Vaccine studies by UF, Stanford warn dropping mandates will bring disease spread

TAMPA, Fla. - The moment Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said the state would push to end vaccine mandates, researchers at the University of Florida and Stanford University began their inquiries about what that would look like.

"If you look at all 50 states, Florida would be towards the top of risks of states that you really worry about in terms of risk of reemergence of vaccine-eliminate diseases," said Dr. Nathan Lo, a researcher at Stanford.

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Because of religious and medical exemptions, inoculation of kindergartners is already down from a pre-pandemic high of 95% to a post-pandemic low of 89%.

"We're already getting dangerously low in terms of coverage in Florida," said UF researcher Ira Longini.

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A chart by UF shows that as immunity goes down from 95%, which is the minimum ideal number, and down to 89%, the number of cases expected in a school of 200 students goes from 20 to 32, with a drop of just five percent in the inoculation rate. 

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The study found the chance of a large outbreak would rise to 92%.

"The rhetoric is quite destructive and is definitely endangering public health in general," said Longini. "Not just for the vaccines it's directed against."

Stanford found similar results. If vaccine coverage went down in Florida by 15%, the study estimated one million measles cases would be expected in Florida over the next 25 years.

"So really a dramatic escalation with even small declines in vaccinations," said Lo.

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What's next:

One thing that's difficult to know is what impact the dropping of mandates would have on the vaccination rates themselves. 

Florida would be the first state to drop these mandates, which doctors said, are effective tools to keep the public healthy.

"So it does seem that policy drives vaccine coverage," said Lo.

The power to remove vaccine mandates for polio, measles, mumps and rubella lies with the legislature, and so far there are few signals that leadership will consider it.

The Department of Health controls vaccinations for chicken pox and Hepatitis B, and the surgeon general said the process is underway to remove those mandates.