Small Gestures For A Better Future
Lincoln laying in state
Please!
Really, please!
If you’re any age between conception and 140-years-old, don’t come to Florida!
At least until the present governor and his surgeon general have completed their Elvis impersonations and “left the building.” [You must be a certain age to appreciate that line. Or you can Google it.]
Right on time for the start of the school year, the undynamic duo announced their intention to eliminate as many vaccine requirements as possible for Florida public schools.
When Florida’s surgeon general got on stage on Wednesday [September 3] and boasted that Florida would push to end “every last one” of its vaccine mandates, he had spoken with the governor just the night before.
“This is where I think we should shoot for, are you OK if I do it,” DeSantis recounted [Surgeon General Joseph] Ladapo saying, sharing that the surgeon general had called him to talk “last night.”
DeSantis said he told Ladapo to “shoot for the moon.”
The Miami Herald. “Surgeon general of Florida wants to end
Vaccine mandate. Will GOP go along?” September 7, 2025
Dr. Ladapo has faced repeated criticism from others in his field for his stances on public health. He allowed parents to choose whether to send unvaccinated children to school during a measles outbreak in Weston, Fla., in 2024, rejecting longstanding, evidence-based public health guidelines. The misinformation he spread about Covid vaccines prompted a public rebuke from the C.D.C. in 2023.
The New York Times. “Florida Moves to End Vaccine
Mandates for Schoolchildren.” September 4, 2025
Florida’s surgeon general did no research before moving to nix vaccine mandates as cases of preventable diseases rise across the state.
“Before you made this decision to try to lift vaccine mandates for Florida, did your department do any data analysis of how many new cases of these diseases there will be with no vaccine mandates?” CNN host Jake Tapper asked Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, noting that case or Hepatitis A, whooping cough, and chickenpox are on the rise in Florida
“Absolutely not,” Ladapo proudly shot back. “There’s this conflation of the science, and what is the right and wrong thing to do.”
On Wednesday, Ladapo and Governor Ron DeSantis announced plans to repeal every law requiring mandatory vaccinations, which Ladapo has described as akin to “slavery.” In addition to previously calling COVID shots “the Antichrist,” Ladapo said growing doubts against vaccines are “reflections of God’s light against the darkness of tyranny and oppression.”
…In addition to bypassing science altogether, Ladapo has a history of cooking the books to make vaccines look dangerous. Ladapo was found guilty in 2023 of altering study data to make COVID-19 vaccinations appear dangerous to young men.
[EDITORS’ NOTE: Ladapo was not criminally charged; the issues were academic. He was accused of “scientific fraud,” promoting “manipulated data” and replacing language in a Florida Department of Health study on mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in order to create the impression that men 18 to 39 were at a higher risk of heart-related (myocarditis) disease after receiving a COVI-19 vaccine.]
During his CNN appearance Saturday, he further defended this week’s move by citing whooping cough, claiming “that’s an example of a vaccine that’s ineffective” and that “the data show that it’s ineffective at preventing transmission.”
[EDITORS’ NOTE: The Centers for Disease Control (June 11 2025) reported:
“In 2024, reported cases of pertussis increased across the United States. Preliminary data show that more than six times as many cases were reported in 2024 compared to 2023. The number of reported cases in 2024 was higher than what was seen in 2019, prior to the pandemic…
“Reported cases of pertussis have been trending down since a peak in November 2024. However, preliminary case reports remain elevated in 2025 compared to immediately before the pandemic. There's no distinct seasonal pattern to pertussis, but past trends suggest that cases may increase in summer and fall.
“Vaccination is the best way to prevent pertussis. However, as typical infection patterns return to the United States, CDC expects pertussis cases to increase both in unvaccinated and vaccinated populations. Pertussis occurs in vaccinated people since protection from vaccination fades over time.”]
Otherwise known as pertussis, whooping cough is a highly contagious respiratory tract infection that can be deadly among children. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the vaccine fully protects 98 percent of kids within a year of receiving the jab, and around 71 percent within five years.
The World Health Organization reports a 90 percent reduction in whooping cough cases and mortality across the industrialized world following the vaccine’s introduction in the 1950s and 1960s.
