Florida’s Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, plans to remove the state’s vaccine mandates —a move that will lead to more infections, hospitalizations, and likely even some deaths of young children in the state.

Lifting the mandate would almost certainly lead to lower vaccine uptake in Florida, and it will have implications for Americans more widely. Florida would be the first state to formally lift the vaccine mandate and may inspire other states to drop the requirement for children to get vaccinated before being able to attend school. It will also worsen the declining confidence in vaccines that a growing number of Americans are experiencing, influenced by the vaccine-skeptical rhetoric of Ladapo, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and other officials.

The

See Full Page