{"id":117089,"date":"2025-09-03T16:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T16:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/117089\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T16:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T16:10:08","slug":"desantis-to-make-florida-first-state-to-end-all-vaccine-mandates-for-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/117089\/","title":{"rendered":"DeSantis to make Florida first state to end all vaccine mandates for schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

Under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis<\/a>, Florida<\/a> will be the first state to end all vaccine<\/a> mandates, the state\u2019s surgeon general announced on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Equating vaccine mandates to \u201cslavery,\u201d Joseph Ladapo, the state\u2019s surgeon general, said the Florida Department of Health and the governor\u2019s office would work together to end every single vaccine mandate.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,\u201d Ladapo said.<\/p>\n

For decades, Florida has required a set of vaccines for children attending public or private school from Kindergarten to 12th grade \u2013 unless they fill out a form invoking a religious or medical exemption. Those vaccines are mandated to prevent life-threatening illnesses such as measles, mumps, and rubella, polio, tetanus, Hepatitis B, and many more.<\/p>\n

But without state requirements for children, vaccination rates against those preventable diseases, and others, could drop and have devastating consequences.<\/p>\n

\"Florida\u2019s<\/p>\n

Florida\u2019s surgeon general said the state would move to remove all vaccine mandates, claiming they are \u2018wrong\u2019 and akin to \u2018slavery\u2019 (Getty)<\/p>\n

Time and time again, areas of the country with low childhood vaccination rates have seen fast-moving and lethal outbreaks of diseases, such as measles.<\/p>\n

This past year, more than 760 people were infected with measles in West Texas, where kindergarten vaccination rates are below the levels needed<\/a> for herd immunity. Two unvaccinated children, aged six and eight, died as a result.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho am I as a government or anyone else, or as a man standing here now, to tell you what you should put in your body? Who am I to tell you what your child should be put in their body? I don\u2019t have that right,\u201d Ladapo said to a round of applause from the audience.<\/p>\n

Every single U.S. state requires vaccines for school-aged children to prevent the spread of deadly diseases.<\/p>\n

Multiple studies<\/a>, spanning back decades, have shown that state laws requiring childhood vaccines have \u201cremarkable\u201d impact on lowering the spread of preventable diseases, \u201cparticularly in school-aged populations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates<\/a> that childhood vaccines save more than four million lives every year.<\/p>\n

Immunization rates among Florida kindergartners have dropped significantly over the last five years, according to the Florida Department of Health<\/a>. In 2020, 93.5 percent of kindergarteners were vaccinated. In 2024, that number has dropped to 89.8<\/p>\n

In 2018, when the state\u2019s kindergarten vaccination rate dropped to 91.1 percent, the state saw an uptick in measles cases, with at least 15 reported.<\/p>\n

his is a breaking news story, more follows\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida will be the first state to end all vaccine mandates,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[49,48,6388,65433,84,65434,17142,65436,34355,65438,30409,65437,65435],"class_list":["post-117089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-florida","tag-florida-department-of-health","tag-health","tag-joseph-ladapo","tag-kindergarten","tag-preventable-diseases","tag-ron-desantis","tag-surgeon-general","tag-vaccination-rates","tag-vaccine-mandate","tag-vaccine-mandates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}