Florida’s surgeon general announced earlier this month that the state plans to drop state school vaccine mandates for children, becoming the first state in U.S. history to do this.
This new proposal is unacceptable. A rollback of these mandates allows parents who have been tricked by the anti-vaccine movement to neglect their children’s health and will make more people vulnerable by reducing herd immunity.
A government that does not care about science or its people’s health must be held accountable before it is allowed to harm public health further.
A big factor in the rise of the anti-vaccine movement in the U.S. is the spread of misinformation on social media, something that’s led to many myths surrounding the life-saving shots.
One of the biggest vaccine myths is that vaccines cause autism spectrum disorders. The fraudulent paper that first claimed this was published in 1998. It turned out to be based on bad science and the authors had major conflicts of interest. The paper was discredited and then retracted by the journal that published it. Later studies found no causal association between ASD and vaccines.
Science shows that refusing to vaccinate your children makes them more likely to contract serious illnesses like tuberculosis, polio and measles with possible complications like pneumonia, blindness, malnutrition and death.
Not only do parents put their children at risk, but they put the health of the people around them at risk. While they may be able to put their unvaccinated children in school in Florida if it scraps the mandates, they will be unable to enroll in schools in any other state. Their children will also face travel restrictions internationally, possibly losing the opportunity to study abroad.
Even if parents do want to keep their kids unvaccinated, vaccine mandates are important to keep everyone safe from serious diseases. According to the CDC, when more than 95% of people in a community are vaccinated, most people are protected through community immunity, also known as herd immunity.
According to a nationwide study, Florida ranks 45th overall in vaccination rates, and the CDC estimates that only 88.1% of Floridians are vaccinated against measles. With the removal of vaccine mandates, the number of vaccinated people will likely drop even lower, and herd immunity will disappear. This will make everyone more vulnerable to preventable diseases, regardless of vaccination status.
Diseases like polio, measles and smallpox were eradicated by vaccines. Americans today are fortunate to not live in fear of diseases that harmed millions of people every year before vaccines. This achievement is due to the widespread vaccination of people. Without it, preventable diseases will come back.
We have already seen it happen. Earlier this year, the U.S. suffered the worst measles outbreak since the disease was declared eliminated here in 2000. The outbreak began in Texas. 90% of the 1,431 total cases reported were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status, and the CDC confirmed three deaths. These deaths would have surely been preventable by a vaccine that has been proven safe and effective by all major health organizations and that has been used worldwide for more than 60 years.
Florida’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo is not concerned about the safety of the community or the importance of vaccines for the health of everyone. Instead, he cares more about what he says are the rights of parents to choose to vaccinate their children — effectively neglecting their own children’s health and endangering the public. He also maintains that vaccine mandates are a “violation” of bodily autonomy and even compared vaccine mandates to the horrors of slavery. Comparing effective vaccine mandates to the tragedies of slavery borders on lunacy.
His position on bodily autonomy is notably inconsistent and political. Just last year, he threatened criminal charges against TV stations for airing ads that urged people to vote for an abortion rights amendment to Florida’s constitution. Apparently, he sees bodily autonomy as irrelevant when it comes to a woman’s right to her own bodily autonomy.
Beyond this, his comments about the government not having the right to mandate vaccinations fly in the face of clear Supreme Court precedent. The Court has repeatedly held that governments may establish vaccine mandates, even over religious objections.
Florida’s neglect of public health and of children’s safety is now in our hands. We cannot continue voting for a government that does not care about scientific fact and passes policies that make us vulnerable to preventable diseases.
I urge every single Floridian to contact their state representatives and Governor Ron DeSantis to stop this rejection of science and health standards. The state government must be held accountable.