Dr. Oz: Vaccine Mandates Are Bad. I’ll Just Beg People To Get Vaccinated Instead.
from the this-isn't-working dept
I want to say a little something upfront in this post, so that there is no misunderstanding. While I’ve spent a great deal of time outlining why I think RFK Jr. and his cadre of buffoons at HHS and its child agencies are horrible for America and her people’s health, I do understand some of the perspective from people who pushback on vaccinations some of the time. One of those areas are vaccine mandates. Bodily autonomy is and ought to be a very real thing. A government installing mandates for what can and can’t be done with one’s own body is something that needs to be treated with a ton of sensitivity and I can understand why vaccine mandates in general might run afoul of the autonomy concept. Of course, it’s also why the government shouldn’t be in the business of telling women what to do with their bodies, or blanket outlawing things like euthanasia, but the point is I get it.
But there are times when we, as a society, do make some legal demands of the citizenry when it comes to their own physical beings for the betterment of the whole. Not all drugs are federally legal because there are some drugs that, if they were to proliferate, would cause enormous harm to the public that surrounds those individuals. The government does regulate to some extent what appears in our food and medicine, never bothering to ask the public their opinion on the matter. And there are some diseases so horrible that we’ve built some level of a mandate around vaccination, traditionally, especially in exchange for participation in publicly funded schools and the like.
Dr. Oz, television personality turned Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has vocally opposed vaccine mandates in general terms. When Florida dropped the requirement for vaccines for public school children, Oz cheered them on.
In an interview on “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” the Fox News host asked Oz whether he agrees with officials who want to make Florida the first state in the nation to end childhood vaccine requirements and whether Oz would “recommend the same thing to your patients.”
“I would definitely not have mandates for vaccinations,” the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator told MacCallum. “This is a decision that a physician and a patient should be making together,” he continued. “The parents love their kids more than anybody else could love that kid, so why not let the parents play an active role in this?”
The MMR vaccine was one of those required for Florida schools. So, Oz is remarkably clear in the quote above. The government should not be mandating vaccines. Further, the government shouldn’t really have direct input into whether people are getting vaccines or not. That decision should be made strictly by the patient and the doctor who has that patient directly in front of them, or their parents.
Those comments from Oz were made in September of 2025. Fast forward to the present, with a measles outbreak that is completely off the rails in America, and the good doctor is singing a much different tune.
So, Oz is now reduced to begging people to get vaccinated for something that, for decades, everyone routinely got vaccinated for.
“Take the vaccine, please. We have a solution for our problem,” he said. “Not all illnesses are equally dangerous and not all people are equally susceptible to those illnesses,” he hedged. “But measles is one you should get your vaccine.”
To be clear, he’s still not advocating for any sort of mandate. Which is unfortunate, at least when it comes to targeted mandates for public schools and that sort of thing. But in lieu of any actual public policy to combat measles in America, he’s reduced to a combination of begging the public to get vaccinated and telling the general public that a measles shot is definitely one they should be getting.
And on that he’s right. But he’s also talking out of both sides of his mouth. Oz isn’t these people’s doctor. These school children aren’t all sitting directly in front of him. So the same person who advocated for a personalized approach to vaccines is now begging the public to take the measles vaccine from Washington D. C.
That inconsistency is among the many reasons it’s difficult to know just how seriously to take Oz. And consistency is pretty damned key when it comes to government messaging on public health policy. That, in addition to trust, is everything here. And when Oz jumps onto a CNN broadcast to claim that this government, including RFK Jr., have been at the forefront of advocating for the measles vaccine, any trust that is there is torpedoed pretty quickly.
CNN anchor Dana Bash was left in disbelief as one of the president’s top health goons claimed the MAGA administration was a top advocate for vaccines. Addressing the record outbreak of measles in the U.S., particularly in South Carolina, Bash asked Dr. Mehmet Oz on State of the Union Sunday: “Is this a consequence of the administration undermining support for advocacy for measles and other vaccines?” “I don’t believe so,” the Trump-appointed Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator responded. He then said, “We’ve advocated for measles vaccines all along. Secretary Kennedy has been at the very front of this.”
Absolute nonsense. Yes, Kennedy has said to get the measles vaccine. He’s also said maybe everyone should just get measles instead. One of his deputies has hand-waved the outbreak away as being no big deal. Kennedy has advocated for alternative treatments, rather than vaccination.
The government is all over the place on this, in other words. As is Oz himself, in some respects. To sit here in the midst of the worst measles outbreak in decades, beg people to do the one thing that will make this all go away, and then claim that this government has been on the forefront of vaccine advocacy is simply silly.
Filed Under: cmms, hhs, measles, mehmet oz, rfk jr., vaccines
