Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said on Sunday that government officials did not conduct any data projections before deciding to roll back vaccine mandates to gauge the impact such a move would have on the overall case numbers in the state.
“Absolutely not,” Ladapo said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” when asked whether his department tried to anticipate the impact that removing vaccine mandates would have on the number of cases of preventable diseases.
Ladapo said the decision was not reached based on the data, but instead on his view that vaccine mandates are immoral and outside the scope of the government’s authority.
“There’s this conflation of the science and, sort of, what is the right and wrong thing to do,” Ladapo said in the interview.
“Ultimately, this is an issue, very clearly, of parents’ rights,” he added. “So, do I need to analyze whether it’s appropriate for parents to be able to decide what goes into their children’s bodies? I don’t need to do an analysis on that.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Ladapo about parents whose children are immunocompromised and therefore cannot be vaccinated against many diseases. Those children often rely on herd immunity, reached when nearly an entire population is vaccinated against a disease, in order to be safe in the classroom.
“What is your message to the parents of immunocompromised kids who are relying on most kids being vaccinated so their kids are safe? You talk about liberty and freedom for parents, but it seems like you’re removing liberty and freedom for the parents of kids who are immunocompromised,” Tapper said in the Sunday interview.
Ladapo said he’s “very sympathetic” to those children and families but doubled down on his view that each child’s parents should be able to make their own decision about their child.
