Michael Osterholm, a former Biden administration adviser on COVID-19, said Wednesday that “Florida’s going to become a hotbed of transmission” after Sunshine State officials announced they will seek to make the state the first in the U.S. to officially remove school vaccine mandates.
“I would have to tell you, as a parent or a grandparent, I wouldn’t want my kids to go into Florida in the years ahead, to go to Walt Disney World, or any place like that, because Florida’s going to become a hotbed of transmission by eliminating this particular mandate, and I think — unfortunately timely for that to be true,” Osterholm told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on his show.
On Wednesday, Florida officials said they will attempt to make the state the first in the country to not have any vaccine mandates for children to attend schools. Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo likened the requirements to slavery.
“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo, a long-time skeptic of vaccines, said of vaccine mandates.
“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body? I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God,” he added.
The Florida announcement comes as vaccine policy at the national scale is in turmoil amid Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s stewardship at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, last week forced out the leader of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a move that was followed by other resignations at the agency.
He was the subject of tough questioning from members of both parties at a Senate Finance Committee hearing Thursday.
On Thursday, 11 out of 12 Democratic senators on the panel in a joint statement called for his resignation ahead of the hearing.
“Robert Kennedy was unfit to serve as the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services before he was on the job, which is why every Democratic member of the Senate Finance Committee opposed his nomination,” the members said.
The Hill has reached out to the Florida Department of Health for comment.
