Patient receiving a vaccination – Courtesy: Shutterstock – Image by Prostock-studio
Panama City Beach, FL. — On Wednesday, the Florida Department of Health took a step toward doing away with four childhood vaccination requirements. The department can do this without the governor’s or the Legislature’s approval.
The idea is the first concrete step in Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo’s plan to do away with all vaccine restrictions in the state. It was discussed at a meeting held in Panama City Beach on Friday.
Polio, measles, and tetanus immunizations are mandated by a Florida statute. The Legislature must act to alter such requirements.
However, the Department of Health has long mandated four more vaccinations for school attendance: Hepatitis B, Pneumococcal conjugate, or PCV15/20; Varicella, or chickenpox; and Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib.
A Department of Health panel heard conflicting public reactions to the state’s proposal to repeal those four vaccination requirements at its meeting on Friday.
Supporters of the state’s proposal said they didn’t trust big pharmaceutical corporations, accusing them of being dishonest in their research or promoting vaccines for financial gain.
Republican Florida House candidate Preston Judd stated that pharmaceutical corporations ought to provide vaccines at no cost if they were so crucial.
Would medical facilities be forcing vaccinations on us? Would they be using our kids as pincushions? Judd remarked. “Avoid the influence of Big Pharma and think honestly and critically.”
However, the tribunal also heard testimony from a number of physicians who claimed that overturning the regulations would reverse advances in public health that have saved and safeguarded the lives of children.
According to a number of public comments, they were old enough to remember how illnesses frightened kids and families before vaccines were widely available.
Dr. Paul Robinson, a physician with forty years of expertise, said he can vividly imagine a two-year-old who had a Hib infection that left him half paralyzed. However, he claimed that he stopped seeing cases following the introduction of the Hib vaccine in the late 1980s.
Robinson, a physician in Tallahassee, stated, “Let me be clear.” One of the most serious childhood diseases I have ever encountered was eradicated by vaccines. This is about public health and safeguarding children who cannot receive vaccinations, not about parental choice.
Speaking at the conference on Friday, Brooklyn resident Jamie Schanbaum urged the panelists to be patient with her because it was hard for her amputated fingers to turn through notes.
After contracting meningitis while attending college in 2008, Schanbaum claimed to understand “what it’s like to survive a preventable disease.” She claimed to have watched her limbs “rotting and decaying before my eyes” throughout her seven months in the hospital.
“This is what it’s actually like to survive something like this,” she remarked.
According to experts, the state-reviewed vaccines have contributed to almost completely stopping the spread of potentially fatal or severely crippling diseases.
According to Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a public health expert at Johns Hopkins University, pneumococcal or Hib infections can cause meningitis, which can kill children or cause severe brain damage and developmental disabilities.
However, Sharfstein said that those cases had been virtually “wiped out” since the introduction of immunizations.
Sharfstein, who did not attend the conference, stated, “None of these are pathogens that have been eradicated from the face of the earth.” “These are everywhere. It involves more than just playing with matches; it involves starting a fire that will hurt kids.
Expanding the state’s vaccine opt-out form was another suggestion made by the state Department of Health on Friday.
For religious reasons, parents can already exempt their kids from vaccination obligations. A parent could use their personal beliefs as justification for exempting their child under the proposed rule.
However, several speakers argued that vaccines shouldn’t be mandated at all and that expanding the exemption wasn’t sufficient.
Former RN Laura Hartman told the panel that she became a minister in 2022 to help families that sought vaccine exemptions for religious grounds but were struggling to obtain them for other reasons.
Childhood vaccination rates in Florida are already declining. Approximately 89% of kindergarteners were inoculated this year, down from over 94% in 2020.
When vaccinations are required, vaccination rates rise, according to Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Vaccine Education Center. The vaccination rate skyrocketed after California and New York restricted the permissible vaccine exemptions.
In an interview with the Times/Herald, Offit stated that vaccine confidence has declined and that “in the midst of all this, our Florida surgeon general has decided we should make vaccines even less used.”
“I find it difficult to comprehend his way of thinking,” he remarked.
The meeting was not attended by Ladapo.
The four vaccines could not be covered by the state rule by spring since it can take three to four months for the Department of Health’s final rule to be implemented after it is filed.
People can provide feedback by sending an email to [email protected], according to Emma Spencer, a division director with the Department of Health. According to Spencer, the department is urging people to send in their ideas by December 22.
In September, Ladapo declared his intention to overturn all state vaccination laws, comparing them to “slavery” and vowing to abolish “every last one of them.”
Public health specialists across the United States have strongly rejected his plan, arguing that it could result in a significant increase in avoidable sickness.
President Donald Trump has also expressed some reluctance, stating in September that “you have vaccines that work, they just pure and simple work.”
“People should accept it when there is no controversy at all,” Trump stated.
Make sure you are staying up-to-date with the latest and most important Florida news with Florida Insider. Whether you are interested in business, education, government, history, sports, real estate, nature, weather, or travel: we have something for everyone. Follow along for the best stories in the Sunshine State.
Chris began his writing as a hobby while attending Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida. Today he and his wife live in the Orlando area with their three children and dog.
