Florida is moving to eliminate all vaccine mandates statewide, including those required for children attending public schools, state officials announced Wednesday.
The controversial move, which would make Florida the first state in the nation to end a practice credited with limiting the spread of infectious diseases, was announced by Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo during a press conference in Valrico, near Tampa, on Wednesday.
“The Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida — all of them!” Ladapo said, drawing lengthy applause and loud cheers from the crowd.
“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” he said, apparently contradicting a 2024 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that found routine vaccines for children born between 1994 and 2023 saved more than 1.1 million lives and $540 billion in health care costs.
“Who am I as a man standing here to tell you what you should put in your body? Who am I to tell you what your child should put in your body?” Ladapo said. “Your body is a gift from God.”
Ladapo did not provide details on how the state would end the longstanding practice, saying only that state lawmakers “are going to have to make decisions.”
Florida’s top health official, a Harvard-trained doctor appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021, is known for his fierce opposition to COVID-19 mitigation measures, including lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccines.
Ladapo has also been accused of manipulating findings in a 2022 COVID vaccine safety study when issuing a recommendation against certain types of vaccines for young men.
In an opinion piece for the Daily News published in October 2020, he wrote that evidence of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19 “is more positive than many in the medical community admit.”
During Wednesday’s news conference, DeSantis also announced a “Make America Healthy Again” commission in Florida to be led by his wife, Casey DeSantis, and modeled after similar initiatives promoted at the federal level by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
With News Wire Services
