At meeting on Florida's plan to end school vaccine mandates, skeptics and doctors stand off

Florida's health department plans to repeal mandates that schoolchildren be vaccinated for hepatitis B, chickenpox and two other viruses.

The heated debate over Florida’s plan to revoke some school vaccine mandates was on full display Friday when state officials held a meeting for the public to weigh in on the proposed changes.

The current plan, according to officials at the Florida Department of Health, is to eliminate requirements that children be vaccinated against hepatitis B, chickenpox and haemophilus influenza type B (Hib) in order to attend private or public schools in the state, including prekindergarten. Admission to day cares would not require those vaccines, either, nor the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine. There is no set timeline yet for when the changes will be implemented.

The meeting, held at a small conference room in Panama City Beach, Florida, showcased the ever-widening gulf between pediatricians and opponents of vaccines, some of whom used their moments at the microphone to voice outlandish conspiracy theories and misinformation.

Two attendees falsely suggested that this year’s measles outbreaks didn’t happen. (The U.S. has recorded more measles cases this year than in any other since it eliminated the disease in 2000.) Another made inaccurate claims about mRNA vaccines, even though none of the shots in Florida’s plan uses the technology. And one attendee argued that giving children more than one vaccine in a 30-day period “accounts to attempted murder.” (Children often get multiple vaccines at a time to minimize doctor’s visits and because the recommended schedules overlap. Evidence does not suggest the practice is more harmful than spreading them out.)

The event offered a glimpse into the entrenched nature of anti-vaccine beliefs, especially when it comes to school requirements. A growing number of U.S. adults support ending vaccination requirements in public schools: An October poll from Axios and Ipsos put the share at 26%, compared with 19% in March.