Choose Your Own Adventure: Florida or California, Health Edition

One bans all protections. The other builds coalitions. Which path leads us out of crisis?

A Tale of Two Responses

In 2025, public health in America has become a choose-your-own-adventure novel, except in this version, one ending includes measles outbreaks, vaccine rollbacks, and a Surgeon General comparing childhood immunizations to slavery.

This week, Florida made headlines for trying to catch up to Idaho. Governor Ron DeSantis and Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo are pushing legislation that would eliminate all childhood vaccine mandates, including those for measles, polio, hepatitis B, and tetanus. In doing so, Florida would follow Idaho’s lead in becoming one of the first states to abolish foundational public health protections under the banner of “medical freedom.” Ladapo, doubling down on anti-science rhetoric, likened school vaccine requirements to “slavery” and “tyranny.”

On the same day, across the country, California, Oregon, and Washington announced a very different strategy: the creation of the West Coast Health Alliance, a tri-state partnership to defend evidence-based public health policy, issue independent vaccine guidance, and shield residents from the increasingly politicized decisions coming from Washington, D.C.

These two headlines dropped within hours of each other. Same week. Same country. Same public health threats. Two radically opposed responses.

It’s no longer just a red vs. blue political divide. It’s a structural rupture in how states interpret responsibility, science, and the government's role in protecting human life.

One side is building an alliance.
The other is tearing up the playbook.

And this is just the beginning.

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Rising Threats, Falling Immunity

While Florida and Idaho are gutting protections, the diseases those vaccines prevent are already making a comeback — not in theory, but in hospital ERs, school nurse offices, and pediatric ICUs across the country.

In Florida alone, pertussis (whooping cough) cases are already on the rise. In the first four months of 2025 alone, the state logged 685 confirmed cases, a sharp increase from previous years. Chickenpox (varicella) is also rising, and the CDC has flagged Florida’s COVID-19 viral activity as “high” based on wastewater surveillance, a strong indicator of a brewing summer wave. This is happening before any official vaccine rollbacks go into effect.

Meanwhile, measles is surging nationwide. With over 1,200 cases already reported in 2025, the U.S. has surpassed totals from several prior years, and public health officials warn this is just the beginning. California alone has reported 20 cases this year across multiple counties. Washington and Oregon have seen smaller clusters. No state is immune. However, states with weakened mandates are particularly vulnerable.

Why? Because herd immunity is breaking down.

In Oregon, for example, only 86% of kindergartners are fully vaccinated, which is well below the 95% threshold required to prevent measles outbreaks. In red states with expanded vaccine exemptions or outright bans, the numbers are even lower. It’s no longer a matter of if there will be outbreaks, but when, where, and how bad.

We have the data. We have the historical precedent. What we don’t have — in many states — is the political will to act on it.

This isn’t just a seasonal spike. It’s the natural consequence of decades of hard-won immunization infrastructure being torn down in real time.

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Federal Collapse: Science on the Sidelines

Once upon a time, states looked to the CDC for guidance in moments like this — rising infections, declining vaccination rates, emerging variants. Today, that leadership is not just absent. It’s been systematically dismantled from within.

Under the leadership of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the CDC has been hollowed out, politicized, and rendered nearly unrecognizable. In August, newly appointed CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired just weeks into her tenure, reportedly for refusing to restrict access to vaccines as ordered. Four senior CDC leaders resigned in protest, including experts in immunization, pandemic response, and public health data. One of them reportedly described the agency as “dead in everything but name.”

See our recent reporting here:

Vaccines Are Being Restricted and the Scientists Who Fought Back Just Got Fired

That wasn’t an exaggeration. The CDC’s Vaccine Advisory Committee was dissolved. Key programs in maternal health, disease forecasting, and community immunization were slashed. Scientific reports were censored, especially those touching on vaccine safety, equity, or diversity. According to internal documents, over 20,000 staff across HHS are expected to be cut in the reorganization.

And then it got worse.

After a vaccine-related shooting at CDC headquarters in July — an attack that left two people dead — more than 1,000 HHS employees signed a letter demanding RFK Jr.’s resignation, accusing him of fueling the very anti-science rhetoric that led to the violence. The letter warned that the current policy is “placing Americans in direct harm.”

See that reporting here:

750 HHS Employees Confront RFK Jr. Over Vaccine Lies and Violence

The federal government has abdicated its role as a scientific authority. With trust in national institutions plummeting, states are now making critical health decisions in a vacuum, or worse, using ideology as their guiding principle.

Public health is now a state-by-state gamble. And in some places, the house always loses.

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Who Pays the Price?

While states like Florida and Idaho strip away protections under the banner of “freedom,” the people most at risk don’t get to make a choice at all.

For immunocompromised families, the stakes are life and death. Consider a family with multiple children. One of them had a kidney transplant. That child is immunosuppressed, meaning any exposure to measles, pertussis, or even the flu could be fatal. As a result, all of the kids are homeschooled, not by preference, but by necessity. Now, with COVID vaccines being federally limited in access, any trip beyond their home is a gamble. Working with other homeschooling families to develop cooperative learning and social interaction is literally deadly.

