KRUGELL: Florida Drops all vaccine mandates including those for children: What should Canadians know?

IMAGE CREDIT:  Houston Department of Health 

My dad was born before the Polio vaccine. When he was little, 6 kids in his school got Polio. He was one of them. All 6 went into the hospital. Only 1 came out. Obviously that was my dad. The other 5 went into the ground. That wasn't news back then. 

Polio showed up every so often and killed young children. People were numb to it.

In fact, it was routine back then for a few thousand children to die from Measles alone every year across North America. That was normal. Some kids died from Whopping cough, the mumps, and Rubella. Those were a more rare but they happened.

The moment we started immunizing kids against those diseases the deaths stopped. Kids rarely got sick. People forgot about what those outbreaks looked like. We've had generations grow up not having seen the effects of these diseases. 

People doubt how bad they can be.  Now they're going to find out.

Yesterday the state of Florida announced it was ending all vaccine mandates across the board including those for children. Currently kids in Florida have to be vaccinated to go to school and certain other activities. That's all going to end over the next couple of years.

What does this mean for Canadians? I think the main thing is: don't go to Florida.

It will take about a decade, or perhaps even more, for the effects of this policy change to show up. 

They'll be small at first. A few kids here and there will get one of these disease and the hospital doctors and nurses will get them through it. It'll take anti-viral medications, respirators, anti-inflammatory medications, and even steroids to save them. Yeah, kids will get pumped up with a half dozen different prescription drugs in the hospital. But that's better than a vaccine.

Going to Florida won't be safe for a lot of people especially young children, cancer patients or survivors, those that have had organ transplants, have respiratory problems, etc. Basically anyone with an immuno-compromising condition will have to avoid the state. That's a lot of people too and it includes people over 75.

Ottawa will have to issue an official travel warning for Florida as will most other national governments.

It also means those people that do go to Florida will be more likely to bring an infectious pathogen back to Canada. So Ottawa might be forced to implement 14-day quarantines for people returning from Florida.

Sounds dramatic? Yeah, but this might become medically necessary.

If you think this is just a Canadian overreaction consider the big tourist operators like Disney, Universal Studios, Paramount, Lucasfilm, and the rest. They are aghast at this. They know it will destroy Florida's tourist economy. It'll destroy their businesses over the course of the next decade.

Seriously, what foreigner is going to go to Florida knowing they need to double check their vaccination status, make sure they have no immuno-compromising conditions, and then put up with a 14-day quarantine when they get back?

Why not go to California instead?