Exemption for moral, ethical beliefs zapped from DeSantis administration’s proposed vax rule

Filed 1h ago · Via Florida Phoenix · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Bernard Gagnon · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Florida's Department of Health, under Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, withdrew a proposed exemption letting parents skip school vaccines for 'sincerely held moral or ethical beliefs,' after a healthcare attorney noted state law never authorized it in the first place. A rule hearing is set for October 8 to discuss further changes Governor DeSantis wants before leaving office in January.

The administration is still pushing to eliminate mandates for Hib, hepatitis B, chickenpox and pneumococcal vaccines, none of which are required by statute but all of which DOH has required under its own authority for years. That push arrives as Florida's measles count reached 162 by mid-August, with new cases still trickling in from Collier County in September.

Florida's kindergarten MMR vaccination rate has dropped to 88.9%, below the 95% threshold for herd immunity and down from 94.1% in 2017-18. The proposed rule also drops the MMR combination vaccine from provider attestation forms, aligning with a Trump executive order urging manufacturers to unbundle combination vaccines that currently don't exist as standalones.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

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They pulled the exemption nobody could legally justify and kept the four vaccine mandates that actually protect kids from diseases nobody wants to see come back. That's a little like a landlord agreeing not to burn down the house but still shutting off the water. Measles doesn't care about the difference between statute and rule, it just cares about that 88.9%.

Source: Read the original at Florida Phoenix → Scored: Scheming Weasel faster · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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