There is no vaccine for RSV
The old claim turned out to be wrong and was rejected by evidence.
TaughtRespiratory syncytial virus (RSV) sends tens of thousands of older adults and infants to the hospital every year, and there is nothing to prevent it. Sixty years of vaccine attempts had failed (one 1960s trial made the disease worse) so RSV was the textbook example of a virus we could not vaccinate against.
NowIn May 2023 the FDA approved Arexvy, the world's first RSV vaccine, for adults 60 and older, followed within weeks by a second. In trials a single dose cut the risk of symptomatic RSV illness by about 83% and severe illness by roughly 94%.
What actually happened
The decades of failure had a real cause, and solving it is why this is a genuine reversal rather than a lucky break. The 1960s vaccine primed the immune system the wrong way and worsened infections; the breakthrough was structural biology work that locked the virus's fusion protein into the shape the body needs to see, so the vaccine teaches the right response.
A maternal vaccine and a long-acting antibody for infants followed in the same window, closing the loop at both ends of life. The honest footnote is that these are approved for specific groups (older adults, pregnant people, babies), not everyone. But the flat sentence taught for half a century, 'there is no RSV vaccine,' is simply no longer true.
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Who was taught this
Still standard through 2023, so anyone who finished school between 1950 and 2023 learned the earlier version.