 20's. I have never been sicker in my life. I honestly thought I might die.
And as a healthy, active person in my 20's it took me almost 3 months before I didn't feel like going back to bed after the strenuous act of walking to the kitchen to get a drink of water.

So now we're going to have large groups of people living in close quarters who aren't vaccinated. What could possibly go wrong?

"Sorry, we have to postpone today's war. Everyone is sick."

Everyone, and I mean everyone in this administration is not just ignorant, they are stupid.

Are recruitment numbers that low that he's trying everything to get people to sign up for his and his cult leader's Middle East follies?

Kegsbreath would not have survived.

Yes, they had wine and beer, but it's just not the same.

We would know they ALL get the vaccines every year!

That's why vaccines were developed and the military was where diseases like the flu, smallpox, measles, spread and wiped out armies. More troops used to die from disease than from combat wounds. That's why vaccines were mandated. How are we going to launch a ground invasion and maintain a war front if half the troops are sick?

Thought I'd have to get better in order to die. It was just awful, would probably kill me now.

Flu shots every year but “flu” is overused and yeah, it’s worse than the cold but Influenza is a whole different beast. After I was diagnosed, I read up on it and learned about the A strain and what happened at the military base in Kansas. I know now how deadly it can be and it scares me when people refuse to be vaccinated and I sure don’t want them anywhere near me and like you, I don’t think I would survive it now with all the mutations. Be well 🌺

While he was in basic.

Exactly one week after everyone got together for Thanksgiving in 1928, she died at the young age of 45 from an "echo" of the Spanish flu, the worst outbreak in the U.S. since 1918.

or in large crowds?

It only takes one sick person to put 6000 at risk on a carrier. Bad news.
I am sure it would be the same for our soldiers, marines, and coasties.
Not so sure how it would effect those in “the good life”, the Air Force…

it's pretty tough to go out and conduct military operations when you are PUKING YOUR GUTS OUT.
He should ask Ka$h about that.

A real culture warrior dumbass.

I apologize for stating the obvious.

These people will "tough it out" and spread it everywhere.

Bear in mind 1) even those of us who get a flu vax every year can get a minor case of the flu.

Bear in mind 2) with so many cuts to CDC and NIH, etc, we don't know if the next vaccine will be well-targeted to begin with.

Vaccines in this case is to keep troops healthy and in action. It’s a national security mistake to not require vaccines for common communicable illnesses.

Time for our "greatest military of all time ever" to get some nasty avoidable debilitating illnesses, I guess. Toughen 'em right up, eh commander?

The military has too many personnel in tight quarters. The risk of transmission is unacceptable.
This is dereliction and abuse of our military.
Some whine so he caves. What a spineless slug!

Captain Trips, the super flu.

Lots of sick soldiers in the future as well as some dying from the flu.

And I woke up today with a nasty case of the flu. This sucks!! 🤢

And Then Pick Their Noses

... The 1918–1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the misleading name Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus. The earliest probable cases were documented in March 1918 in Haskell County, Kansas, United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million,[7][8] and possibly as high as 100 million,[9] making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history.



Soldiers sick with Spanish flu at a hospital ward at Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas

Putin says thanks!

Hell, Iran says thanks!

Went to the hospital for one week.

What a dumbass thing for Hegseth to do.

For nearly 250 years, U.S. military leaders have prioritized inoculating the troops. It’s a lesson the current defense secretary hasn’t learned.

During the Revolutionary War, smallpox took such a brutal toll that George Washington decided to inoculate the troops in 1777, ensuring the survival of the United States.

This came to mind watching Hegseth scrap the Pentagon’s policy on flu vaccines for no reason.
www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-04-21T18:43:19.505Z

It weakens our forces.

You know, this is exactly what the separation of church and state was all about.

Too much whiskey caused brain damage?

Prosecute him for stupidly endangering the troops.