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COVID-19 vaccines false context

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did not repeal Florida’s school vaccine requirements

A viral tweet takes a statement from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis about COVID-19 vaccine mandates out of context to falsely push the claim that Florida schools will no longer require any vaccinations. Let’s take a look at the facts.

A tweet that says “Ron DeSantis announces Florida schools will no longer require vaccinations for polio, measles, & mumps…” This comment appears as a quote retweet of an Oct. 30 tweet from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that says, “In Florida, there will be no vaccine mandate for children in our schools. This is a decision that belongs to parents.” The News Literacy Project has added a label that says FALSE.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis did not say that Florida schools will no longer require vaccinations for polio, measles and mumps.
DeSantis said in an Oct. 28 press conference that “in Florida there will be no mandate on school children” to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
The state of Florida requires children to receive a number of vaccines before they can enroll in public school, including the polio vaccine and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.

NewsLit takeaway

Outrage and anger are powerful drivers of engagement on social media, and sharing comments, photos and video clips out of context can be easy ways to provoke these emotions. While this post might initially seem like an accurate representation of the retweeted statement from DeSantis, it is grossly misleading. However, social media users casually scrolling through their feeds may react without pausing long enough to figure this out — especially if they have strong feelings about the importance of vaccines or strong partisan opinions about DeSantis. If DeSantis had actually repealed all vaccine mandates for Florida schools, it would have made national headlines.

Featured Fact-Checks

NLP’s viral rumor rundown is a regular feature in The Sift, its weekly email newsletter for educators, and in Get Smart About News, its weekly email newsletter for the general public. You can subscribe to these newsletters here. Send suggestions, questions or feedback on this rumor or on the viral rumor rundown blog to thesift@newslit.org.