By Edwin J. Asturias, of Denver, a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at the University of Colorado. “In my 30 years as a pediatrician, I’ve cared for infants so severely dehydrated from rotavirus that they required IV fluids, toddlers gasping for breath with RSV, and previously healthy school‑aged children suddenly fighting for their lives against meningococcal meningitis. These are not abstract statistics. They are real children and families enduring suffering we have long known how to prevent.”