Former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Wednesday said she “can’t imagine” how parents in Florida will protect their children as the state moves to end all school vaccines mandates.
“Florida has put out some terrifying guidance suggesting that they’re going to get rid of all vaccine mandates for kids in school,” Sebelius said during a Wednesday appearance on CNN’s “CNN News Central.”
“I can’t imagine what I would do if I were a parent in Florida thinking about sending my child to a school where you have no idea if there could be a measles outbreak or, God forbid, even polio will reappear. So, we are in uncharted territory,” she added.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo compared current immunization requirements to slavery, sparking outrage among health experts and vaccine advocates who say a lack of vaccines will cause disease outbreaks.
Ladapo is leading the effort to remove vaccine requirements from Florida schools following in the path of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who said the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will no longer recommend the COVID-19 vaccine recommendation for healthy children and pregnant women earlier this year.
“In my lifetime, CDC has been, you know, a standard for public health, not only here, but countries around the world have emulated it. And we have seen in about seven months a secretary with no scientific background, no training and a long history of vaccine skepticism and making money on suing vaccine companies begin to dismantle what is the protective shield around Americans,” Sebelius told CNN.
“This is about health security. And as we learned with COVID, this is about our economic security. Another infectious disease that we’re not prepared for takes the whole economy down. So, this is very dangerous territory,” she added.
Last week, the CDC Director was removed by the Trump administration while four senior officials resigned citing the “weaponization of public health.”
“For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political paused or interpretations. Vaccines save lives — this is an indisputable, well-established, scientific fact,” former CDC Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry wrote in her resignation letter.
“Recently, the overstating of risks and the rise of misinformation have cost lives, as demonstrated by the highest number of U.S. measles cases in 30 years and the violent attack on our agency,” she continued, citing a measles outbreak from earlier this year.
Other officials agreed and said new policies were beginning to lean further and further away from scientific data or evidence and more towards political pursuits.
“I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponizing of public health,” Demetre C. Daskalakis, former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases said.
