Florida health officials hosted a workshop Friday on the state surgeon general's plan to end school mandates for four vaccines, including one that prevents a dangerous form of meningitis increasingly affecting children, doctors said.
It's called haemophilus influenzae type B, or Hib. Caused by bacteria, it can spread by coughing or sneezing.
"I want everyone to know how serious matters are," Dr. Eehab Kenawy, a Panama City pediatrician, said during the Department of Health's rule-development workshop in a crowded hotel conference room in Panama City Beach.
"Just in the past six months, we've had two patients in the ICU with Hib. One child unfortunately succumbed at 4 months of age. No vaccines. One month ago, I was on call, and another patient also came into the ICU, a 2½-year-old, never vaccinated, Hib again. Abscesses in the brain, seizures, brain dead. Quote, unquote, mother's words: 'Please give my child every vaccine you can.' "
In September, state Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo announced plans to end all 11 school-entry vaccinations in the name of medical freedom, likening them to "slavery," Four can be addressed through the health department, which Ladapo heads: Hib, varicella (chickenpox), pneumococcal conjugate and hepatitis B. The others are part of state law.
Friday's workshop was a first step toward lifting requirements agency's requirements.
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During nearly three hours of public comment, several doctors, nurses and teachers expressed the need to keep the mandates in place. Many speakers applauded the state for moving to lift mandates, saying parents should be able to choose whether to vaccinate their children.
Tallahassee pediatrician Dr. D. Paul Robinson spoke for his two minutes and recalled how early in his 40-year career spinal taps were far more common for sick children, and as many as 20% of children he treated with Hib died from sepsis or severe infections of the brain and spinal cord.
"Hib didn't cause mild illness. It caused children to die," he said. "And many survivors were left with deafness, paralysis or lifelong neurologic injury."
A vaccine was introduced in the late 1980s, and since then Hib has become rare. But cases have started rising again in recent years.
On the eve of the meeting, Robinson said, "Almost no one at that meeting, unless they're my age or above, and I'm almost 70, has seen some of the conditions that immunizations now routinely prevent.
"If you've never seen, for example, haemophilus influenza meningitis, you don't have any idea what it looks like. It's just a condition on paper. Those of us who are older, we've seen it. We've seen the damage it does."
Data from the state health department showed the rate of Hib illnesses – which is not a form of the flu despite its name – among children under 4 nearly tripled from 2020 to 2023, before dropping slightly in 2024, the most recent year with data available.
The number of pediatric cases statewide was 207 in 2020, rising to 460 in 2023, and dipping to 403 in 2024, according to this chart.
Some speakers, like Larry Downs Jr., said they applaud the state surgeon general's stance.
"This is about freedom. The default setting should be freedom, not these corporate chemical vaccine injections," Downs said.
Vaccination efforts across the country and around the world have stalled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw an explosion in vaccine skepticism. Ladapo's proposal comes as U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has worked to reshape the nation's vaccine policies to match his long-standing suspicions about the safety and effectiveness of well-established shots.
Mary Helms, a grandmother from Apalachicola, referenced Kennedy as she voiced her "full support" for rolling back the mandates: "Medical choice and medical freedom in all ways is a God-given and sovereign human right."
Others at the meeting expressed opposition to any change in vaccine rules, citing civil rights and religious protections.
"The proposal to eliminate vaccine requirements in the state of Florida is not just a policy change, it is a direct threat to public health equity and civil rights, and today, the NAACP clearly stands and clearly states that we oppose it," said Lewis Jennings, with the NAACP Okaloosa chapter.
Florida law allows parents to opt out of vaccines for their children via medical or religious exemption.
One speaker, Susan Sweetin, who leads marketing for the National Vaccine Information Center, said her son was "vaccine injured," and that such exemptions are difficult to obtain.
"This idea of freedom, this idea of choice, is not existent, and it's an illusion. It is not the role of the government to mandate a procedure that can cause injury and death, period. We shouldn't have to ask the government for permission to not do a medical intervention," Sweetin said.
A handout from the workshop suggested expanding exemptions. The current language says "immunizations are in conflict with my religious tenets or practices." A new draft would add the phrase: "which may include a sincerely held moral or ethical belief."
Joseph Harmon with the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops said he disagreed.
"We urge the Department of Health to utilize the current language, rather than adopt the new rule, which seems to be an improper expansion of what's allowed by the statute," Harmon said.
Another speaker, Mary Wynn, said the idea of lifting mandates is not allowed by law, and pointed to a line in Florida statutes that says the health department "shall ensure that all children in this state are immunized against vaccine-preventable diseases."
Near the end of the meeting, Simone Chriss, a civil rights attorney with Southern Legal Counsel, asked if the state had "consulted national medical experts on this rule development — such as the American Academy of Pediatrics or the American Medical Association."
The answer was no.
"Thank you so much for your question. The rule language is grounded in policy based on considerations that favor parental rights and medical freedom," a department spokeswoman responded.
The department is "still in the process of looking at" epidemiologic modeling to estimate increases in hospitalization and death following the loss of herd immunity, she added.
Another requirement for the state is to show the estimated regulatory cost of the changes, which has not been done yet.
It is "a requirement in the Florida statutes for rulemaking and will be done at the appropriate time," said Amanda Bush, with the general counsel's office.
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