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Republicans bash Florida’s anti-vaccine stand: ‘Horrible idea’
Republicans on Capitol Hill are sounding alarms over Florida’s move to end vaccine mandates for school children, voicing fears about the spread of preventable infectious diseases and what it means for their home states.
The apprehensions highlight the internal GOP divide over both the public health benefits of vaccines and the powers of government at any level to require residents to obtain those inoculations in the name of community safety.
“Vaccinations have proven to be — the basic ones — helpful in preventing the spread of measles, polio and other things,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said. “My children are vaccinated, my grandchildren are vaccinated. I don’t agree with that.”
The charged issue had already been front and center under President Trump, whose pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has long fought vaccines with warnings that they cause autism — a view roundly rejected by most public health experts.
Building on that vaccine skepticism, the Florida Department of Health last week announced it will ban mandates for schoolchildren to be vaccinated for numerous diseases, making it the first state to make such an action.
The decision affects jabs for hepatitis B, chickenpox, haemophilus influenzae type B and pneumococcal diseases, including meningitis.
Plenty within the GOP expressed doubts about mandating the COVID-19 vaccine in recent years. But Florida’s move against routine childhood vaccinations unnerved a number of Republican lawmakers who worry not only about the decision, but also what it could mean for their respective states as vaccine skepticism continues to rise in the years following the COVID-19 outbreak.
“It’s a horrible idea,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told The Hill. “I think it’s a bad idea, and I think it could create … a pressure on other states to do the same thing.”
“I just think it’s bad policy. I don’t think it’s rooted in science. I think it’s rooted in political science, but not epidemiology,” he continued. “I........
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