A new survey shows parents still overwhelmingly support vaccine mandates for measles and polio, as Florida moves to remove immunization requirements for school-aged children and other states consider changes to their laws.
A Washington Post-KFF poll found that 81 percent of parents support requirements for measles and polio, while 18 percent do not. One percent of participants skipped the question.
Vaccine enthusiasm remained high among parents from all parties as 75 percent of Republicans agreed that school aged children should receive immunizations for measles and polio. Eighty percent of independent voters also supported the status quo, in addition to 91 percent of Democrats.
In Flordia, the Post-KFF survey found 82 percent of parents said they believe public schools should require vaccines for measles and polio, with some health and religious exceptions, while 17 percent said schools shouldn’t require those vaccines.
Vaccine mandates became highly politicized during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stoked the debate with a series of divisive moves since joining the Trump administration.
Earlier this year, Kennedy announced the Center for Disease Control and Prevention would no longer recommend healthy children and pregnant women receive vaccines for COVID-19. He has also ousted members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which made recommendations to the CDC, and replaced them with known vaccine skeptics. Kennedy and President Trump have falsely suggested vaccines are linked to cases of autism in young children.
Florida officials took an unprecedented step on Wednesday, when they announced they will seek to make the state the first in the country without school vaccine mandates.
Public health experts railed against the move.
“I would argue that this is the worst public health decision I’ve ever seen [from] a state health official,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “This guy will have dead children at his feet.”
However, Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor who oversees Medicaid and Medicare, said he supports efforts to remove immunization requirements.
“I would definitely not have mandates for vaccinations,” Oz said during an interview on Fox News’s “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”
“This is a decision that a physician and a patient should be making together,” he continued. “The parents love their kids more than anybody else could love that kid, so why not let the parents play an active role in this?”
While no other state has made such a drastic step, lawmakers in other states including Idaho, New Hampshire and Texas are considering laws that could roll back some vaccine mandates for schoolchildren.
