Florida’s leaders are considering a reckless proposal to eliminate long-standing vaccine requirements for schools, daycares, college housing and even nursing homes. If adopted, Florida would be the first state in the nation to abandon these protections — protections that have kept families safe for generations.
We’re not talking about experimental treatments or newly developed medicines. We’re talking about the basic vaccines that generations of Floridians have relied on to stay alive and healthy. Polio. Measles. Mumps. Chickenpox. Hepatitis. Tetanus. Whooping cough. These vaccines make up the bedrock of modern medicine. Together, they have saved millions of lives, spared countless families heartbreak, and turned once-deadly childhood diseases into distant memories.
And to be clear — no one is being forced to get these vaccines. The law simply says that if you want to attend public school, live in a college dorm, or work in a nursing home, you need to meet basic immunization requirements. It’s a common-sense safeguard to protect everyone in close-contact settings, not a blanket mandate on private life.
Now, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo want to rip those protections away. They say it’s about “parental choice.” But what about the rights of parents who don’t want their child exposed to measles at school, chickenpox in daycare, or meningitis in a college dorm? What about seniors in nursing homes who can’t afford to be in the same room with unvaccinated visitors?
Even more disturbing, Ladapo has publicly claimed that vaccine mandates are “immoral” and compared them to slavery. That is not just outrageous, it is a dangerous distortion of both science and history. Vaccines are not chains of oppression — they are shields of protection that have freed millions from the threat of disease.
Public health is about more than one person’s choice — it’s about the safety of entire communities. Without vaccine requirements, we lose herd immunity, which is what keeps infants, cancer patients and people with weakened immune systems safe. We open the door to outbreaks that we thought were long behind us.
Florida’s leaders may rail against science, but what’s truly immoral is exposing 4.5 million children, 7 million seniors, and nearly 150 million tourists to preventable diseases — all for political theater.
This isn’t just a health issue. It’s an economic one. Tourism is the lifeblood of Florida’s economy. Visitors don’t come to a state where measles or polio might break out. Businesses won’t thrive in communities where illness keeps workers home. Rolling back decades of progress threatens not only our families’ health but also our livelihoods.
For more than a century, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld vaccine requirements as constitutional. All 50 states have them. It’s one of the rare places where science and law have always been in agreement. Florida would stand alone in rejecting this consensus — and in putting politics ahead of people’s lives.
The truth is simple: Vaccines work. They are safe, effective and lifesaving. To undo that protection would be reckless and dangerous.
As a mother and grandmother, I cannot imagine standing by while preventable diseases return to our schools, our playgrounds and our nursing homes. The thought of children once again suffering from measles, or seniors in nursing homes contracting whooping cough because someone wasn’t vaccinated, is not abstract to me — it’s personal. Families like mine, and families like yours, would be left more vulnerable.
Florida has always been a place where families come to live, learn and thrive. Let’s keep it that way.
