VaccinesOct 5, 2026
If you're a close contact of a mumps case at SDSU, or on any campus where public health has declared an outbreak and is offering boosters, take the third MMR shot. It's free, well tolerated, and cuts your short-term risk by about three quarters. Your two childhood doses are still doing their main job, which is keeping breakthrough cases mild. What they're no longer reliably doing is blocking infection. Mumps antibodies fade faster than the measles and rubella parts of the vaccine, and most undergraduates got their second dose around kindergarten.
NewsOct 5, 2026
Most of the infections behind the '1 in 8 cancers' headline are preventable or treatable. Four pathogens account for the bulk: Helicobacter pylori, human papillomavirus (HPV), and the hepatitis B and C viruses. For each one, there's a specific action with real human evidence behind it: a vaccine, a stool or blood test, a short course of pills. For you, the useful question is which of the four applies, and whether you've acted on it.
NewsSep 24, 2026
Probably yes, especially if you get the shot before age 27. The vaccine is proven to sharply reduce vaccine-type oral HPV infections, especially HPV-16, the type behind most HPV-positive throat cancers. Now real-world data show the cancers themselves turning up far less often in vaccinated people. That's an association, not proof. But it points the same way as everything that came before it.
NewsSep 3, 2026
Two MMR doses on the standard schedule give your child roughly 97% lifetime protection against measles, and that number has held up in huge cohorts followed more than a decade out. Whether the US formally loses its elimination certificate in November matters far less to your family than whether the kids in your child's daycare, classroom, and pediatric waiting room are vaccinated. The gap is uptake, and it's fixable this week.
VaccinesSep 3, 2026
This fall, the major U.S. doctors' groups recommend the updated COVID, flu, and RSV shots for a wider group than the FDA label and CDC now cover. AAFP endorses the updated COVID shot for every adult 19 and up. ACOG urges COVID, flu, and RSV vaccination in every pregnancy. AAP kept routine COVID vaccination for babies 6 to 23 months and high-risk kids 2 to 18. If your own physician recommends a shot the FDA label no longer lists you on, the evidence is behind them.
NewsAug 28, 2026
Yes, if you're 65 or older, or you have any of the CDC's high-risk conditions. That list includes diabetes, obesity, heart or lung disease, kidney disease, cancer, immunocompromise, pregnancy, and even current or former smoking. Most American adults still qualify. The FDA moved from a universal recommendation to a risk-based one, and the risk category is wide.
NewsAug 28, 2026
If you are in the US and not traveling to eastern Congo, your personal Ebola risk is effectively zero. The record outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is real and severe, but it is Bundibugyo virus, a different species than the one Ervebo was built for. So it is being fought without a matched vaccine, and still contained by the pre-vaccine tools: fast case detection, contact tracing, and isolation of the sick.
Brain HealthAug 27, 2026
If you're 50 or older and haven't finished your Shingrix doses, the newest evidence gives you a second reason to schedule them. A 2026 study of more than half a million older adults ties the shot to fewer dementia diagnoses over four years, and it fits a pattern already seen in Wales, Australia, Canada, and several US cohorts. This isn't proof the vaccine prevents dementia, and the headline study was funded by GSK, which makes Shingrix. But the shingles protection alone already justified getting it. The cognitive signal is now hard to wave off.
NewsAug 26, 2026
If you have two documented MMR shots, your individual risk from this outbreak is near zero. Among Pennsylvania's 393 measles cases across 28 counties in 2026, none have been in fully vaccinated people. The two Lancaster County residents who died in August, the first U.S. measles deaths of 2026, were both unvaccinated. This is a coverage-gap story, not a vaccine-failure one, and the useful thing you can do this year is confirm your status.
VaccinesAug 24, 2026
The first mRNA seasonal flu vaccine is here. Moderna's mFlusiva is approved for adults 50 and older starting fall 2026, and if you're a healthy adult between 50 and 64, it's a defensible upgrade over your usual flu shot: about a quarter fewer lab-confirmed cases of flu, at the price of a sorer arm. If you're 65 or older, the question is trickier. Your current best options are the high-dose and adjuvanted shots, and whether mFlusiva beats those is the exact question the FDA is now making Moderna answer.
NewsAug 24, 2026
Yes, if you're 65 or older or have a high-risk condition. Start nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid) within a few days of symptoms, and be current on the 2025-2026 LP.8.1 booster. Both still cover Stratus (XFG) and Nimbus (NB.1.8.1), the immune-evasive Omicron descendants driving the summer 2026 wave. The XFG-matched shot isn't shipping yet, and neither variant looks more dangerous than earlier Omicron, so waiting trades a real, available benefit for a theoretical one.
NewsAug 23, 2026
Two on-time doses of MMR give your child about 97% lifetime protection against measles, and that individual protection matters more this year than it has in a generation. National kindergarten coverage has slipped for a sixth straight year. Exemptions cluster in specific schools, and US measles cases have already passed 2,400. Your own child's schedule is still the piece you control.
