Florida to end all school vaccine requirements

Emotional Response & Framing

• Many see the policy as “horrific backsliding” in scientific literacy and compassion, predicting children will bear the brunt (“FAFO”).
• Others frame it as part of a long arc: decades of disinformation, partisan radicalization, and media ecosystems weaponizing contrarianism.

Why Anti‑Vax Sentiment Rose

• One camp blames intentional, well-funded right-wing propaganda and political opportunism; shifting blame to academia is seen as enabling.
• Another camp argues broader failures in science communication, “publish or perish,” and the replication crisis eroded general trust, even if vaccine science itself remained solid.
• Some note that polls don’t show a collapse of trust in medicine overall; instead, a noisy minority gained power.

Dealing with Vaccine Skeptics

• One side says skeptics have been educated exhaustively; further engagement is futile and only derision is left.
• Others, especially those living among skeptics, argue condescension backfires. They push for patient explanations to “common sense” questions (e.g., liability protections, expanding schedules).
• Multiple replies counter that answers do exist and are easy to find; refusal to accept them is seen as identity-based, not informational.
• Some argue platforming anti-vaxxers (debates, TV) legitimizes them and grows the movement.

Ethics, Parental Rights & Child Welfare

• Strong view: refusing vaccination without medical reason is child abuse; parents don’t have unlimited rights (analogy to withholding food or giving bleach).
• Opposing view: parents should have near‑sole discretion; forcing vaccines they believe harmful is itself unethical and authoritarian.
• Long subthread debates whether children are in any sense parental “property,” with evidence cited that abuse by parents is not “extremely rare.”
• Herd immunity is repeatedly invoked: unvaccinated children endanger immunocompromised kids and vaccinated people (breakthroughs, incomplete protection).

Expected Consequences & “Natural Experiment”

• Widespread expectation of measles, polio, mumps, meningitis resurging, especially harming vulnerable children and undermining activities like tourism and schooling.
• One commenter sees this as creating an otherwise-unethical control group for large-scale vaccine effectiveness data; others call that framing itself unethical.
• Rough back-of-envelope math suggests herd immunity to measles in schools could be lost within 1–2 years.

Politics, Media, and Culture

• Fox/right-wing media, Trumpism, RFK Jr., and social media bubbles are cited as key amplifiers.
• Several say this is less about evidence and more about culture, grievance, religion, and identity; you can’t reason people out of positions they didn’t reason into.
• Some note COVID policies and mandates (especially for children) damaged trust and are now leveraged against all vaccines.

Miscellaneous

• Questions raised about insurance pricing for unvaccinated, tourism impacts, and joking references to iron lung startups underscore expectations of real, material fallout.