Florida leads crusade for vaccine 'freedom' in schools

“Florida decided there were too many children,” he scoffs in The Atlantic satirist Alexandra Petri. An ironic reaction to the desire of this large Republican state, governed by Ron DeSantis , to eliminate all vaccination requirements, especially in schools.

Announced on Wednesday, September 3, by Joseph Ladapo, a vaccine skeptic who heads the Florida Department of Health, “the initiative has shocked health and education officials across the country,” reports The Washington Post , “but it has energized activists opposed to any vaccine mandate.”

These activists in the “health freedom” movement hope Florida’s announcement will inspire state leaders, the newspaper reports. Right-wing figures like Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former strategist, rejoiced. The president himself, however, distanced himself on Friday: “Some vaccines are so incredible. I think we have to be very careful,” he said.

Yet Donald Trump maintains his confidence in his Secretary of Health, Robert Kennedy Jr., “a leading anti-vaccine activist” who is upending vaccination policy at the federal level – ignoring scientific consensus – and thus giving wings to “red” states.

“Florida is becoming a prime location for this new experiment in the United States against science, which risks taking us back to a time when people, especially children, died from diseases that we know how to prevent,” laments an editorial in the Miami Herald .

Robert Kennedy's offensive, on the other hand, is pushing Democratic states to act to preserve their vaccination policies, observes The Boston Globe , highlighting the "disparate paths" taken by different states across the country.

“In Massachusetts, Governor Maura Healey has effectively mandated anti-Covid shots for everyone over the age of 5, in an effort to thwart potential federal restrictions on Covid booster shots,” explains the state’s leading daily. Indeed, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in August limited booster shots to those over 65 and at-risk individuals. An advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), completely redesigned by Robert Kennedy , may soon adopt the same line.

“On the West Coast, officials in California, Oregon, and Washington state, eager to ensure their residents' access to vaccines, have announced the formation of a 'health alliance' that would define public health policies independent of the federal government,” adds the Boston Globe. A similar alliance could emerge on the East Coast around Massachusetts.