The state of Florida is planning to end vaccine mandates. Not just covid vaccine mandates, but all of them. That is what Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo and Governor Ron DeSantis announced in a press conference this past Wednesday.
“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo said. “Who am I, as a government or anyone else, to tell you what you should put in your body? I don’t have that right.”
I could not agree more strongly. Indeed, requiring people to get a medical procedure demonstrates complete and utter disdain. And indeed, no one has the right to tell another person what they should put in their body.
This is absolutely fantastic news for kids in Florida, because it means that the government will no longer force them to undergo medical procedures in order to attend school. But despite the fact that this is objectively fantastic news, some people (unsurprisingly but wrongly) are unhappy about it.
On the Fox News social media post regarding this news story, the most common reactions were “like” and “love,” but the third most common was the “angry” emoji. Yes, nearly a thousand people are apparently angry about kids not being forced to undergo medical procedures against their will. How a lack of forcing people to undergo medical procedures against their will could possibly make someone angry is incomprehensible and demonstrates the complete moral bankruptcy of such a person.
On a somewhat similar note, Fox News’s medical analyst, Dr. Marc Siegel, claimed that “school mandates make sense” because they are the only way to achieve herd immunity, in which “those who can’t get that vaccine because they are immunocompromised are protected by those around them.” This way of thinking is wrong because it focuses solely on the consequences of policies, rather than the intrinsic morality (or lack thereof) of the policies themselves. Perhaps vaccine mandates are the only way to achieve herd immunity, but this is irrelevant to the question of whether mandates should exist. Vaccine mandates violate people’s rights, and therefore are wrong, and need to be abolished, regardless of any positive results that they achieve. Violating people’s rights is never okay. Similarly, perhaps vaccine mandates enable people who can’t get the vaccine to be protected by those around them, but being protected from disease by the people around you is not a right that anyone has. Declining medical intervention, on the other hand, is a right that people have, and vaccine mandates violate it. The desire for immunocompromised people to be protected by those around them does not supersede the right to decline medical intervention.
Dr. Susan Kressley, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that abolishing vaccine mandates “will put children in Florida public schools at higher risk for getting sick.” This is another example of a fact that may very well be true, but is irrelevant to the question of whether or not we should have vaccine mandates. Yes, abolishing vaccine mandates may increase children’s risk of getting sick, but you know what else it will do? Stop children from being forced to undergo medical procedures against their will. And given that forcing people to undergo medical procedures violates their rights, it’s kind of important to stop doing that. Similarly to what I stated above, the desire to reduce kids’ risk of getting sick does not supersede kids’ right to decline medical intervention.
In conclusion, the decision of the state of Florida to end vaccine mandates is excellent news because it means that children’s fundamental rights will actually be respected. And there’s nothing more important than that.