Anti-vax Sentiment May Infect Legislature in Florida
In Singapore, the Childhood Immunisation Schedule mandates that all infants be vaccinated against measles and diphtheria from birth till the age of 12 months. This compulsory vaccination scheme serves many purposes. It keeps vaccinated children healthy, while protecting immunocompromised people by lowering contagion risks to vanishingly low rates. Yet, Florida’s Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo, has promised to end mandatory vaccination schemes in his state, even those for school children.
His rhetoric behind the move was to give parents a “choice” in the matter, likening the mandates to “slavery”. Florida’s health department claims that the mandates for vaccines against hepatitis B, chickenpox, Hib influenza and pneumococcal diseases will be lifted in schools in 90 days. Any changes to other vaccine mandates will only be possible if the Florida Administrative Code is changed through altering the state legislature, though it is certainly not out of the question.
A total lift of school vaccination mandates would result in outbreaks of preventable diseases in schools, endangering immunocompromised children who are especially vulnerable. Medical experts are also concerned with overcrowding in hospitals, in which ward space could be used for patients in need of more serious care. With a wave of anti-vax sentiment sweeping across Florida, caused in part by religious exemptions, outbreaks of such diseases have increased to alarming levels. However, Ladapo has said that his department has not yet analysed data about how the change in policy could affect outbreaks of preventable diseases, asserting that the issue remains about allowing parents the choice to vaccinate their children. His statement has drawn ire for his myopic view on policy.
This push against vaccines is no surprise, seeing as the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy, has been championing his so-called “Make America Healthy Again” movement. The movement is pointedly anti-vax in nature, based on unsubstantiated and untrue claims about autism being caused by vaccinations. Kennedy has fired hundreds of health officials, as well as replacing an independent vaccine advisory committee with vaccine sceptics.
These changes have caused mass uncertainty in the public. According to Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, the reaction of an uncertain populace is inaction. America continues to be divided over an issue that other countries have long since found a solution for, and medical experts warn that this is going to cost lives.