The latest strategy the current government has implemented is mitigating vaccination research to damage our health systems.
Now, advocates have only strengthened their ideologies by dropping essential vaccine requirements.
Recently, Florida has cut all vaccine requirements for children in schools.
The striking decision to cut all mandates came from the values of many outspoken conservative politicians.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo best sums up these values in his press release, stating that every last vaccine drips with disdain and slavery, as reported by Politico, a political journalism organization.
Ladapo, a PhD-holder from Harvard, fails to realize that cutting vaccines impacts the relationship between the spread of viruses and herd immunity.
Herd immunity refers to the idea where if a large percentage of a population is vaccinated, diseases can’t be easily spread from person to person.
When we lose herd immunity by not receiving vaccinations, diseases like polio and malaria can spread rapidly amongst both vaccinated and non-vaccinated people.
Take polio in the United States. Cases are rare because of widespread childhood vaccination across all 50 states, creating herd immunity for Americans, as researched by the National Health Society (NHS).
On the contrary, the NHS states that underdeveloped countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan have several thousand polio cases.
This is because there is not a widespread effort to vaccinate the population against polio and to create herd immunity.
Cutting vaccine requirements in schools will directly result in a further decrease in vaccinations rates.
When a state gives parents the medical liberty to opt out of vaccinating their kids, children will be at a higher risk of contracting diseases, such as measles, whooping cough, and even meningitis, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC).
Because of the lax vaccination rules in some Republican-led states, the amount of children who get vaccinated has significantly dropped.
In 2023, fewer 2-year-olds in Idaho were fully vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis compared to the previous year, according to research done by the medical department of Johns Hopkins University.
Idaho’s vaccination rates from 2019 to 2023 fell by a significant 8% within children alone.
Recently, Idaho faced a measles outbreak, showing the consequences of inadequate vaccination coverage in a specific population.
Even with sufficient evidence, some conservative politicians still compare vaccines to the robbing of personal autonomy, religious rule, and freedom.
The National Conference of State Legislatures shows that several states, including West Virginia and Idaho – historically very conservative states – allow vaccine exemptions for personal and religious beliefs.
It’s not just these states that have adopted the unsafe practice of dropping vaccine mandates.
The federal government has enacted such preposterous policies by cracking down and prohibiting federal funding for COVID-19 vaccine mandates in schools, citing personal freedoms and liberties in a recent press release from the White House.
But there are a few ways states can stop the spread of chaotic medical mismanagement.
An article by Axios, an American news organization, states that California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington have created the West Coast Health Alliance.
According to the article, the West Coast Health alliance is a health-based alliance that aims to coordinate and protect health guidelines across all four states.
In its first press release, the West Coast Health Alliance clarified that California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington are interested in putting safety, public health and science first before politics.
It isn’t just the Pacific Coast standing against the chaos of the foolish vaccine cuts. New York, Illinois and Arizona have allowed pharmacists to prescribe COVID-19 vaccines after federal action created several roadblocks.
It’s important to realize the nuance of incidents like these occurring across the country.
Americans need to be protected by the people they elect to represent them.
But cutting vaccine mandates only puts our citizens at risk for contracting diseases and viruses that they should be protected against.
The scientific evidence against vaccines has been disproven many times.
Advocates for eliminating mandates usually base their argument off of dubious sources.
Creating a space where conspiracy theorists can spread their ideas onto politics is not the way to progress as a society.
By upholding vaccine mandates, our government can help protect Americans from the dangers of preventable diseases.
