In what has become a pattern of spreading vaccine misinformation, the Florida health department is telling older Floridians and others at highest risk of COVID 19 so most of the shots push, saying they have the potential to be dangerous.
Clinicians and scientists denounced the message as political scaremongering that also weakens efforts to protect against diseases like measles and whooping cough.
A prominent Florida doctor expressed dismay that the state’s medical leaders, fueled by anger at Gov. Ron DeSantis, are slow to fight back. anti-vaccine message from Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, including the latest COVID bulletin. Ladapo is DeSantis’ representative and the top official in the state health department.
The bulletin made several 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.” The Florida guidelines largely drew on ideas from anti-vaccine websites, said John Moore, a professor of microbiology at Weill Cornell Medicine.
Ladapo did not respond to a request for comment. DeSantis referred questions to the health department, which said the surgeon general’s guidance and quotes “speak for themselves” and pointed to a post made on social media platform X that accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA of “saving America.”
DeSantis has positioned himself and his administration as a bulwark against vaccine mandates, lockdowns and other public health protections adopted during the pandemic to prevent infections and save lives. The COVID vaccination has become a partisan issue, with a survey by KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News, finding that Republicans have less faith in the safety and efficacy of the shot than Democrats.
But the vaccine historian consulted for this article cannot remember the nation’s health leaders before urging citizens to avoid FDA-approved and CDC-recommended vaccinations. “This is unprecedented,” said Paul Offit, director of the Center for Vaccine Education at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Florida’s medical leaders need to speak out more forcefully against Ladapo’s attack on public health, said Jeffrey Goldhagen, a pediatrician and professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville. Ladapo urged people under the age of 65 to avoid the last year’s COVID shot and to reject public health protocols to fight measles outbreaks.
“What you’re seeing is a pattern of fear and disregard for professional responsibility across the country, in part because of the fear of this governor and the revenge of this governor,” said Goldhagen, the former director of the health department in Jacksonville.
He specifically criticized the Florida Medical Association, a trade group for doctors, because Ladapo is a non-voting member of the board of governors. The association did not respond to an email seeking comment.
The Florida Health Care Association, whose members run more than 600 long-term care facilities, declined to comment on Ladapo’s newsletter. One nursing home chain, LeadingAge Southeast, said it was aware of federal and state recommendations on COVID boosters and encouraged providers to “engage with residents, families and health care professionals to make informed decisions.”
US Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman Cherie Duvall-Jones said the agency “disagrees with the Florida Surgeon General’s characterization of the safety and effectiveness of the updated COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.” The vaccine meets the FDA’s “scientific and rigorous standards,” he said, and he urged people to get boosters because the population’s immunity to COVID has waned.
Among the erroneous claims, the Florida bulletin said the new mRNA enhancer mistakenly targeted a variant of the virus, Omicron, that no longer circulates. This is wrong, because all major variants of COVID in the last two years evolved from Omicron and subsequent mutations.
“You start with and then go into head-exploding-emoji territory,” says Moore. “It’s a litany of lies from the anti-vaxxer playbook.”
Other claims in the Ladapo newsletter include:
- The COVID-19 booster has not undergone clinical trials. That’s right The COVID booster shotwhose mRNA sequence was slightly changed from the previous shot, was not tested in a large trial. There is no annual influenza vaccine. By the time these tests are complete, flu season will be over. But the native mRNA image undergoing clinical trials, and like the flu shot, “a lot of evidence is accumulating to support the continued use of the vaccine,” said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health.
- The shot increases the risk of infections, autoimmune diseases and other conditions. “I don’t know where the claim came from, but it’s not accepted by the general medical community,” said William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Serious side effects occur, rarely, as with any drug. US authorities were among the first to detect rare cases of myocarditis, an inflammation of heart tissue, in young adults who received the COVID vaccine. Most patients recover quickly. Myocarditis is more commonly caused by the COVID infection itself.
- The shot can cause protein levels to spike and foreign genetic material in the blood. These concerns, which have been circulating on social media, have either been refuted or not resolved. For example, the number of billions of bacterial DNA suspected of contaminating a COVID shot is reduced by other exposures, Offit said. “You meet foreign DNA all the time, assuming you live on the planet and eat anything made from animals or vegetables,” he said. “I don’t know Dr. Ladapo, but I think he does.”
- America faces “unknown risks” from so many booster shots. Scientists see the possibility of “overvaccination” every time they study boosters. So far, there are no safety risks associated with multiple immunizations, Schaffner said.
- Floridians should exercise and eat vegetables and “healthy fats.” “This will benefit public health, but nothing will prevent COVID,” Schaffner said.
The bulletin urges all Floridians, including older residents, to avoid the mRNA vaccine and seek alternatives. But that’s a “no in good faith” because it doesn’t mention the only non-mRNA vaccine available, from Novavax, Dean said.
Some critics of the Ladapo newsletter say it reads like trying to work for the long-serving Trump administration. anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who said Trump wanted him to help senior health officials. Trump has said that children receive too many vaccines and has suggested that vaccines cause autism, a myth that has been debunked by years of scientific research.
Ironically, even as his administration fast-tracked the creation of the first COVID vaccine, Trump refused to take the shot in public, as presidents have done during past outbreaks.
The statement of the Ladapo vaccine “conforms to Project 2025“said Offit, referring to the conservative Heritage Foundation’s policy blueprint. While the plan’s authors included officials from Trump’s first term, he said it did not reflect his views.
The document called the CDC “perhaps the most incompetent and arrogant agency in the federal government.”
Organized resistance to vaccines has existed during vaccination itself. In the six months since the mRNA vaccine was released in December 2020, about 70% of American adults have been vaccinated. People who refuse put themselves at greater risk of hospitalization or death if they get COVID, study shows.
Cheryl Holder, an internist who practices in Miami, said Ladapo’s claims have reduced interest in vaccinations overall. People who are blasé about COVID “also don’t want to get the tetanus vaccine, and they don’t want to get the pneumococcal vaccine, or the flu vaccine,” he said.
“We’re in an age of disinformation,” Offit said. “It’s definitely a profitable business, more profitable than the information business. But what really bothers me is when you have someone with credentials stand up and say this stupid thing.”
Ladapo, he noted, has a medical degree and a doctorate from Harvard.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF – an independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.
