Florida is moving to “finish all vaccine mandates” in the state, Florida surgeon general Joseph Ladapo announced at a press conference on Wednesday.
Ladapo said that the Florida Health Department would work with Governor Ron Desantis’s office to end all mandates in state law, in the Grace Christian School event in Valrico, located east of Tampa.
“The last one is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo said about vaccine mandates.
Currently, Florida It requires children Between the kindergarten and 12th grade to receive four or five doses of the Cold Diphtheria-Tetanus (DTAP) four or five doses of the polyomyelitis vaccine; Two doses of the measles, paper and rubella (MMR) vaccine; A dose of the vaccine against the tetanos-imifteria-acellular (TDAP) and at least two doses of the chickenpox vaccine unless the child has had the disease in the past.
However, Florida allows parents to request exemptions based on religious reasons, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The 50 states and Washington, DC, currently have vaccine mandates so that children can attend school.
The General Surgeon of Florida Joseph Ladapo and Governor Ron Desantis at a press conference at West Palm Beach, Florida, on January 6, 2022.
Joe Cavaretta/Sun Sentinel/Tribune news service through Getty images, files
Ladapo said that an argument that health professionals have done in favor of vaccination is that people get vaccinated to help protect those who cannot receive an opportunity.
The general surgeon said that it is not a “sincere” argument and said: “There is no ethical basis for that to be used as a reason, really a force to eliminate its ability to choose what you put in your body and what you as a father puts in your child’s body.”
Dr. Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former interim director of the CDC, described the announcement as “scary.”
“As a pediatrician, and as a father, he is absolutely scary, the idea that children could go to school and not get vaccinated,” Besser told ABC News. “That puts them at risk and others around them that can have underlying medical conditions. That is not the United States. In the United States, there are things we do to be part of a community.”
Desantis said that some of the vaccine mandates would be removed immediately, while others would require legislative intervention.
In the last 50 years, vaccines have saved approximately 154 million lives, according to a 2024 study led by the World Health Organizations. Of those lives, around 101 million were those of babies.
The study also found that the measles vaccine had the most significant impact on the reduction of babies babies, which represents 60% of the saved lives due to vaccination.
Ladapo has criticized Covid-19 RNM vaccines in the past. In March, Ladapo announced that Florida would become the first state to officially advise against the vaccination of healthy children for COVID-19. Florida was also the only state that did not reserve any COVID-19 vaccine for young children for the 2022-23 season.
In December 2023, Ladapo He sent a letter to the centers for the control and prevention of diseases and the administration of food and medicines that question the safety evaluations of the PFIZER and modern COVID-19 MRNA vaccines.
Despite a answer From the FDA declaring that the agency was “safe” in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, Ladapo asked to stop in its use a few weeks later.
During the press conference, Ladapo referred to COVID-19 vaccines as “poison.”
A Commonwealth Fund AnalysisA nonprofit organization that investigates medical care problems, found that from December 2020 to November 2022, the COVID-19 vaccination program in the United States prevented more than 18.5 million additional hospitalizations and 3.2 million additional deaths.
Besser said that it expects other states to follow Florida’s example and that there will be “a mosaic throughout America of states that require vaccines as they currently do, and the states that do so exclusively for the choice of parents.”
The Ladapo movement occurs when three states announced that they will form a group to offer their own consistent vaccines guidelines, backed by evidence and informed by the main national medical groups.
The new group, called West Coast Health Alliance, is formed by California, Oregon and the state of Washington. The governors of the states said in a joint statement that they felt that the need provided their residents consistent with an inconsistent federal guide and an erosion of confidence in federal health agencies.
ABC News’ Youri Benadjaoud, Sony Salzman and Selina Wang contributed to this report.
