The Army, Navy, and Air Force are once again requiring basic trainees to get vaccinated against influenza after the virus quickly swept through an Air Force base in Texas, sickening at least 222 recruits and hospitalizing four.

The outbreak flared just two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth abandoned a decades-long requirement for flu shots. The requirement was intended to keep armed forces healthy in their bases, which provide ideally tight conditions for a variety of pathogens, including influenza, to run rampant. Mandates stem from centuries of intertwining histories of militaries, war, and human pathogens that have firmly established the danger that infectious diseases pose to armed forces.

But in April, Hegseth claimed that flu shot requirements were "not rational" and said removing the requirement was "restoring freedom" to military members.

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