The anti-vaccine thrust in Florida leads to a dangerous change for American public health

Florida surgeon, General Joseph Ladapo, is expressed during an anti-vaccine event in Sarasota, Florida,
Dave Decker / Zuma Press Wire / Shutterstock
Skepticism around vaccines has reached new heights in the United States, Florida officials growing to eliminate all mandates from vaccines, including those of schoolchildren. This decision can embrace other states to follow up on, as well as the risks triggering a resurgence of infantile diseases for a long time.
“If I were a virus, I would organize a party right now,” said Cynthia Leifer at Cornell University in New York State. “The potential elimination of all vaccination mandates in Florida will allow diseases that have been checked for decades to raise their ugly heads again.”
Once relegated to the touch, the anti-vaccine movement has become a significant force in the United States since the COVVI-19 pandemic. Florida is an excellent example. In 2022, it became the first state to recommend against the vaccination of COVVI-19 mRNA for most children. Two years later, he extended these advice to everyone. Now it could become the only state to completely eliminate the mandates from vaccines.
“The Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the Governor, will work to end all Florida law vaccination mandates,” said Joseph Ladapo, the highest head of public health in the state on September 3. “Each last is false and flows with disdain and slavery.”
Like every American state, Florida legally needs children to be vaccinated against several diseases before entering school. While the Florida Department of Health, which Ladapo supervises, has an important authority with regard to academic vaccination mandates, state legislators are the only ones to be able to repeal all the requirements of the vaccine.
In a declaration to the Associated Press, the State Department of Health said that the change of rule provided would affect vaccines for hepatitis B, chickenpox, chickenpox, chickenpox, chickenpox, chickenpox, chickenpox, chickenpox, chickenpox Haemophilus influenzae Type B (HIB) and pneumococcal diseases. Other vaccines, including those of polio and measles, are always required for school attendance under state law, unless legislators repeal the legislation.
Vaccine mandates are a great reason why the United States has one of the highest immunization rates in the world – and why epidemics of diseases such as polio, diphtheria and darling are a distant memory. Eliminate them would eliminate them from decades of progress in public health and put lives in danger. A 2024 US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report estimates that infant routine vaccinations have saved nearly 1.13 million lives and prevented around 508 million infections in children born between 1994 and 2023.
“Vaccines have become victims of their own success because people have ceased to see the suffering of children from vaccine preventable diseases,” said Leifer.
A large part of the decline against vaccines stems from concerns about their side effects. But studies show that these pale risks compared to those posed by infection. For example, the probability of developing myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, is about seven times higher with a previous infection COVID-19 than vaccination. Meanwhile, 1 in 1,000 people with measles will develop dangerous inflammation in the brain, called encephalitis, against only 1 million children who are immune.
During a press conference, Ladapo did not provide scientific justification for the repeal of the mandates of the vaccine. The Florida Ministry of Public Health has also not answered questions New scientist To know if he had one. Instead, he called on the religious freedoms of individuals.
“Who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body?” Who am I to tell you what your child should put [their] Body? “He said. Your body is a gift from God.
But this explanation neglects the fact that more than half of the States, including Florida, allow people to give up compulsory vaccines for religious reasons. Sixteen states also authorize exemptions for personal reasons, such as philosophical disagreements, and all states have medical exemptions.
It is difficult to know to what extent vaccination rates would fall if school mandates were repealed. But the data is clear what to make the opposite requirements – strengthening – stimulates the absorption of vaccines. For example, Maine has removed personal and religious exemptions for compulsory vaccines in 2019. Consequently, more than 95% of school -aged children had received all the vaccines required by 2024. It is the threshold to which the immunity of the herd is affected for measles, or when most people in a community are protected against infection.
Less than 89% of children who start kindergarten – which generally starts around 5 years – in Florida, were vaccinated during the 2024-2025 school year. To reach the immunity of the herd, the state should strive to increase vaccination rates if it wants to protect public health. Instead, it is undermining them.
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