Voters across the country have every right to be skeptical of the medical establishment after the lies and failures of COVID-19. But vaccines have a long and well-established history of maintaining public order in the United States. Florida is making a grave mistake in moving to undo all of the state’s other vaccine mandates.
There is no question that public health officials lost the trust of the public, especially conservatives, during COVID-19. At first, we were told masks did prevent the spread of the virus, then we were told they did not, then we were told they were mandatory, and then we were told they were largely ineffective again.
The Centers for Disease Control’s 6-foot distancing rule was not based on any science whatsoever, yet it was used to shut down the economy for months and schools for even longer. The vaccine itself was purposefully delayed to harm President Donald Trump’s reelection, and then, when it was rolled out, the public was falsely told it was more effective than it was at preventing transmission of the disease. Worst of all, the same public health officials who recommended the banning of church services to prevent the spread of COVID-19 said mass public demonstrations for Black Lives Matter were perfectly fine, again with absolutely no scientific reasoning behind the double standard.
With this recent history in mind, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo’s Wednesday speech announcing his intention not to enforce Florida’s vaccine bans has a ring of truth to it.
“Every last one of [the mandates] is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo said. “Who am I as a government, or anyone else, as a man standing there 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? I don’t have that right.”
Which sounds nice, except that, for over 100 years, the Supreme Court has held that state governments have every right to mandate vaccines to maintain public safety.
Vaccines have been saving American lives since the late 1700s, and the first vaccine mandate was passed to eradicate smallpox in Massachusetts in 1809. Other states quickly joined in after the Massachusetts mandate proved successful at limiting the disease, but there was also political opposition. Many states, including California, Illinois, and West Virginia, actually repealed their smallpox mandates in the 1850s before the disease’s resurgence forced the states to reimplement them in the 1870s.
Individuals, even in the most pro-vaccine states, kept fighting the mandates in court, however, and the first Supreme Court case challenging their constitutionality came in 1905. In Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the Supreme Court held that “there are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good. … Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.”
“Upon the principle of self-defense,” justices continued, “of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.”
States have been using their police power to keep epidemics under control ever since. And when people have rarely died from outbreaks, lack of vaccines has almost always been the cause. That was the case when nine children died of measles in Philadelphia in 1991. That was the case when dozens were infected from immigrant communities in the Pacific Northwest in 2019. And it was the case when one died and hundreds were infected in Texas just this year.
Vaccine mandates work. They save lives, particularly children’s lives. And Florida officials are playing Russian roulette by rolling them back.
Ladapo admitted Wednesday that he did not have the legal authority to end all of the state’s vaccine mandates. The polio, diphtheria, rubella, mumps, and tetanus shots are all still mandated by statute. He and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) will need to go to the legislature to get these vaccine mandates off the books. But they still could do a lot of damage by choosing not to enforce them.
Florida already has a robust system that allows families to opt out based on religious and personal beliefs, which balances our children’s health and parental rights. Ladapo’s ban on vaccine mandates will disrupt that balance and put all of Florida at risk. Vaccine mandates don’t just protect the vaccinated — they also protect those who are too young to be vaccinated and those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.
Just as the state has every right to ban vagrancy and regulate sanitation to maintain public order and health, the state has every right to mandate vaccination. Hopefully, Florida’s leaders will rethink this path before too many people become ill.