President Donald Trump showed support for vaccines on Friday, following Florida’s move to eliminate vaccine mandates in schools and shake-ups at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
During an Oval Office signing on Friday, Trump was asked about Florida’s efforts to become the first state in the country without school vaccine mandates.
“I think we have to be very careful. You have some vaccines that are so amazing,” Trump said, citing the polio and COVID-19 vaccines. “You have some vaccines that are so incredible. I think you have to be very careful when you say some people don’t have to be vaccinated.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced Wednesday the move to eliminate vaccine mandates in schools.
“Every last one is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo said about vaccines at the press conference. “Who am I, or anyone else, to tell you what you should put in your body? Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body? I don’t have that right.”
Ladapo said his department will repeal the mandates that are under his authority, and that the state Legislature will have to handle the rest.
Similar to school districts across the country, Florida currently requires students to have vaccines for communicable diseases, including polio, measles, and chickenpox, among others, according to the state’s health department.
Currently, all U.S. states and Washington, D.C. require vaccinations for children to attend school.
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Trump said he heard about Florida’s plan on Thursday, adding that it’s “a very tough stance.”
“Look, you have vaccines that work. They just pure and simple work,” the president said.
“They’re not controversial at all, and I think those vaccines should be used, otherwise some people are going to catch it, and they endanger other people,” Trump said. “When you don’t have controversy at all, I think people should take them.”
When Trump launched Operation Warp Speed in 2020 to fast-track development of the COVID-19 vaccine, he called the vaccine a “medical miracle” that could “save millions of lives.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed the COVID-19 vaccine from the federal government’s list of recommended vaccines for healthy children in May.
Ladapo said the COVID-19 vaccine is “poison.”
Earlier this year, Trump signed a presidential action that eliminates federal funding for COVID-19 vaccine mandates in schools, arguing there is “incredibly low risk of serious COVID-19 illness for children and young adults.”
Trump’s comments come after Kennedy testified before Congress for three hours on Thursday.
Republicans and Democrats scrutinized Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, on the recent firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez and Kennedy’s stance on the COVID-19 vaccine.
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Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), who are both doctors, shared that their physician colleagues have been contacting them with confusion and concerns about the new vaccine policies and recommendations.
“I’ve been hearing from many of my medical colleagues, people I know from medical school residency and when I practice medicine in Wyoming, and their real concerns that safe, proven vaccines like measles and hepatitis B and others could be in jeopardy, and that would put Americans at risk and reverse decades of progress,” Barrasso said.