Florida’s controversial surgeon general is drawing criticism for his handling of an elementary school’s measles outbreak, telling parents of unvaccinated children it is their choice whether their students attend class — a contravention of federal guidelines calling for their mandatory exclusion.
Dr. Joseph Ladapo, nationally known for his outspoken skepticism toward the COVID-19 vaccine, sent a letter this week to parents at Manatee Bay Elementary School near Fort Lauderdale after six students contracted the highly contagious and potentially deadly virus. Such outbreaks are rare in the United States, though reported cases have spiked from 58 for all of 2023 to 35 already this year.
The letter notes that when a school has a measles outbreak, it is “normally recommended” that unvaccinated students who haven’t previously had the disease be kept home for three weeks “because of the high likelihood” they will be infected.
I used to live in Volusia County, where a kid died from meningitis recently. The city of Oak Hill had the audacity to call the school “Burns Science and Technology” Charter School.
The town that it’s in had a history of being populated by people who were hiding out from the cops, most of them for drug charges and about 10 years ago, their entire police force was fired because of meth use. The county is now in charge there.
This is a town that is in the process of being gentrified, but it is still very much full of ill-informed rednecks that are hostile to any kind of governance.
The fact that a kid died because of the ignorance of the State of Florida is an absolute tragedy, full stop.
And this city is also responsible because they know that vaccines are necessary to prevent this kind of thing, and they chose to ignore both common sense and logic.
Ron DeSantis only set the precedent for Florida to be able to let this happen. The kid’s parents are to blame, along with the city of Oak Hill and Volusia County. Shame on the lot of them.