“In terms of analysis - ultimately, this is an issue, very clearly, of parents’ rights,” Ladapo said. “Do I need to analyze whether it’s appropriate for parents to be able to decide what goes into their children’s bodies? I don’t need to do an analysis on that.”
The Daily Beast. “Florida Surgeon General stuns CNN Host With
Admission: ‘Kind of Shocked’” September 7, 2025
In July 2020, the now Florida surgeon general appeared as a part of an epidemiologist- and immunologists-free group called America’s Frontline Doctors in a 43-minute video promoting hydroxychloroquine as a “cure” for COVID-19. One of the featured speakers in that Tea Party Patriots-organized stunt was Dr. Stella Immanuel, who operated a “medical clinic” in a Texas strip mall next to her Firepower Ministries church and claimed that ovarian cysts and endometriosis are caused by “demonic seed” inserted into sleeping individuals when they have sex with demons in their dreams. [EDITORS’ NOTE: We can’t make this stuff up.]
According to the Florida Department of Health, at the start of the 2025-2026 school year, K-12students were required to have the following immunizations:
Diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTaP) – four or five doses
Inactivated Polio vaccine (IPV) – four or five doses
Measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) – two doses
Hepatitis B (Hep B) – three doses
Varicella – two doses or a documented history of the diseases
Tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis (Tdap); and additional dose is required for children entering, attending or transferring to the seven grade one doses is required for students entering seventh grade
Florida’s ivy Leage-educated governor (He fled Jacksonville for the Ivies.) is fond of citing the numbers of vaccinations required of Florida students.
Except he leaves out the history and reason for that number.
HISTORY:
In the 1720s, Jesuits in the Amazon were using “variolation” - inoculation with virus obtained from people who had mild cases of smallpox – to fight the disease among Indigenous peoples. Ironically, European settlers and the African slave trade brought smallpox into the Caribbean and Central and South America.
In 1757, Pope Benedict XIV was inoculated (variolation) against smallpox.
In 7777, General George Washigton required revolutionary War troops to undergo variolation.
In 1796, Edward Jenner, mimicking practices that were already old in India and China and based on two distinct concepts - first, that one attack of smallpox effectively protected against any subsequent attack and, second, that a person deliberately infected with a mild case of the disease would safely acquire such protection – used matter from a cowpox lesion of Sarah Nelmes, a young dairymaid to infect eight-year-old James Phipps. Six weeks later Jenner inoculated/infected the boy again – with smallpox. No disease developed and the protection was complete. Jenner became the first to test a smallpox vaccination in a scientific method and proved the vaccine worked.
In 1810, the Massachusetts legislature passed a law giving local health boards the authority to require smallpox vaccinations. Between 1811 and 1837, only thirty-nine smallpox deaths were reported and, in 1838, the Massachusetts legislature, thinking that vaccination was no longer required and that it infringed on individual liberties, repealed the law. By 1855, there were 1,032 reported smallpox deaths and the legislature again passed compulsory vaccination laws.
In 1822 Pope Pius VII initiated a comprehensive vaccination campaign against smallpox in the Papal States.
Pope Leo XII (1823-1829) NEVER SAID “Whoever allows himself to be vaccinated ceases to be a child of God. Smallpox is a judgment of God, the vaccination is a challenge toward heaven.”
On April 12, 1955, following a large-scale trial with nearly two million “Polio Pioneers,” Dr. Jonas Salk announced the first successful killed-virus polio vaccine. By 1962, U.S. cases dropped from over 45,000 annually to 910.
By the late 1950s, polio, smallpox and DPT – Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis – vaccines were part of the recommended series.
In 1963, the measles vaccine was developed.
The mumps vaccine became available in 1967.
The rubella vaccine was available in 1969.
MMR – measles/mumps/rubella - vaccine was developed by Dr. Maurice Hilleman in 1971.
Because smallpox had been eliminated, the vaccination was no longer recommended after 1972.
The vaccine for Haemophilus influenzae type B was licensed in 1985 and placed on the recommended schedule in 1989.
Hepatitis B vaccine was recommended in 1994; it had been licensed in 1981 and recommended for high-risk groups in 1981.
Between 1995 and 2010, new vaccines were added: Varicella (chickenpox) 1996; rotavirus (1998-1999); hepatitis A (2000); pneumococcal vaccine (2002).
