Just when you thought the medical industrial complex had run out of ways to make “just die at home” seem like a reasonable healthcare plan, someone at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia apparently said, “Hold my syringe.”
Meet “Close Your Eyes, We’ll Immunize!”—something that sounds like a rejected scene from Halloween II but is, in fact, a genuine program being offered at a real-life hospital.
I only wish it were satire.
Since 2023, the hospital has been offering flu shots to kids while they’re knocked out for unrelated surgical procedures. You know, as a selfless public service to protect children from the horrors of a pinprick. During the 2025-26 flu season alone, 2,054 doses were administered to unconscious kiddos. Apparently, getting your tonsils removed now comes with an optional side of Pfizer.
And Philly isn’t a one-off. Both UNC and Seattle Children’s Hospitals have similar programs—although neither is likely as prolific as Children’s Hospital Colorado. According to reporting by independent journalist Jon Fleetwood, the Aurora medical center has vaccinated more than 18,000 children under sedation since 2020. Eighteen thousand. That’s enough kids to populate Nantucket and still leave nearly a quarter looking for somewhere to live.
This delightful initiative reportedly kicked off in October of 2020 (because a full-blown pandemic apparently wasn’t traumatic enough). By 2021, Colorado had introduced an electronic alert to remind medical staff to offer vaccines to children before surgeries—the hospital equivalent, I suppose, of “would you like fries and a drink?” As questionable bureaucratic ambushes go, it was an excellent call. Vaccinations skyrocketed from about five a week to more than 40 at a speed normally reserved for generating the bill.
And over at UNC Children’s Hospital, they discovered that when flu vaccine customers are slightly comatose, they’re a whole lot more receptive to the idea of a drive-by jab. The authors literally bragged about the results of their study, concluding that it “highlights the perioperative setting as a scalable platform for population-level preventive care delivery.” In other words, Covid and RSV, coming soon to an OR near you!
Naturally, the story is trending on X, where medical freedom-fighters are reacting with the sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for finding a live scorpion in your underwear.
And people are showing up in the comments in droves to share about the time this very thing happened to them or someone they love—without their knowledge.
Despite such real-world claims to the contrary, the hospitals insist that parents are consenting to the surgical add-ons. I’d really love to hear the exact wording of that little check-in prompt. Is someone explicitly asking, “Would you like us to administer an additional, unrelated medical product while we are simultaneously pumping your child with a cocktail of powerful anesthetics, knowing that it can introduce separate risks and side effects that could complicate the procedure?” Or do Mom and Dad get a breezy, “And while we’re in there, we’ll take care of that flu shot and save you an office visit!”
Because at the risk of insulting anyone’s intelligence, those are two wildly different pitches. And even CHOP (whose Vaccine Education Center Director is none other than Paul Offit) admits that “time constraints in the perioperative setting can limit the opportunity for detailed discussions.” In other words, Look, we’ve got to get little Hunter into the OR immediately, so please ignore our track record and initial here, here, and wherever your remaining questions used to be. Who doesn’t love making a major medical decision between deciphering insurance paperwork and trying to smuggle out your kid’s lovie?
And to be clear, the safety concerns aren’t small or imaginary. Vaccines can cause fever, rashes, fainting, swelling, nausea, allergic reactions, and occasionally seizures and anaphylaxis. Surgery and anesthesia come with their own similarly festive menu of potential complications. I’m no medical detective, but it would seem to be basic common sense that the ideal time to be introducing any unnecessary variables into the equation is [*checks notes*] not when a child is under the knife.
As someone who recently lived through a pandemic, I also think it’s fair to wonder if maybe—like could it be even a remote, highly unlikely possibility—hospitals are pushing unnecessary surgeries on folks so they can clandestinely meet their vaccine quotas. (If your knee-jerk reaction to that is Oh, Jenna, I think your tinfoil hat is cutting off circulation to your brain, I invite you to watch the documentary series Making a Killing and then let’s chat.)
I am not saying that’s happening. I’m just saying it certainly exists within the realm of the imaginable.
I suppose we should be grateful. I mean, I think we all assumed they were jabbing anesthetized patients anyway. The transparency is at least refreshing. It would be like your local mechanic putting up a sign that says “In a bind? We’ll rob you blind!”
Regular readers may recall a piece I wrote this spring about my friend Laura Bartlett. After witnessing similarly shifty hospital shenanigans during Covid—from patients receiving unwanted treatments to being offered vaguely worded permission slips—Laura partnered with a nurse-attorney to create and distribute a free I Do Not Consent Form to preemptively protect people from medical decisions they never agreed to. This would not be a bad time to revisit that.
I know. Our goal is to avoid hospitals like, well, the plague. But emergencies happen. Appendixes burst. Bones break. Kids do things that make you wonder how the human species has survived this long at all. And when you’re racing to the ER with a bleeding child, the last thing you should have to worry about is whether the people putting him back together have any bonus procedures in mind.
POLL REDUX FOR FINICKY PHONES:
This whole thing is…
precisely why I have trust issues.
horrifying but not surprising.
a lawsuit waiting to happen.
hospitals being hospital-y.
*combo/unsure/other
When you used to sign the form when being admitted as a patient it was all on paper. Now I hear it's on an ipad so you cannot cross out anything you disagree with. I don't think you can be admitted as a patient if you don't sign it.
Even if you explicitly say no to any jabs I don't think they would listen. Because as we all know it's about the money. The more jabs they give out it's more $$ for them.
It's crap like this that makes people not trust the medical profession or ever want to step foot inside a hospital.
This horrifies me for several reasons, mainly for perpetuating the idea that vaccines are so safe that we can conveniently bundle them into other procedures. (The same way they pressure pregnant women to take vaccines during their prenatal care). This protocol makes it impossible to separate vaccine reactions from surgery side effects. It also means families who are unaware their kids got a jab might vaccinate again at their primary care doc's office - which increases the risk of vaccine injury. The arrogance of this cavalier attitude is so dangerous and frankly, it's creepily close to entering the rape zone. If someone is unconscious, IT MEANS NO.