Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo announced Wednesday that all vaccine mandates in the Sunshine State will be rescinded, saying the state has no business telling its residents what to put in their bodies.
“People have a right to make their own decisions, informed decisions,” Ladapo said at a news conference in Valrico, Florida, in the Tampa area. “They don’t have the right to tell you what to put in your body. Take it away from them.”
“Every last one is wrong and DRIPS with disdain and slavery!” Ladapo continued. “Who am I, or anyone else, to tell you what you should put in your body? Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body? I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God. What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your Body and God.”
The doctor added: “Pretty much every state has them. It’s wrong.”
Until now, children in the state’s public school system were required to be vaccinated for measles, chickenpox, hepatitis B, Diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP), polio and many other diseases, according to the Florida Health Department’s website.
Ladapo said the department can lift rules for some of the vaccine mandates, but others will require action by the state’s legislature.
He told reporters that his department would work with lawmakers to to end “all of them. Every last one of them.”
The Sunshine State will be the first state to eliminate all of its vaccine mandates.
During the pandemic, Florida was among the first states to scuttle authoritarian measures such as mask mandates, “vaccine passports,” school closures and mandates forcing workers get the COVID jab to keep their jobs.
And in March 2022, the Florida Department of Health became the first state agency to officially recommend against COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children.
“I don’t think there’s another state that’s done as much as Florida. We want to stay ahead of the curve,” the governor said during the news conference.
Naturally, Florida’s move drew criticism from certain public health professionals who argued that the vaccines are safe and effective and the best way to stop the spread of communicable diseases.
“When everyone in a school is vaccinated, it is harder for diseases to spread and easier for everyone to continue learning and having fun,” Dr. Rana Alissa, chair of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told CBS News in an email. “When children are sick and miss school, caregivers also miss work, which not only impacts those families but also the local economy.”
Dr. Philip Huang, director of the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department in Texas, said dropping vaccine requirements was “insane and stupid.”
“People forget the successes that we’ve seen with these vaccines. Before we had the polio vaccine, there were almost 60,000 cases in the U.S. each year, and almost 14,000 cases of paralytic polio,” Huang told CBS News. “Parents waited fearfully every summer to see if it would strike.”
He noted it was similar for measles, which caused 48,000 hospitalizations and 450 to 500 deaths each year before the vaccine was introduced in the 1960s. Earlier this year, lower vaccination rates in some communities enabled the spread of the biggest measles outbreak in decades.
“It’s so important to get those vaccination levels up so it protects everyone,” Huang said.
There’s no definitive answer as to how many injuries and deaths can be attributed to vaccines each year, but autism has sky-rocketed from very rare to 1 in 32, coinciding with the rate childhood vaccines have increased over the years. Chronic ailments such as asthma, allergies, seizures, eczema, and cancer are also on the rise. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that about 3,000 infants die from a sudden unexpected infant deaths each year. An analysis of the VAERS database from 1990–2019 shows that 75 percent of the babies died within a week of vaccination.
DeSantis announced the creation of a state-level “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) commission similar to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s federal effort. He said the commission will be chaired by Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and Florida first lady Casey DeSantis.
He said the MAHA commission will promote informed consent in medical matters, safe and nutritious food, and parental rights regarding medical decisions involving their children. The panel will also work to abolish “medical orthodoxy that is not supported by the data,” DeSantis said.
“We’re getting government out of the way, getting government out of your lives,” said Collins.
The governor explained that the commission’s work will help inform a large “medical freedom package” that will be introduced in the Legislature’s next session.
“There will be a broad package,” the governor said.
Meanwhile, the Democrat governors of Washington, Oregon and California announced Wednesday that they’ve created an alliance to ensure their residents “remain protected by science, not politics.”
The Blue State alliance will coordinate on authoritarian public health and vaccine policies to counter what they called the Trump administration’s politicized and anti-science approach to public health decisions.
In a joint statement, Gov. Bob Ferguson (D-Wash.), Gov. Tina Kotek (D-Ore.) and Gov. Gavin Newsom D-Calif.) said they planned to align immunization plans based on recommendations from “respected” national medical authorities.