Florida Makes a Move on COVID-19 Vaccination That Is Going to Set Hair on Fire

Sometimes doing what’s right isn’t necessarily what’s easy, but it is right nonetheless. That’s the lesson being provided out of Florida after a major announcement on COVID-19 vaccinations.

When it comes to vaccinating children, few Republicans of note have had the guts to stand up and speak clearly on the matter. No doubt, a lot of peer pressure exists to go along with the “Vaccinate everything that moves” narrative being pushed by the federal government. Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo have taken a different approach, though.

At a round table today, Ladapo let it be known that his state would be recommending against giving the COVID-19 vaccines for children, making Florida the first state in the nation to do so.

According to @FLSurgeonGen, Florida will become the first state to recommend against the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children. #desantisroundtable

— Karol Markowicz (@karol) March 7, 2022

By the numbers, this is absolutely the right move. Less than 1,000 children have died from COVID-19 over the course of the pandemic. There are 75 million children aged 0-18 in the United States. Further, when you drill down, almost all the children that have died from COVID-19 also had pre-existing conditions. Given that, why would the government not take a more targeted approach in vaccinating children from the coronavirus, only giving it to those who are significantly immunocompromised?

I don’t cite the above numbers to downplay the death of any child. Every lost life is a tragedy, no matter the cause. Still, at no point in our history have we as a society chosen to blanket-vaccinate children from a virus that presents such a minuscule, almost non-existent risk to them. Public policy should never be decided by emotion, and it is nothing but an emotional response to vaccinate a six-year-old from COVID-19 who is otherwise healthy. It simply makes no sense, especially in light of the lack of longitudinal data on how the vaccines affect a developing child.

Yet, the vaccination of children has become another crutch for triple-vaxxed hypochondriacs who believe schools are a vector for transmission to adults. There’s simply no data to back that up, and even if there were, we should not be using children to placate the irrational concerns of adults. Florida’s move to recommend against that is the right one. Yes, hair will be set on fire as a result, and DeSantis will once again be called “anti-vax.” Doing the right thing overrides public relations concerns, though.

Besides, the press and the collective left are going to trash Florida no matter what anyway. They see the free state as a foil and distraction from the abject failures taking place in their own states. DeSantis and Lapado should be commended for tuning out the noise and doing what makes sense. That’s been Florida’s path through the pandemic since the beginning.