Oral polio vaccine was discontinued in 2000.
The first shingles vaccine was licensed in 2006
In 2011 vaccinations for Human Papillomavirus (HPV) were recommended for males.
Late 2020 the first COVID-19 vaccines were approved in response to a developing pandemic.
In 2023, the first vaccines against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) became available for adults 60 years of age and older.
REASON:
Science, Medicine and Theology are not stagnant. They are on-going and constantly developing. In the same way, viruses and their associated diseases are constantly evolving. (Oh, dear God, the priests are writing about Evolution.) COVID-19 did not exist in 2016 or 2017, maybe even 2018. It’s called COVID-19 because it was first identified in 2019. In keeping up with the evolution of disease, Science and Medicine develop new medications and vaccinations and, for the public good, some of those vaccinations may be required.
THEOLOGY:
Respectfully (and one of the authors is writing about his own Church), the Roman Catholic Church is History’s absolute master at producing complex and complicated word salad-like documents. This is because major RCC documents reflect two-thousand-plus years of moral/social teaching; cite Sacred Scripture; and draw on twenty-two centuries of theological writing, papal documents, Church councils, and other sources. Church/Vatican statements are often dense, sometimes ponderous, but always well documented and well considered; and they are never the product of some political appointee saying “I don’t need to do an analysis…”
During the early stages of COVID-19 vaccinations, some elements of the Church were roiled by a debate offer the morality of using vaccines that, decades prior in early research and development, used cells derived from 1950s elective abortions.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the highest department or office in the Church) resolved the issue with the December 17, 2020 “Note on the morality of using some anti-Covd-19 vaccines.”
“In any case, from the ethical point of view, the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one's own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good. In the absence of other means to stop or even prevent the epidemic, the common good may recommend vaccination, especially to protect the weakest and most exposed. Those who, however, for reasons of conscience, refuse vaccines produced with cell lines from aborted fetuses, must do their utmost to avoid, by other prophylactic means and appropriate behavior, becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent. In particular, they must avoid any risk to the health of those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons, and who are the most vulnerable.” [Emphasis in original document.]
On January 14, 2021, Vatican News confirmed that Pope Francis and Pope emeritus Benidict XIV had received their first COVID-19 vaccinations. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Vatican and other Church-related statements have made it clear that, when there are several scientific steps of removal from an original abortion in which fetal cells were collected for the purpose of research and vaccine development, receiving such vaccines is morally acceptable.
Shortly before receiving his first COVID-19 vaccination, Pope Francis declared that not only was it morally acceptable, but it was also an ethical obligation to receive the vaccine because it would help save lives.
In a video produced in conjunction with the Ad Council and Roman Catholic bishops from across the Americas, Francis declared,
“Thanks to God’s grace and the work of many, we now have vaccines to protect us from Covid-19. In any case, from the ethical point of view, the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one's own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good. In the absence of other means to stop or even prevent the epidemic, the common good may recommend vaccination, especially to protect the weakest and most exposed. Those who, however, for reasons of conscience, refuse vaccines produced with cell lines from aborted fetuses, must do their utmost to avoid, by other prophylactic means and appropriate behavior, becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent. In particular, they must avoid any risk to the health of those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons, and who are the most vulnerable.”
Pope Francis noted that social and political love is built up through “small, individual gestures capable of transforming and improving societies. Getting vaccinated is a simple yet profound way to care for one another, especially the most vulnerable.” He then added that he prayed that “each one of us can make his or her own small gesture of love. No matter how small, love is always grand. Small gestures for a better future.”
“Ay, there’s the rub…”
Hamlet
Hamlet. Act III, Scene 1
William Shakespeare
To posture, pose and play with others health and lives for votes the next time you run for president…
To cook the books to make vaccines look dangerous and alter study data to make COVID-19 vaccinations appear injurious to young men.
Ay, there’s the rub
Or…
To perform “small, individual gestures capable of transforming and improving societies. Getting vaccinated is a simple yet profound way to care for one another, especially the most vulnerable… each one of us can make his or her own small gesture of love. No matter how small, love is always grand. Small gestures for a better future.”
Ay, there’s the rub