56 Comments
User's avatar
Theresa maier's avatar

I support herd immunity over herd mentality. Not one infectious disease doctor supports this change. Those that did stand in support mistakenly think freedom means “you can’t tell me what to do!” Well, I’d like to have our residents free from polio, measles, and all the many diseases prevented by vaccines. For a state where tourism is an economic driver this makes no sense.

Jamie Ross's avatar

It’s so fucking stupid not to vax. When a bunch of their kids die, let’s see what happens.

+ and -'s avatar

And most of the anti-vaxers are also right-to-lifers! Is that hypocrisy or what!

Beth Knoche's avatar

Tell Ladapo & DeSatan to keep their hands off of life saving vaccines, better people than these two can vouch for the effectiveness of vaccines. Personally, I’m vaccinated to the hilt & have had NO negative reactions to any of them. Plus, I stayed healthy all through COVID. Give me a vaccine rather than an illness anyday

Leah Tahiry's avatar

Doing away with vaccines is foolish, just look at the recent outbreaks of measles. Lacking immunity, in early Hawaii, they estimate that 10 to 31% of the population was wiped out. In 1842 King Kamehameha died from a measles outbreak in London.

Robert Ivey's avatar

I'm at a loss to understand the logic of mandatory vaccines being associated with slavery. By this logic the mandatory paying of taxes and obeying traffic laws is also somehow associated with slavery.

As many qualified health professionals have testified, the issue is public health which is the role of mandatory vaccines once heard immunity is reached. Why is the issue of public health being minimized? Some people have somehow gotten the notion that mandatory vaccinations are an infringement on their freedom. It could also be argued that it is an infringement on my freedom if I get sick because others did not get the mandatory vaccine.

Janet Robinson's avatar

As a native of Florida, I received all those vaccines and more, and I'm just fine. If you want your child to attend public school, then your child should be vaccinated. Florida has a large elderly population, and why should they be put in harm's way because anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers think their personal rights trump (see what I did there!) the rights of others?

America and Florida were much nicer places to live when we thought about others and followed the rules.

Julie Leatherbarrow's avatar

That depends on when you were born as new vaccines have been added yearly since 1989.

Janet Robinson's avatar

That is a good point. My generation probably didn't have the scientific knowledge that is available today.

Karl Sidman's avatar

History tends to repeat itself unless we do something to stop it. Removing vaccinations will bring us back to the 1940's and 1950's when polio and measles were abundant. These are both life threatening events that no one wants but that is where we are headed due to the inept politicians and their ideas that no one needs to be vaccinated.

זאב בן גדליא's avatar

I would ask him to name a pediatrician who required 80 shots. Science does not run on hyperbole.

“Now, any pediatrician in this room who tells you that a kid needs 80 shots shouldn’t be trusted to put a band aid on a kid’s knee,” he said.

Demetria Livingston's avatar

That’s exactly what I thought when I read that statement. What nonsense!!

SeaCorey's avatar

I came here for the same reason, I'll bet the rest of that guys position is equally well thought out and supportable...

For people like Julie below - yes - details do matter, including the detail that society is much, much better off with these vaccines than without them!

Barb's avatar

Exactly my thought. 80 vaccines. What a ridiculous comment.

Julie Leatherbarrow's avatar

When’s the last time you checked the childhood recommendations for vaccines? They start at day one with Hep B and there’s a recommendation for every month after that, up to age 18. Some shots are 3in1 so when all of the recommendations are added up, there’s 69 shots all together. That includes boosters.

זאב בן גדליא's avatar

The answer to your question is, just now. You can too: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/imz-schedules/downloads/child/0-18yrs-child-combined-schedule.pdf

Your count, which I cannot verify, is 69, is still a totally different number from 80.

Julie Leatherbarrow's avatar

I wonder if they’ve added the Covid vax along with boosters to get to 80. Still, 69 shots from 24hrs old to age 18 has never been tested in its totality. While individual vaccines go through trials, the impact of the full schedule is being tested in real time. So those who are older (born after 1989) have never had this number of vaccinations.

Peter Burkard's avatar

Very good article in the current Mother Jones on Ladapo and his nutty wife. I strongly recommend reading the whole article. She's a woo woo weirdo from a fundamentalist family who claims to hear the voices of angels and see the energy of other human beings. (Interestingly, she saw a "dark entity" attached to Ladapo's "aura" when they first met.) After Ladapo gained conventional medicine credentials, he was derailed by the wife and one particular "guru" that he went to for help with their struggling marriage. The wife also saw this "guru" and claims that their sessions caused her to levitate and communicate with "divine presences". So all this was just prior to the pandemic, setting he and his wife up to react the way they did. They claimed to have seen "dark energy and nefarious intentions" in normal scientific recommendations. If we can elect a normal governor like David Jolly next year, we can put all this dangerous nonsense behind us.

BARBARA DUNDEE's avatar

This is insanity. Vaccines work!

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Dec 15Edited
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The Rainbow Zee's avatar

Flu vaccines are different...They realy dont know which variant(s) will show up. I have not gotten the flu since getting my annual flu shot. I have multiple chronic illnesses, so this gives me the best shot (lol) at not getting the flu.

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Dec 15
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The Rainbow Zee's avatar

The surgeon general is a twatwaffle. I would not take his advice on my houseplants.

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Dec 17
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The Rainbow Zee's avatar

Nah. When they go low, I limbo in hell's basement. I give no fucks for those nazis.

Alan Sharp's avatar

And these are the idiots that are in charge of our country, the ones that got the injections themselves as a child. Let’s just cause more disease after all it’s free for the Republicans. They don’t have to pay for anything. Then when you get sick, they still not gonna pay for anything. It’s a win-win situation for them.

