Florida Surgeon General Admits He Banned Vaccine Mandates Based on Vibes

Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, admitted on CNN on Sunday that no analysis went into his decision to seek to eliminate all vaccine mandates in the state.Paul Hennessy/SOPA/Sipa/AP

After his announcement this week that he would seek to eliminate “all vaccine mandates,”^[2] Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, made one thing clear: This decision was based on no science, just vibes.

In an interview^[3] on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning, Ladapo told host Jake Tapper that officials did not undertake any analysis to determine how many new cases of  hepatitis A, whooping cough, and chickenpox would arise after the ending of vaccine mandates. “There’s this conflation of the science and sort of, what is the right and wrong thing to do?” Ladapo said, before proceeding to claim that the whooping cough vaccine is ineffective at preventing transmission. (Research has shown^[4] the whooping cough vaccine is safe and effective; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says^[5] the protection they provide “decreases over time.”)

He continued: “This is an issue very clearly of parents’ rights. So do I need to analyze whether it’s appropriate for parents to be able to decide what goes into their children’s bodies?”

In fact, as my colleague Kiera Butler explained^[6] when Ladapo announced his decision this week it is an issue of public health—not “parents’ rights”:

If successful, such a move could have broad implications for workers across state government sectors. Most significantly, it could allow many more unvaccinated children to attend school, putting others at risk of acquiring highly contagious and potentially deadly diseases such as measles and polio.

Under Ladapo’s leadership, Florida’s rates of routine childhood vaccination—shots that protect against catastrophic diseases like polio and tetanus—have already declined^[7]. Today, the immunization rate for kindergartners is 90 percent, the lowest it’s been in a decade^[8], and below the threshold required to prevent the spread of some serious illnesses. The rate of families seeking religious exemptions to school vaccine requirements has increased^[9] over the past few years.

All this is part of why, as Tapper mentioned, experts ranging from Ladapo’s predecessor, Scott Rivkees^[10], to major medical groups including the American Medical Association^[11] and the American Academy of Pediatrics^[12] have voiced their opposition to the plan.

A Washington Post-KFF poll conducted in July also found^[13] that more than 80 percent of Florida parents said public schools should require vaccines for measles and polio, with some health and religious exceptions. A new NBC News poll^[14] out today shows that nearly 80 percent of Americans strongly or somewhat support vaccines. Even President Donald Trump seems skeptical of Ladapo’s decision, telling^[15] reporters in the Oval Office this week: “I think we have to be very careful. We have some vaccines that are so amazing… I think you have to be very careful when you say that some people don’t have to be vaccinated.”

Later in the CNN interview, Ladapo seemed to slightly revise his argument, claiming that officials did not do any projections ahead of killing off vaccine mandates because they already recognized that outbreaks would, in fact, be inevitable: “We don’t need to do any projections. We handle outbreaks all the time. So there’s nothing special that we would need to do. And, secondly, again, there are countries that don’t have vaccine mandates, and the sky isn’t falling over there.”

So, buckle up, Florida. Your surgeon general just admitted that outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease are coming.