With a brief memo, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has subverted a public health standard that’s long kept measles outbreaks under control.
On Feb. 20, as measles spread through Manatee Bay Elementary in South Florida, Ladapo sent parents a letter granting them permission to send unvaccinated children to school amid the outbreak.
The Department of Health “is deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance,” wrote Ladapo, who was appointed to head the agency by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose name is listed above Ladapo’s in the letterhead.
Ladapo’s move contradicts advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This is not a parental rights issue,” said Scott Rivkees, Florida’s former surgeon general who is now a professor at Brown University. “It’s about protecting fellow classmates, teachers, and members of the community against measles, which is a very serious and very transmissible illness.”
Hopefully it’s only antivaxxers’ kids who die because of this.
Imagine wishing death on innocent children while being convinced you still somehow have any kind of moral high ground over anti-vaxxers (or anyone, for that matter)…
Children shouldn’t have to die because of braindead parents.
Tell that to child protective services, who aren’t doing their goddamn jobs and taking kids away from unfit antivaxxer parents.
Unfortunately, they must. It is the only way. Sad but necessary to clean up the gene pool.
Genes have nothing to do with social media induced mass psychosis.
Wild thought, if you find yourself thinking “the genes of the inferior must be cleansed with the blood of the children”, perhaps take a moment of self-reflection.