Quack FL Surgeon General OK With Sending Unvaccinated Kids To School During Measles Outbreak
It's a parental 'choice.' Like letting kids play on freeways.
Let’s get this right up front: measles is a highly infectious airborne virus that can cause serious health complications like brain swelling or even death in children, especially those younger than five years old. The good news, which you’d think everyone would know by now, is that if people are fully vaccinated against measles (two doses of the MMR vaccine), they have a 97 percent chance of not being infected.
OK, you can breathe again and enjoy your coffee.
There’s an ongoing measles outbreak at Manatee Bay Elementary School in Weston, Florida, a bit west of Fort Lauderdale. To illustrate how quickly the virus can spread, the cluster there started with a single reported case last Thursday, but by Tuesday, six unvaccinated kids were infected. Manatee Bay has just under 1,100 students. The number of infections hasn’t risen since, fortunately.
The Broward County Health Department offered free vaccinations at the school Wednesday, and Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Peter Licata said that as of Wednesday there were 33 students at the school who weren’t vaccinated. (That’s either down from 86 Tuesday, or that Tuesday number at the Daily Beast was off, darned if I know.)
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that, during measles outbreaks, “unvaccinated children, including those who have a medical or other exemption to vaccination, must be excluded from school through 21 days after their most recent exposure.” That’s pretty clear!
But then, we’re talking Florida, where the state’s top public health official, quack anti-vaxxer Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, doesn’t so much follow best practices as flush them straight down the toilet. Ladapo issued a letter Tuesday in which he said it was just peachy to ignore the CDC guidelines.
Now, the letter does acknowledge that the measles virus is highly contagious, and that the MMR vaccine is highly effective, but the letter doesn’t take the next step and urge parents to vaccinate their kids. It’s kind of a “we report, you decide” approach to public health. As for the stay home for Crom’s sake warning for unvaccinated students, the letter acknowledges then quickly dismisses it, because shouldn’t important health decisions for the community be left to parents, whose opinions are every bit as important as those of medical experts?
Because of the high likelihood of infection, it is normally recommended that children stay home until the end of the infectious period, which is currently March 7, 2024. […]
However, due to the high immunity rate in the community, as well as the burden on families and educational cost of healthy children missing school, DOH is deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance. [Emphasis added]
That, notes Mother Jones, is some bad advice:
Data from Florida’s childhood immunization records, however, suggest that the rate of immunity in Broward County might not be high enough to forestall an even greater outbreak. According to the CDC, at least 95 percent of a population must be immune to measles—either through vaccination or prior infection—to meet the “herd immunity” threshold necessary to prevent a disease from spreading broadly. As of 2022, 91.7 percent of Broward County kindergartners were fully vaccinated, according to the Florida Department of Health.
Also too, as CBS News reports, Ladapo’s letter really does tie school administrators’ hands. Superintendent Licata stated that without a stay-home order from state health officials, the district on its own is “not allowed to keep children from coming to school.” He went on to say that could change if the state were to declare a health emergency for the school and order unvaccinated students to stay home — as the CDC says it should! — “but that's their decision. We don't have that authority."
Without an emergency order, the most the school can do is keep the school clean and sanitized; the district has replaced air filters at Manatee Bay Elementary and is cleaning all surfaces with “a special machine used during COVID-19.”
In addition, parents are being allowed to keep their kids home, vaccinated or not, and take online classes for the 21-day quarantine period; they’ll need to let the school know today if that’s what they want to do. So far, a lot of parents seem to be voting with their parked minivans and SUVs to keep even their vaxxed kids away from the little unvaccinated darlings who might be showing up: there were 200 absences Tuesday and 174 on Wednesday.
This is only the most recent instance where Ladapo has offered advice that flies in the face of medical experts, which is why Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him in the first place. Ladapo has lied again and again about the COVID-19 vaccines, lying they were more risky than the virus (they are not) and even recommending that younger Floridians not get them at all, based on a bogus study for which he personally altered data, making its already dubious results even more worthless. More recently, the state recommended that no one get COVID vaccines, based on Ladapo’s lie that the mRNA vaccines could mess with human DNA, which of course is pure bullshit too.
Good luck, Florida! Hope y’all vote all these bastards out in 2026!
Daily Beast (reprinted at Yahoo News) / CBS News / NBC Miami / Mother Jones]
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What's always left unstated is the role of the public schools in the US, as taxpayer-provided daycare for the employees of low-wage employers. An indirect, but absolutely critical, subsidy to low-wage employers.
This was what drove the mania to get the schools back to in-person during COVID. Those of us whose work allows us to work from home, and who have the resources to have broadband internet and enough devices for kids to do virtual school, weren't the issue. It was all the parents whose jobs required being in-person on site, who can't pay for daycare of any kind, so they couldn't go to work or needed some or other accommodations from their crap employers.
We're never honest about the true roles of American public schools. For many kids, it's their only reliable meal(s) of the day. Their only point of contact to healthcare. Daycare for when their parents are working, including before and after-school programs.
The likes of Ladopo are carrying water for the large employers. That's who's always been behind the campaign to end work-from-home, to get kids back into schools, to never shut down for epidemics (never mind pandemics), and even to call snow days.
Now, if we funded education appropriately to the roles it actually plays; I might have a wee bit more tolerance for it. But we don't, so we lie about what we demand from the schools.
OMG, Melanie's Marvelous Measles...
And don't forget those Dr. Seuss classics, "And To Think I Caught It On Mulberry Street," "Horton Hears From the W.H.O.," and my personal favorite, "The Cat In The Hat Comes Back (And Gives You Ringworm)."