COVID vaccines may be hard to find this season. Credit: Adobe Stock
Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, announced at an event on Wednesday that the Department of Health, working with the governor, would “end all vaccine mandates in Florida law.” He also compared vaccine mandates to slavery.
“Your body is a gift from God. What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your God,” Ladapo said.
Ladapo added that being immunocompromised is “part of the experience of life” and is not an ethical basis for mandating vaccines. He also called the COVID-19 vaccine “poison”.
This announcement comes amidst a widespread mistrust of vaccines and the scientists and politicians who support them. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an outspoken critic of vaccinations and has begun taking steps to remove recommendations that often help insurance companies determine which vaccines to cover. The CDC’s vaccine committee, the ACIP, walked back flu vaccine recommendations. The committee’s eight members were appointed by Kennedy in June, shortly after he abruptly removed the standing members.
Ladapo has been active in this space as well. In 2024, he allowed parents to choose whether to send their unvaccinated children to school during a measles outbreak. In 2023, the CDC publicly rebuked misinformation he spread about the COVID vaccine.
Florida has already banned school mandates for the COVID-19 vaccine.
States diverge on vaccine policy
Also on Wednesday, California, Oregon and Washington announced plans to form a “health alliance” that will make recommendations on vaccines for the states’ residents just hours before Florida’s announcement. In a joint statement, Governors Newsom, Kotek and Ferguson said the CDC has become “a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences.”
Through the planned alliance, the three states will ensure that their public health policies are “informed by trusted scientists, clinicians and other public health leaders,” according to the press release.
Northeastern states are considering a similar move. Health officials from Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania met last month to discuss coordinating their states’ vaccine recommendations.
Kennedy to add seven new ACIP members
Staffers at the CDC have been instructed to appoint seven new members to the ACIP. HHS insiders leaked the information to Jeremy Faust, an emergency medicine physician and public health expert who broke the news on his Substack.
The new members are Hillary Blackburn, Joseph Fraiman, John Gaitanis, Evelyn Griffin, Kirk Milhoan, Raymond Pollak and Catherine Stein. None of the new members appear to have direct experience in vaccines or infectious diseases. Several of them have made comments criticizing vaccines.
Fraiman authored a 2022 paper questioning the safety of mRNA vaccines and wrote a public petition calling for their withdrawal. Milhoan is affiliated with the Independent Medical Alliance, a group that is critical of COVID vaccines. Gaitanis has appeared as an expert witness in multiple lawsuits alleging injury from vaccines.
The ACIP’s next meeting is on Sept. 18, giving the new members limited time to prepare. The agenda for this meeting has not been released.
Filed Under: Infectious Disease
