On Thursday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya commented on Florida moving to scrap vaccine mandates by stating that he’s not speaking for the administration, but not having mandates “seems to be the better approach” and “The strategy of using mandates, it’s not obvious it’s the right one.”

Bhattacharya said, “I’m not sure exactly what — the administration yet has a take on this, but I’ll tell you, Rob, if you look in the U.K., if you look in Sweden, you look in Denmark, none of them have vaccine mandates for any of their vaccines. All of the vaccines are voluntary in those places. What they do have is public health that doesn’t lie to their people. And so, you have amazing vaccine uptake for vaccines like MMR in all of those places, without vaccine mandates, without violating bodily autonomy of people, because public health has the trust of the people because they’re trustworthy. The problem in the United States has been, public health hasn’t been trustworthy, especially during COVID, you saw a lot of, like, exaggerations about the vaccine’s — the COVID vaccine’s ability to stop you from getting and spreading COVID, for instance, and the mandates, they just deepen the distrust. The strategy of using mandates, it’s not obvious it’s the right one. And, as I said, like in Europe, you have a very, very different strategy and they have better results than we do on uptake of essential vaccines like the MMR.”

He added, “They’re not coercing people. What they’re doing, they’re reasoning with people. I find that approach quite attractive. I’m not making an announcement as far as the administration is concerned. I’m just telling you my point of view as an epidemiologist and scientist, that that seems to be the better approach to public health, talk to people, talk to them about the data, what the data actually show and don’t show, be honest about what — when there are problems, and then, treat people like adults, especially parents, to help them make good decisions for their families.”

Earlier, Bhattacharya said that with the MMR vaccine, “you have 90-plus percent of parents vaccinating their kids, which makes complete sense, given what the scientific evidence says and the risk-benefit ratios and stuff. For the COVID vaccine, less than 20% of Americans have vaccinated their children…because it doesn’t make sense for most of their kids from a scientific point of view.”