Florida’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, has announced plans to end all state vaccine mandates, including for children to attend schools, likening the mandates to “slavery.”

“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo said at a news conference in Tampa on Wednesday. “Who am I as a government or anyone else, or who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what to do with your body?”

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“People have a right to make their own decisions, informed decisions,” he added.

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis also announced on Wednesday the creation of a state-level “Make America Healthy Again” commission modelled after similar initiatives pushed at the federal level by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

The state Health Department, Ladapo said, can scrap its own rules for some vaccine mandates, but others would require action by the Florida Legislature. He did not specify any particular vaccines, but repeated several times that the effort would end “all of them. Every last one of them.”

Florida would be the first state to eliminate so many vaccine mandates, Ladapo added.

Democratic state Representative Anna Eskamani, who is running for Orlando mayor, said in a social media post that scrapping vaccines “is reckless and dangerous” and could cause outbreaks of preventable disease.

“This is a public health disaster in the making for the Sunshine State,” she said on the social platform X.

West Coast Health Alliance

Meanwhile, the Democratic governors of Washington, Oregon and California announced on Wednesday that they created an alliance to safeguard health policies, contending that the administration of President Donald Trump is politicising public health decisions.

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The partnership plans to coordinate health guidelines by aligning immunisation plans based on recommendations from respected national medical organisations, according to a joint statement from Governor Bob Ferguson of Washington, Governor Tina Kotek of Oregon and Governor Gavin Newsom of California.

Under the West Coast Health Alliance, the states said they will make joint recommendations on who should receive vaccines, informed by national medical associations, even if they diverge from federal guidance.

Typically, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a federal advisory body to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, advises on who should receive vaccines and at what intervals after the Food and Drug Administration approval.

“ACIP remains the scientific body guiding immunisation recommendations in this country, and HHS will ensure policy is based on rigorous evidence and Gold Standard Science, not the failed politics of the pandemic,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services told the Reuters news agency.

‘Ahead of the curve’

In Florida, vaccine mandates for child day care facilities and public schools include shots for measles, chickenpox, hepatitis B, Diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP), polio and other diseases, according to the state Health Department’s website.

Under DeSantis, Florida resisted imposing COVID vaccines on schoolchildren, requiring “passports” for places that draw crowds, school closures and mandates that workers get the shots to keep their jobs.

“I don’t think there’s another state that’s done as much as Florida. We want to stay ahead of the curve,” the governor said.

The state “MAHA” commission would look into such things as allowing informed consent in medical matters, promoting safe and nutritious food, boosting parental rights regarding medical decisions about their children, and eliminating “medical orthodoxy that is not supported by the data”, DeSantis said. The commission will be chaired by Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins and Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis.

“We’re getting government out of the way, getting government out of your lives,” Collins said.

The commission’s work will help inform a large “medical freedom package” to be introduced in the Legislature next session, which would address the vaccine mandates required by state law and make permanent the recent state COVID decisions relaxing restrictions, DeSantis said.

“There will be a broad package,” the governor said.