Some issues have been long and fairly debated:
Who should pay the most in taxes? Is the death penalty a good idea? Is it smarter to rent or buy?
But throughout the course of human history, there has been only one sane answer to this question: Should we help polio and rubella make a comeback?
The answer — for anyone who doesn’t like the idea of children covered in rashes or losing the ability to use their legs — has always been no.
Until now in Florida anyway.
Bucking generations of success and overwhelming agreement among medical professionals, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his conspiracy-touting surgeon general are choosing feelings over facts and opinions over evidence in pushing to end vaccine requirements for kids entering school.
They say this is about “freedom” — the freedom for their kids to give your kid the mumps.
Let’s be clear: This is not one of those debates with a “lot of smart people on both sides.” The medical community is united.
In response to the governor’s plan, the American Medical Society responded: “This unprecedented rollback would undermine decades of public health progress and place children and communities at increased risk for diseases such as measles, mumps, polio, and chickenpox resulting in serious illness, disability, and even death.”
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, a guy who was hanging out with a group of fringe doctors who warned of “demon sperm” before DeSantis brought him here, actually compared vaccine requirements to slavery, saying: “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”
This forced Politifact to spend time vetting that claim before concluding that, no, vaccine mandates aren’t like human enslavement for many reasons, including the fact that “Florida has exemptions from vaccine participation” while “Enslaved people had no exemptions.”
This is life in an idiocracy where some people want to “own the libs” by bringing back diphtheria.
Because nothing says “pro life” like subjecting people to a deadly disease.
Maybe this is all fun and games to some of those in the politisphere. But for people who’ve actually spent their lives provding medical treatment, it’s maddening.
As soon as he heard Ladapo compare vaccines to slavery, a friend of mine — Dr. Don Diebel, a respected OBGYN who delivered about 5,000 babies in Central Florida over the course of his career — texted me in shock, saying: “Disparaging an area of medicine that is one of the great success stories of our civilization is beyond belief.”
Sacha Stone says humanity is controlled by the Illuminati and a “Babylonian blood-cult.”
He markets a “5GBioShield” to protect humans from the threat described in his ‘documentary’ – “5G Apocalypse: The Extinction Event.”
Here’s his recent guest.https://t.co/F9U3gVSO49 pic.twitter.com/npEkniRAWQ
— Scott Maxwell (@Scott_Maxwell) September 19, 2023
If you don’t understand what vaccines and vaccine requirements have accomplished, you’re probably enjoying the benefits of what’s known as “survivorship bias.” That’s when you don’t consider something a threat because it never threatened you personally.
See, generations of Americans, including our Greatest, didn’t throw tantrums or spread conspiracies when cures to deadly diseases were discovered. They did their part and got their shots to help put an end to diseases that could cripple and kill.
That means younger generations that would rather hear Joe Rogan question science than actually read a scientific or medical journal for themselves have the luxury of considering things like polio and rubella as simply theoretical threats.
Well, those people should take a look at images of rash-covered children in other parts of the world who’ve actually contracted measles. And at decades-old photos of children crippled by polio.
The nation’s first large-scale polio epidemic broke out in New York City in 1916. In total nationwide, 27,000 cases were contracted and 6,000 people died.
A typical response from anti-vaxxers — that you’re still free to get your kids vaccinated, so you needn’t worry about anyone else — demonstrates both ignorance about how vaccines work and a lack of concern for vulnerable populations.
Some Immunocompromised people can’t take vaccines. Yet most of us still don’t feel entitled to give them a crippling communicable disease in the name of “freedom.”
Plus, the only way diseases like polio were all but eradicated generations ago was because the vast majority of the population got vaccinated.
If you still don’t understand the science, think of guns. Yes, everyone else can agree not to fire bullets straight up into the air. But if you continue to do so, people are still going to get hurt
Don’t take it from me. Take it from Dr. Ladapo’s own employer, the University of Florida, which has long supported vaccine mandates, saying: “The most effective way to preserve and protect our campus from outbreaks of these infections is by establishing an immunization requirement.”
“The most effective way to preserve and protect our campus from outbreaks of these infections is by establishing an immunization requirement.”
This is from Ladapo’s employer.
Anyone wanna take odds on how long it takes before this page is scrubbed?https://t.co/sLLiTKzXVs https://t.co/ncHnTrFlKE pic.twitter.com/cKmA0LkMG9
— Scott Maxwell (@Scott_Maxwell) September 4, 2025
How long before that website is scrubbed?
Are there some people who have valid reasons for not wanting their kids vaccinated? Yes. Especially the aforementioned immunocompromised. Some also have religious reasons. That’s why — and this is important — Florida already allows parents to seek exemptions with relative ease. More than 11,000 Floridians did so just last year. All those supposedly enslaved people.
“We had two deaths in the last year in unvaccinated children due to measles, the first measles deaths in 20 years,” said Dr. Michael J Muszynski, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases and professor at Florida State University’s College of Medicine. “And we have already had more whooping cough deaths in the last year than in the last decade combined. So the worst is yet to come.”
The reality is that some of the people screaming the loudest don’t really care about the science, the people they might hurt or the responsibilities that accompany rights. As former Supreme Court justice Oliver Holmes said pf freedom: “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”
For generations, society understood that and embraced the idea of collective good as a shared ethos.
But we now live in an increasingly “me first” era where a growing population loves to play the role of oppressed victim.
Still, most Americans draw the lines at doing things that would senselessly kill each others. If you’re among them, consider letting your legislators know. (Contact info at www.leg.state.fl.us)
DeSantis and Ladapo can’t end vaccine mandates on their own. And early rumblings suggest legislators from both parties understand what generations before them did to keep them and their children safe. And they aren’t interested in undoing that for generations to come.
Facing DeSantis, Ladapo vaccine proposal, Florida lawmakers are lukewarm
