{"id":14166,"date":"2025-09-04T15:13:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T13:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/?p=14166"},"modified":"2025-09-04T15:13:35","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T13:13:35","slug":"florida-setzt-die-gesundheit-aufs-spiel-wie-desantis-und-ladapo-den-impfschutz-zerschlagen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/en\/florida-setzt-die-gesundheit-aufs-spiel-wie-desantis-und-ladapo-den-impfschutz-zerschlagen\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Puts Health at Risk - How DeSantis and Ladapo Dismantle Immunization"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is happening in Florida is not just another culture-war provocation. It is a frontal attack on modern public health. State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced Wednesday that Florida would become the first U.S. state to abolish all vaccine mandates - not just for COVID-19 but for measles, mumps, rubella, polio, diphtheria, hepatitis, and other diseases that have been pushed back for decades through widespread immunization programs. With a single stroke of the pen, Ladapo wants to end \"every last one\" of these protections. This is not just a radical turn in American health policy, it is an invitation to diseases long thought defeated. Measles is no trivial matter, polio is no relic from history books, and whooping cough is no harmless cough. According to the WHO, vaccination programs have saved at least 154 million lives over the past fifty years, most of them children. They have kept classrooms open, prevented epidemics, and made society more stable. And now all this is to be sacrificed - on the altar of an ideologically charged notion of \"medical freedom.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Joseph Abiodun Ladapo<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Ladapo calls vaccine mandates \"immoral,\" an intrusion of the state into people's bodies. It sounds like a libertarian battle cry but ignores the simple truth: health is never purely private. A child who is not vaccinated can infect others at school. A community that forgoes collective protection loses what epidemiologists call herd immunity - and opens the door to outbreaks long forgotten by the collective memory. Ladapo is backed by Governor Ron DeSantis, who since the pandemic has been waging a political crusade against the public health authority CDC and all forms of vaccine mandates. On Wednesday, DeSantis announced the creation of a \"Make America Healthy Again\" commission that is intended to turn the entire medical regulatory framework upside down. Led by Lt. Governor Jay Collins and First Lady Casey DeSantis, the commission is to prepare a comprehensive \"medical freedom package\" - paving the way for a complete dismantling of all existing protective regulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ladapo is backed by Governor Ron DeSantis<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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What is being sold here as a \"right to self-determination\" is in truth a political decision with potentially deadly consequences. Pediatricians like Dr. Rana Alissa warn that removing vaccine mandates not only threatens the health of students but also the functioning of the education system: children who are sick and stay home miss school, parents cannot work, local economic cycles break down. And Democrat Anna Eskamani, who is running for mayor of Orlando, speaks of a \"public health catastrophe in the making.\" The American Medical Association also warns that decades of medical progress are in danger. The data are clear: vaccines are safe, effective, and the best protection against outbreaks. Anyone who claims otherwise is not providing enlightenment but spreading disinformation. The fact that the Trump administration under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now openly supports this agenda fits the picture: Kennedy has long been known as an anti-vaccine activist, and his \"reforms\" at the CDC have already led to massive staff departures and political conflict. Now this course is being transferred to the states - with Florida as the spearhead. The consequences could be devastating. The U.S. is already seeing declining vaccination rates in kindergartens and elementary schools. In some counties they are so low that the WHO warns that measles outbreaks are only a matter of time. If a state as large as Florida abolishes all requirements, other Republican-governed states will follow. Then not just a regional but a national problem looms. And a look beyond the borders makes the magnitude even clearer. While the World Health Organization invests billions in Africa and Asia to finally eradicate polio, Florida is creating exactly the conditions that could bring the virus back. UNICEF is fighting to reach children in crisis areas such as Sudan or Afghanistan so that they at least receive basic immunization - and in one of the richest U.S. states there is a serious discussion about making this immunization voluntary. That is not progress, it is regression at the expense of the most vulnerable. It is telling that DeSantis speaks of \"staying ahead of the curve\" while removing the guardrails that have so far protected his own citizens from dangerous diseases. The idea that infectious diseases can be defeated by individual freedom of choice is not only scientifically wrong - it is dangerous. It ignores that viruses respect no political borders and that individual decisions have collective consequences. If Florida goes down this path, the world will have to watch as 22 million people are used as a live experiment to see what happens when immunization is abandoned. The answer will likely not be long in coming: rising case numbers, rising hospitalizations, preventable deaths. Anyone who still speaks of \"freedom\" should explain whose freedom is meant here - that of the viruses or that of the children to grow up healthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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