Holy hell: The dangers in rising religious exemptions to school vaccinations in Florida

It’s not surprising to learn that required vaccinations for Florida schoolchildren are at a 10-year low.

I’m not talking about COVID-19 vaccines. These are the routine “Part A” vaccinations required for incoming kindergarten students, the shots that immunize them from communicable diseases such as polio, measles, mumps, rubella, influenza B, hepatitis B, tetanus, and diphtheria.

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Out of 67 Florida’s counties, only 18 met or surpassed the goal of having 95 percent of kindergarten students vaccinated against these communicable diseases this year, the Florida Department of Health reported.

And some of Florida’s most populous counties have failed to meet even a 90 percent compliance rate. They include Palm Beach, Duval, Orange, Osceola and Sarasota counties.

Using "religious beliefs" as an excuse is easy in Florida

To sidestep compliance with the state’s vaccination requirements, parents may file for a medical or a religious exemption.

These exemptions now account for 8.2 percent of Florida’s kindergarten students. The medical one requires a doctor’s written consent. But the religious exemption, which is far more popular now, is simply accomplished by the signed statement from a parent or guardian.

Sarasota County, a hub of the “medical freedom” anti-vax movement against COVID-19 immunizations, has nearly the lowest immunization rate in Part A vaccinations in the state (87.4 percent) for kindergarten students, and leads the state in the number of kindergarten students who have received religious exemptions from any vaccination.

Religious exemptions to vaccinations used to be far more rare. Ten years ago, the number of students who opted out of vaccinations for religious reasons was 0.3 percent of incoming kindergarteners. Last year, that number had grown to 3.5 percent, according to state Department of Health numbers.

Those 7,913 children got a religious exemption through the completion of a form called a DH-681 which states that “immunizations are in conflict with the religious tenets and practices of the children’s parent or guardian.”

The dangers of a rise in unvaccinated children

This was a familiar tact taken by the politically orchestrated opposition to COVID-19 vaccinations. Despite the leaders of the world’s religions urging people to get vaccinated from the contagious virus, a highly organized opposition spread all sorts of disinformation about the effectiveness and dangers of the vaccine, while also claiming that it violated their nebulous, personal religious beliefs.

And their delusions and dubious claims were bolstered by many of the state’s elected officials who saw this as an organizing opportunity for political support. This nurturing of anti-vaccination sentiment in Florida has made the state an outlier in sound medical policy.

Gov. Ron DeSantis took a detour from advocating consensus science when he handpicked Dr. Joseph Ladapo as Florida’s surgeon general last year. Ladapo is a vaccine skeptic who had been part of a group of doctors whose leader was arrested and imprisoned for storming the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of the last presidential election.

Ladapo voiced the anti-mask, anti-vax sentiments that became a foundational political tool in DeSantis’ “free state of Florida” posturing.

As part of this, DeSantis began calling vaccines “jabs” — as if the slight temporary arm pain was more important to consider than the life-saving immunity. And he refused to talk about his own vaccination status.

Last year, DeSantis signed state legislation that prohibited employers from mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for their workers without allowing workers to file for one of five different exemptions. They included exemptions for medical reasons, religious beliefs, a negative COVID-19 test, agreement to take COVID-19 tests in the future, or an agreement to wear masks or other personal protective equipment on the job.

Under the Florida law, private employers in the state faced fines of up to $50,000 for requiring their workers to be vaccinated against the virus.

"Floridians are now protected in their jobs, at school and as parents to choose how to protect themselves from COVID-19,” Ladapo announced after the passage of the law. “If you are aware of a violation, we encourage you to report it to the appropriate entity — either through Department of Health or the Office of the Attorney General.

A byproduct of this suppression of vaccine advocacy and outright cheerleading against vaccinations has been unnecessary deaths.

The high cost of badmouthing life-saving COVID vaccinations

Vaccinations could have prevented 56 percent of Florida's COVID-19 deaths during the first 16 months the vaccines were available, Brown University's School of Public Health reported.

And Floridians are still living in a state of denial. Recently, DeSantis announced that Florida was “affirmatively against” COVID vaccines for children under the age of 5. Florida was the only state that didn’t pre-order the vaccines — a position it quietly abandoned.

This past week he concocted a political stunt in the form of a roundtable discussion about dangers of mRNA vaccines. This was done as a prelude to asking the Florida Supreme Court to empanel a statewide grand jury “to investigate any and all wrongdoing in Florida with respect to COVID-19 vaccines.”

Meanwhile, back in the real world, COVID-19 vaccines have kept 18.5 million Americans out of hospitals and saved 3.2 million lives, according to an analysis released this month by The Commonwealth Fund.

“The U.S. COVID vaccination program has saved the U.S. more than $1 trillion in medical costs, and has preserved hospital resources, kept children in school, and allowed for reopening of businesses and other activities,” the report concluded.

Yet in Florida, the governor is still cultivating herd stupidity by casting vaccines as more of a problem than a godsend.

And now, all of this dangerous posturing over the COVID-19 vaccine is having a spillover effect on vaccines that have helped make debilitating childhood diseases like polio and the measles a thing of the past.

The state report on school immunizations notes that the COVID-19 pandemic “likely played a significant role” in the decrease in Florida kindergarten getting immunized and the increase in parents and guardians claiming religious objections to vaccines.

There is a cost to this. Health care administrators warn that childhood diseases that have practically been wiped out through vaccinations could come back once immunization rates decrease.

Three years ago, the state of New York ended religious exemptions for vaccines after a measles outbreak spread from a largely unvaccinated Orthodox Jewish community.

By not being a clear-throated advocate for lifesaving vaccinations, Florida is mortgaging the future of its children.

For what?

Frank Cerabino is a columnist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at fcerabino@gannett.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida students at risk with religious exemptions to vaccinations