This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.

And I'm Flor Lictman.

Today in the podcast, scientists have been trying and failing to make a universal flu vaccine for years.

What's the hold-up? Could a new NIH vaccine plan solve the problem?

What's fact from fiction? What's public relations versus what is really the message that there is good science out

there and what is it accomplishing?

Just yesterday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

announced that the CDC would stop recommending

COVID vaccines for both pregnant women and healthy children. And last week, the FDA announced

plans to restrict access to the COVID vaccine for people under 65 or without preexisting

conditions. These steps, which have raised a lot of concern from vaccine experts, come just a few weeks after the NIH announced a new vaccine initiative, Generation Gold Standard.

They say the goal is to make a next generation universal vaccine platform that could work for influenza and COVID using, quote, traditional vaccine technology.

Now, for decades, scientists have been chasing

this holy grail of universal vaccines, like a one-and-done flu shot, so that instead of schlepping

to the pharmacy every winter, you get one vaccine, maybe a booster, and you're immune for years,

maybe forever. But Ira, so far, that super shot has been elusive.

It certainly has, and the question is, will this program have more success? That is the

literally $500 million question. So where is the science on this? How does it square with the

administration's other efforts to limit vaccine access?

We invited someone from NIH to join us today, and they have declined.

Now, let me introduce our guests.

Michael Osterholm is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy,

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