What Florida Is Doing To Vaccine Mandates Is Sick

What Florida is doing to vaccine mandates is sick. The state is moving to end all vaccine mandates. Its surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, has ordered the Florida Department of Health to eliminate all of its vaccine requirements. He declared, “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”

Kids will no longer be required to get shots for polio, measles, mumps, rubella and other diseases to attend school. Previously, exemptions were allowed only for religious or medical reasons.

The benefits of such routine immunizations are self-evident. Infectious illnesses cannot only be miserable experiences but also crippling and lethal. Widespread immunizations prevent outbreaks that impact people with compromised immune systems, not to mention those who never got vaccinated in the first place. We saw hundreds of cases of measles last year in West Texas, where immunization had declined, including the first measles deaths in the U.S. in years. Apparently—and incredibly—there are no recollections of the terror that polio once posed to parents during each summer when this deadly virus was most virulent and hit youngsters disproportionately. Thousands died each year. Are we now going to have to resurrect iron lungs for kids to keep them alive after they get polio?

Most disappointing is that Governor Ron DeSantis is actively pushing the state legislature to remove all laws requiring vaccinations. Should DeSantis try another run for the White House in 2028, he thinks this will help him win votes among those who supported Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential bid in 2024.

Florida is not alone in this medieval madness. A few months ago, Idaho did something similar. The state enacted a law, dubbed the Idaho Medical Freedom Act, that with few exceptions, prohibits vaccine mandates in both the private and public sectors. Schools are even specifically barred from keeping out unvaccinated kids when there’s an outbreak of a contagious disease they’re not protected against.

Why these backward moves that will lead to more sickness and death? Largely, it’s a lethal overreaction to the lies and blunders that scarred the credibility of public health authorities during the Covid-19 pandemic. They include the unnecessary and unhealthy length of the lockdowns; the damaging and unscientific closing of schools; the unnecessary, indeed potentially harmful, vaccinating of children; the coverups about the origins of the lab-created virus; the efficacy of masks and the arbitrary six-foot length of social distancing. There are also concerns that perhaps kids are getting too many vaccinations. But that possibility doesn’t justify throwing out all vaccine mandates.

There have always been some people who have a general distrust of vaccines. This distrust has gained traction, thanks to the well-known vaccine skepticism of the secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who took office earlier this year.

For the sake of our health, and especially for the well-being of our children, let us hope other states don’t follow the benighted examples of Florida and Idaho.