Florida’s plan to remove all vaccine mandates will not lead to infectious disease outbreaks, the state’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, has said.
Ladapo announced on Sept. 3 the plan to remove the mandates. In a new interview, he said the effort to remove mandates is motivated by a desire to restore bodily sovereignty, but he rejected critics’ claims that it will reduce vaccination rates.
“I think that you can have both,” Ladapo told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” in an interview that will be released on Oct. 4. “I think you can have a moral environment for providing vaccinations, and you can have a high uptake of vaccines that are effective at preventing a transmission to other people.”
Ladapo said at the briefing announcing the plan that mandates are wrong.
“Who am I, as a government, or anyone else, or who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body? Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” he said at the time. “I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God. What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your God.”
The first stage of the plan was initiated by the Florida Department of Health on Sept. 3 and is expected to take 90 days. It involves rescinding requirements for vaccines that were promulgated by the department. Those requirements are for vaccines against pneumococcal disease, hepatitis B, varicella, and Haemophilus influenzae type B.
Florida also requires children attending day care, preschool, and primary school to receive other shots, including vaccines against polio and measles. Changing those requirements requires updating the law.
Legislators are slated to meet in January 2026. Ladapo and other officials are working with them to draft legislative language, the surgeon general said.
Asked if he thinks the law will pass, Ladapo told EpochTV, “I’m a dreamer. That’s the truth. I think that it’s going to pass.”
Responding to the announcement, critics said Florida’s plan would cause harm.
“This unprecedented rollback would undermine decades of public health progress and place children and communities at increased risk for diseases such as measles, mumps, polio, and chickenpox resulting in serious illness, disability, and even death,” Dr. Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, trustee of the American Medical Association, said in a Sept. 3 statement.
Dr. Rana Alissa, president of the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in a Sept. 5 statement, “The ripple effect … would affect all of us.”
“Infants, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems would be at much higher risk. Our state’s theme parks, grocery stores, movie theaters, sports arenas, and the waiting rooms in doctor’s offices and hospitals will all become places for contagious disease to spread easily—making every outing or gathering a risk,” Alissa said.
Every state except Idaho has vaccine mandates for schoolchildren, with exemptions allowed on medical and/or religious grounds. Florida had about 89 percent coverage of required vaccines during the most recent school year, according to federal data.
Ladapo said in the new interview that he distinguishes between vaccines that do not prevent transmission, such as pneumococcal shots, and those that do, such as the measles vaccine. He said he’s heard from people who are afraid that rolling back mandates will lead to outbreaks.
Ladapo thinks vaccination rates will remain high, pointing to high rates in countries that do not have mandates, such as Sweden and Norway, and said he trusts parents to make the right decision for their child.
“There are many other countries that don’t have mandates, and that fear also belies a lack of confidence in the ability of parents to make good decisions,” he said.
“Some of the opposition we’ve received, it’s left me wondering whether people just feel that parents are incapable of making good health decisions for their children. I don’t believe that. I believe that parents provided with good information can make good decisions for the health and the benefit of their children.”