DeSantis Makes Disease Great Again

Florida’s leaders call it “freedom,” but ending vaccine mandates means parents may save a buck on taxes only to pay the ultimate price: burying children from preventable diseases.

Guest article by Michael Cohen. Read more from him by following him on Substack here.

Just when you think Florida can’t sink lower, Ron DeSantis and his surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, hand you a shovel and say, watch this. Weeks into the new school year, Ladapo announced Florida is working to eliminate every single vaccine mandate for kids. His reasoning? Mandates “drip with disdain and slavery.”

Slavery. For making sure kids don’t end up in an iron lung. This is where we’re at.

Every other state in the union requires certain vaccines for kids to attend school. Polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B—you know, the very diseases we fought like hell to wipe out. But Florida wants to be first to toss that playbook in the trash. If you’re keeping score, that means Florida will be the first state in modern history to invite polio and measles back into the classroom like they’re guest speakers at career day.

Doctors, teachers, pediatric associations—they’re all sounding the alarm. Dr. Rana Alissa from the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics spelled it out: classrooms are petri dishes. Kids sneeze, cough, drool, swap snacks, and lick God-knows-what off desks. When vaccines go away, outbreaks come rushing in. Richard Carpiano, a public health professor, put it even plainer: “This is completely public health in reverse… This is really madness.”

Madness is the polite term. I call it reckless endangerment, wrapped in the cheap packaging of “freedom.”

Here’s the irony. For months, people in New York, Jersey, even California were looking at Florida as an escape hatch. High taxes, cold winters, crime—people were eyeing Miami condos and Boca mansions, telling themselves they could live like kings while saving a bundle. And many thought maybe, just maybe, with someone like Mamdani in NYC’s political future, Florida would be a great choice to relocate to and raise the family.

But then comes DeSantis, flanked by his anti-science mascot, HHS Secretary RFK Jr., effectively saying: Welcome to Florida, where you can pay no income tax and maybe pick up measles while you’re at it. Suddenly that “quality of life” calculus starts looking like a bad bet.

We’ve already seen warning signs. Miami-Dade’s immunization rates have been sliding—down nearly 3% in kindergarten coverage since 2019. Broward dropped by 10%. In 2024, a single Broward elementary school saw a measles outbreak that infected seven kids. Seven may not sound like much, but in public health, that’s a fire alarm. And this year alone, there have been 1,431 measles cases nationwide, six in Florida. Once these numbers start climbing, they don’t politely stop at county lines.

So imagine you move your family to Florida for the sunshine and tax breaks. Your kid goes to school with classmates whose parents “chose” to skip vaccines. Next thing you know, your child has measles. You’re in the ER. You’re out of work. Your dream move just turned into a nightmare, all because the state wanted to cosplay freedom at the expense of science.

It’s not just about kids getting sick. As Dr. Alissa pointed out, when children miss school, caregivers miss work. The economy takes a hit. Outbreaks cost money—massive amounts—when hospitals, schools, and communities scramble to contain them. You’d think a party obsessed with “fiscal responsibility” would at least care about that. But no, ideology trumps economics, just as it trumps medicine.

Of course, there are parents cheering this on. BuzzFeed found one Miami mother crowing about how she “regrets” vaccinating her child, convinced that autism or illness was caused by a shot. This is the pseudoscience RFK Jr. has spent years mainstreaming—peddling myths that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent. The tragic part? People are buying it, and their kids are paying the price. A very heavy price.

Meanwhile, parents like Maria Sanchez, a respiratory therapist with a first grader in Miami Beach, are asking the obvious question: How can such a seismic change be decided without public input? Why aren’t the people whose kids will be directly affected even part of the conversation? The answer’s simple: because this isn’t about kids. It’s about politics.

The teachers’ union nailed it in their statement: school vaccination requirements are “proven, science-based protections” that safeguard kids and keep classrooms functioning. Without them, we’re back in the days when a single outbreak could shut down entire communities. And while DeSantis and Ladapo can fiddle around the edges without legislation, removing the mandates entirely would require a vote. God help us if Florida’s legislature decides to go along.

So, here’s the bottom line: people don’t move to Florida dreaming of polio. They don’t buy a second home in Miami hoping their kid will bring home measles like it’s a Disney souvenir. But thanks to this administration, that’s the new reality. Save on taxes, roll the dice on your child’s life. That’s the Florida package deal.

You’d think RFK Jr. would know better, given the Kennedy legacy of public service. But no; he’s chosen to squander his family name stoking paranoia, handing DeSantis cover for policies that endanger children. Together, they’re dragging Florida—and anyone foolish enough to relocate there—into a public health crisis that makes zero sense in 2025.

So if you’re considering packing up and moving south to “live free” in the Sunshine State, you better ask yourself a brutal question: How much is your kid’s life worth? Because you might be saving on taxes, but you’re gambling with everything else.

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