State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo spread anti-vaccine misinformation by telling Floridians to avoid mRNA vaccines. Vaccine experts and historians can't remember another state health leader urging residents to avoid an FDA-approved vaccine.

In what has become a pattern of spreading vaccine misinformation, the Florida health department is telling older Floridians and others at highest risk from COVID-19 to avoid most booster shots, saying they are potentially dangerous.

Clinicians and scientists denounced the message as politically fueled scaremongering that also weakens efforts to protect against diseases like measles and whooping cough.

A prominent Florida doctor expressed dismay that medical leaders in the state, leery of angering Gov. Ron DeSantis, have been slow to counter anti-vaccine messages from Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, including the latest COVID bulletin. Ladapo is a DeSantis appointee and the top official at the state health department.

The bulletin makes a number of false or unproven claims about the efficacy and safety of mRNA-based COVID vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna, including that they could threaten “the integrity of the human genome.” Florida’s guidance generally regurgitates ideas from anti-vaccine websites, said John Moore, a professor of microbiology at Weill Cornell Medicine.

  • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
    17·
    1 month ago

    DeSantis was trying to win the 2024 Republican nomination with Covid response as his centerpiece. So he appointed a nutjob to the role.

    Nut job is just proceeding to nutjob.