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Taking what may be its most radical step yet to cement its reputation as the “free state of Florida,” Florida officials plan to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren.
This will mean, not just the mRNA vaccines used in the COVID shots, but all vaccines will cease to be required for entry into Florida’s public schools.
“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, and early sceptic of the COVID vaccines, said to applause during an event on Wednesday in Valrico, Florida. “Your body is a gift from God.”
He added that the administration would be “working to end” all vaccine mandates. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Dr. Ladapo said.
For decades, the state has required numerous vaccines for kids attending school, including shots that protect against Measles-mumps-rubella, polio, chickenpox and Hepatitis B, reported the Miami Herald.
It is unclear what the process of undoing the state’s longstanding vaccine mandates might look like. Dr. Ladapo said the Florida Department of Health, the agency he oversees, would do away with rules promulgating vaccine mandates. State lawmakers “are going to have to make decisions” as well, Dr. Ladapo said, according to reporting by the New York Times. “That’s how this becomes possible.”
In 2021 the Florida legislature passed a bill to ban schools from requiring students to provide proof of a COVID-19 vaccination, despite the fact that the state already required students to receive a long list of shots.
Speaking to the Miami Herald in 2021, state representative Tom Leek, a Republican explained that coronavirus vaccines "don't have the same proven history of the same vaccines we require our school children to get. We must recognize that vaccine hesitancy is real and understandable."
Earlier this year West Virginia Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order on his first day in office that enabled families to receive religious exemptions from required school vaccinations.
“That’s a huge step,” said Brian Festa, co-founder of the law firm We The Patriots USA, which works on vaccination-related cases throughout the country. “That’s a state that never had a religious exemption.”
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, twenty-nine states and Washington D.C. allow exemptions for people who have religious objections to immunizations. Fourteen states allow exemptions for either religious or personal reasons. Two states, Louisiana and Minnesota, do not specify whether the non-medical exemption must be for religious or personal reasons. Five states do not allow any type of non-medical exemption.
Is ending all vaccine mandates, even those for childhood diseases nearly eradicated in the United States a good idea or not? Take today’s poll to register your opinion.
- Donald Trump
- Governor Ron DeSantis
- vaccine mandates
- COVID pandemic
- mask mandates
- school vaccines
- public schools
- Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, Florida surgeon general
- Florida Department of Health
- Florida Legislature
- vaccine hesitancy
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