This family lives in lockdown while others shout about liberty. Because when herd immunity breaks down, people like that child don’t just lose options. They lose access to society itself, and so do their families.

An estimated 6–7% of American adults are immunocompromised, and that doesn’t count children or the elderly, whose immune systems are naturally weaker. Now, any school child, teacher, or staff member, no matter their own vaccination status, is potentially exposed to unvaccinated peers and bringing home viruses that their own system may struggle with, and which may be a death sentence to a vulnerable loved one.

And it’s not just individual families making sacrifices. It’s entire communities.

Black, Latino, Indigenous, and low-income families already face higher rates of chronic illness, lower access to healthcare, and greater exposure to infectious disease due to work and housing conditions. Now, they’re the ones most impacted by the collapse of public health infrastructure, especially in states rolling back vaccines, masking, and school-based protections.

There’s nothing “equal opportunity” about viral spread. When protections vanish, the consequences land hardest on those already carrying the heaviest burdens.

These policy decisions aren’t just reckless. They’re discriminatory by outcome, if not intent.

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Two Paths Forward

Faced with the same set of threats — resurgent diseases, declining vaccine rates, a federal agency in freefall — states are forging two very different futures.

On one side: Florida, Idaho, and their ideological allies.
On the other: California, Oregon, Washington, and a growing circle of public health defenders.

Florida frames its approach as freedom first. The West Coast is betting on coordination, credibility, and care.

These aren’t just policy differences. They are ideological fractures. One model accepts the risk of outbreaks, treating vulnerable lives as acceptable collateral. The other is trying to hold the line, even as the center collapses.

And other states are watching.

Some are already choosing sides. States like Texas, Mississippi, and West Virginia are proposing their own anti-mandate legislation. Meanwhile, states like Illinois, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and New Mexico are exploring stronger regional cooperation and maintaining CDC-adjacent advisory structures.

We’re witnessing the fragmentation of national public health, not by accident, but by design. Your protection, your child’s safety, your community’s immunity: it all depends on what your state decides next.

Because in 2025, health is no longer federal. It’s geographical, political, and local.

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Idaho: First to the Poisoned Punch

While Florida grabs the headlines, Idaho quietly beat them to the punch. In early 2025, the Idaho legislature passed House Bill 32, banning mask mandates at all levels of government, including schools, health districts, and public agencies. At the same time, lawmakers expanded vaccine exemption rights and stripped public institutions of the authority to enforce immunization rules.

Florida may be louder, but Idaho was first.

If you're looking for a case study in what happens when ideology completely overrides evidence, Idaho is the template, a state where political leaders proudly outlawed the bare minimum in public health protection while simultaneously arguing that the CDC can’t be trusted.

It’s gotten so absurd, you could almost laugh if the stakes weren’t so deadly.

Idaho’s favorite crop, the humble potato, has more health protections than its children. The tuber receives vaccines, pesticides, and sometimes even comes with a foil wrapper. The children? Thoughts and prayers.

When your public health policies are being compared to Florida’s — and you're the one going further — it’s time to ask whether you've pioneered something or simply abandoned your responsibility to protect people.

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A Fractured Nation: Choose Your Model

This isn’t just a policy debate. It’s a defining moment for American public health.

The collapse of federal guidance has created a vacuum, and states are rushing to fill it. Some, like California, Oregon, and Washington, are forming alliances, building shared frameworks, and doubling down on science. Others, like Florida and Idaho, are dismantling decades of public health policy, banning mandates, blocking masks, and framing basic disease prevention as tyranny.

Every state now faces a choice, and every resident does, too.

Do we want to live in a country where herd immunity is a distant memory and measles outbreaks are the norm? Where immunocompromised families are forced into isolation, while others chant about liberty? Where vulnerable communities are sacrificed in the name of individualism?

Or do we want to build a model rooted in evidence, equity, and shared responsibility?

Because make no mistake, your zip code now determines your level of protection, and public health has become a political border war.

So as more states consider which model to follow, ask yourself:

• Will we be Florida… or California?

• Will we be Idaho… or something better?

Because the fork in the road is here, and the consequences are already unfolding.

Sources:

• “Florida plans to end all state vaccine mandates, including for schools” - Reuters

• “'Shameful' Vaccine Changes From Florida, RFK Jr., 'Turn the Clock Back to the Bad Old Days,' Expert Says” - People

• “California, Oregon and Washington form health alliance amid federal vaccine tensions” - Reuters

• “Covid backlash gave anti‑vaxxers a foothold…” - The Washington Post (Opinion)

• “What polls show about Americans' views on childhood vaccine mandates” - AP

• “Florida Seeks to Be First to Ban Vaccine Mandates for Children in the State” - AJMC

• “AMA statement on Florida ending all vaccine mandates” - American Medical Association