CNN host Jake Tapper said he was "shocked" after Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo admitted he did not do any data analysis before banning vaccine mandates.
"I'm looking at this report from your department from April, showing that more people in Florida are seeking religious exemptions for vaccines," Tapper told Ladapo in a Sunday interview on CNN. "And at the same time, Florida is seeing rising cases of hepatitis A and whooping cough and chicken pox."
"This is in your own report, your own department's report," the host noted. "Before you made this decision to try to lift vaccine mandates for Florida, which include, obviously, public schools, did your department do any data analysis?"
"Did you do any data projection of how many new cases of these diseases there will be in Florida once you remove vaccine mandates?"
"Absolutely not," Ladapo insisted. "In terms of, you know, like analysis, well, ultimately, this is an issue very clearly of parents' rights. So do I need to analyze whether it's appropriate for parents to be able to decide what goes into the children's bodies? I don't need to do an analysis on that."
Tapper was taken aback: "So you're trying to lift the vaccine mandate in Florida and your department, and you did not even do a projection as to how this could impact public health."
"So you have not prepared hospitals in the Florida counties most at risk with the best treatments for any outbreaks of measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, polio," he added. "And you have not looked into how many kids might now get these preventable diseases. That's what you're saying?"
"That's what you said," the surgeon general replied. "What I'm saying is that it's an issue of right and wrong in terms of whether parents should be able to control, have ultimate authority over what happens to their kids' bodies."
"I have to say, just I'm very, I'm kind of shocked that you have not done any sort of like projection or data analysis of what this is actually going to, going to literally mean for kids in Florida," Tapper remarked. "You talk about liberty and freedom for parents, but it seems like you're removing liberty and freedom for the parents of kids who are immunocompromised."
