Nixed Vaccine Mandate Stirs Anxiety Among Some Floridians

For Elizabeth, Florida’s recent announcement ending vaccine mandates for public school students set off alarm bells and sparked uneasiness about her daughter’s health in the coming year.

That's because Elizabeth's 11-year-old daughter has a rare immunodeficiency disorder that requires plasma infusions twice a week to keep her somewhat protected from disease.

Elizabeth asked The Hill to only use her first name out of concern for her privacy.

Despite the treatments, she told The Hill that her daughter can still miss up to 50 days of school a year, and she's worried that things are only going to get worse now that there's no requirement for parents to vaccinate their children.

"By taking the mandate away, you're telling people that you don't care whether they get the vaccines or not. So why would a parent of a healthy kid want to do it?" she asked. "They need to do it for the other people in their lives who could be in danger."

In September, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced that beginning in January, the state would no longer require children attending public school to receive vaccines against diseases such as chickenpox, hepatitis B, strep, and Hib, a potentially serious bacterial infection that can cause a wide range of diseases.

Elizabeth told the outlet that she would "love" to return to Massachusetts, where she used to live, but extended family members who help her with child care live in Florida's Lake Worth area.

Dr. Sonja Rasmussen, who specializes in infectious diseases and who worked at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 20 years, said that vaccines have such a successful track record in eliminating diseases from measles to polio that "people think we don't need those anymore."

"I'm worried we're going to see this reemergence of these diseases that we haven't seen for decades with the withdrawal of these requirements," Rasmussen told The Hill.

In an interview with CNN shortly after the rollback announcement, Ladapo insisted that the state was "not taking vaccines away from anyone."

"If you want them, you can have as many as you want, and if you don't want them, parents should have the ability and power to decide what goes into their children's body," he said.

University of South Florida epidemiology chair Jason Salemi explained that the exposure risk for people with immunocompromised statuses would increase in the absence of vaccine mandates.

"Once herd immunity dips below [95%], we, of course, worry about a risk of outbreaks," he said.

But just as Ladapo's move has galvanized opposition, it has also rallied supporters who say they are in favor of medical freedom.

Dr. Simone Gold, who serves as president of America's Frontline Doctors, an organization that was against COVID-19 pandemic measures, said she hopes that Florida inspires other states to end their vaccine mandates.

"I think having mandates is the worst thing we can do to Americans. ... The diseases that they're telling you are such boogeyman, terrible things that you need to take a shot to protect [yourself is] not true," she said. "The vast majority of measles cases are no big deal."

"I'm very against the government forcing medical therapeutics on people," Gold added.

Some outbreaks — such as the measles outbreak in Texas earlier this year that led to 100 hospitalizations and two deaths among schoolchildren — have primarily affected the unvaccinated. According to Brown University's School of Public Health, low vaccination rates were the main factor in that outbreak, as only 14% of kindergarteners received the measles vaccine in West Texas.

Rana Alissa, the president of Florida's chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told The Hill that the lack of a vaccine mandate was "unfair" to families like Elizabeth's.

"These are the vulnerable people, they are not going to be able to go to amusement parks, theaters, convenience [or] grocery stores," she said. "[They'll] never know which person who's going to give them a virus that's going to kill them."