SeaCorey's avatar

And they'll make money by being invested in our Disease Treatment industry.

If only we had an actual Disease Prevention / Health Care industry...

The AI Architect's avatar

Fantastic reporting on a really consequential policy shift. What stuck with me from Dr. Southwick's testimony was his description of seeing Hib cases before 1985 versus the near elimination after vaccine rollout, that's the kind of real-world data that cuts through alot of the rhetric. I worked briefly with epidemiologists studying vacine hesitancy, and one pattern that kept coming up was how success becomes invisible, people stop seeing the diseases so they start questioning the intervention. The tension between individual autonomy and collective imunity is genuinely hard to navigate, but removing mandates without addressing the underlying trust issues feels like treating symptoms rather than causes.

Sherry Adams's avatar

I can’t believe we’re regressing to believing politicians instead of pediatricians.

Julie Leatherbarrow's avatar

They are not removing anyone’s ability to receive vaccines, they’re just removing the mandates. No government should be involved in the individuals medical care-that care should remain between the individual and their doctor. I am pro choice on all medical decisions and I fully support keeping medical info private. That’s why we gave HIPPA laws.

SeaCorey's avatar

What about the rights of someone to not send their kid to school with other kids who are infected with entirely preventable diseases that we as a species have had under control for decades and decades?

Protecting the freedom of one individual at the potential expense of tens of thousands of other individuals is not protecting freedom at all.

Removing these vaccine requirements is tantamount to dismantling our civilization itself.

Darth Percolator's avatar

… and what about the right of doctors to refuse to accept unvaccinated patients in their practice? Many are treating patients who are immunocompromised, pregnant, or carry genetic susceptibility… why should a physician risk those patients health?

Julie Leatherbarrow's avatar

Why would anyone assume that someone who’s not vaccinated is carrying a disease? You understand, I hope, that people carry bacteria all of the time that may or may not impact others. If vaccines work the way you believe they do, the vaccinated should be protected, should they not?

We also cannot ignore the very real adverse effects that come with ALL vaccines. When you go to the vaccine manufacturers websites, you can read the full label that list most but not all of the side effects. Mandates do not take the individuals medical history into consideration. I, for one, am highly allergic to pharmaceuticals.

SeaCorey's avatar

No assumptions are necessary if one looks at the historical data at how outrageously effective vaccines have been - that reality is undeniable and inescapable.

Just the one comment from one of the doctors, about the vaccine that began being administered in the 80s, going from 20,000 cases to 30, should be enough to address that issue, but since people are brainwashed to pretend that that information isn't as impactful as it is - here we are...

Your reducing the issue to one anecdotal example, yourself, is highly indicative of the perspective you're bringing to this topic.

Ignoring this forest in order to focus on one or two of the trees puts the entire society in danger.

Julie Leatherbarrow's avatar

Because I matter just as much as you do. Maybe not to you, but certainly to my husband, my children, my friends and family. My life matters. And I do not have to risk my life to make somebody else feel comfortable.

SeaCorey's avatar

How dare you put those words in my mouth so that you can try to shove them down my throat?

You should be ashamed of yourself for ranting emotionally rather than acknowledge even one factual, empirical, or objective point.

Virginia D Fish's avatar

You used the words "I" or "my" six times in one paragraph. We are talking about public health here, not the decisions your make in consultation with your doctor. You make your own choices about what you do; these choices impact me as an older person if more than 5% of the population refuses to get vaccinated. I get sick more often now that I am 70 and I hate when family holidays are wrecked by RSV, COVID and flu which can be easily avoided if 95% of us care about others' well-being.

SeaCorey's avatar

And it's conspicuous that you haven't replied directly to my question about the rights of and benefits to the majority outweighing the rights of and the infinessanimal yet non-zero risks to an individual.

SeaCorey's avatar

"infinitesimal".

Gave voice to text a bit more than it could handle with that one...

Julie Leatherbarrow's avatar

My medical concerns are just as important as yours. Who are you to decide for others that their concerns do not matter? What do you know about other people’s medical history? Nothing. Im not the only person who’s allergic to pharmaceuticals. These decisions should be left to the individual and their doctor, not some random stranger on the internet. Have you ever gone to a vaccine manufacturers website and read the list of potential adverse effects?

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Dec 16
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SeaCorey's avatar

That's quite a lot of projection there Brian - if you don't like the looks of hysterics, then stop exhibiting them.

Advertising that you don't understand the science involved here is very different from making an intelligent point.

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Dec 17
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SeaCorey's avatar

You're the one regurgitating the propaganda challenging the decades and decades of established science - you go ahead and explain that. In terms of scientific facts - rather than emotional feelings.

I'm not going to explain how gravity works to you either - all you have to do is look it up (notice I don't say research, research is a much, much bigger endeavor than simply looking something up) somewhere other than foxnews or any other outlet of the right wing echo chamber.

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Dec 17
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Theresa maier's avatar

“You can’t tell me what to do!” Is about as selfish as you can get.

Julie Leatherbarrow's avatar

Selfish is expecting other people to put their lives at risk when you know nothing about their medical history. Have you ever gone to a vaccine manufacturers website and read the potential adverse effects for their products? If not, do so now. You can find the links right on the CDC website.

Julie Leatherbarrow's avatar

Tell me how much you will trust a medical mandate from the Trump regime.

Pro choice is pro choice. Protecting my own health is not selfish, it’s self protection!,

The Rainbow Zee's avatar

Herd immunity is important for people who cannot be vaccinated: cancer, autoimmune diseases, people on immunosuppresants (like transplant recipients).

Julie Leatherbarrow's avatar

Having the government mandate medical procedures is a slippery slope. Look at the Trump regime and tell me that you would trust a medical mandate from these clowns? No way.