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FLORIDA’S NEW COVID BOOSTER GUIDANCE IS STRAIGHT-UP MISINFORMATION
 
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Arthur Allen, Daniel Chang and Sam Whitehead
September 23, 2024
KFF Health News
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_ Ladapo’s vaccine statement “aligns with Project 2025.”
Several critics of Ladapo’s bulletin said it read like a tryout for
a job in a Trump administration advised by longtime anti-vaccine
activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. _

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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
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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.

Ladapo did not respond to a request for comment. DeSantis referred
questions to the health department, which said the surgeon general’s
guidance and citations “speak for themselves” and pointed to
a post he made
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platform X accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and
FDA of “gaslighting Americans.”

DeSantis has styled himself and his administration as a xxxxxx
against vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and other restrictive public
health protections adopted during the pandemic to curb infections and
save lives. Covid vaccination has become a partisan issue, with
surveys by KFF, the health information nonprofit that includes KFF
Health News, finding that Republicans have far less confidence
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the safety and efficacy of the shots than Democrats.

But vaccine historians consulted for this article could not recall any
previous state health leader urging residents to shun an FDA-approved
and CDC-recommended vaccination. “It’s unprecedented,” said Paul
Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s
Hospital of Philadelphia.

Florida medical leaders should speak out more forcefully against
Ladapo’s attacks on public health, said Jeffrey Goldhagen, a
pediatrician and professor at the University of Florida College of
Medicine in Jacksonville. Ladapo urged people under 65 to avoid covid
shots last year and has rejected public health protocols for fighting
measles outbreaks.

“What you see is a pattern of fear and neglect of professional
responsibilities across the state, in part because of the fear of this
governor and the vindictiveness of this governor,” said Goldhagen, a
former health department director in Jacksonville.

He specifically criticized the Florida Medical Association, a trade
group for physicians, noting that Ladapo is a nonvoting member of the
group’s board of governors. The association did not respond to
emails requesting comment.

The Florida Health Care Association, whose members run more than 600
long-term care facilities, declined to comment on Ladapo’s bulletin.
One nursing home chain, LeadingAge Southeast, said it was aware of
both federal and state recommendations on covid boosters and
encouraged providers to “engage with their residents, families, and
healthcare professionals to make informed decisions.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Cherie
Duvall-Jones, said the agency “strongly disagrees with the State
Surgeon General of Florida’s characterization of the safety and
effectiveness of the updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.” The vaccines
met the FDA’s “rigorous, scientific standards,” she said, and
she urged people to get boosters since the population’s covid
immunity has waned.

Among its incorrect claims, the Florida bulletin says the new mRNA
boosters wrongly target a viral variant, omicron, that is no longer
circulating widely. This is false, since all major variants of covid
in the past two years evolved from omicron and subsequent mutations.

“You start off with that and then you go into head-exploding-emoji
territory,” Moore said. “It’s a litany of lies out of the
anti-vaxxer playbook.”

Other claims in Ladapo’s bulletin include:

* COVID BOOSTERS DON’T UNDERGO CLINICAL TRIALS. It’s true that
covid booster shots, whose mRNA sequences are changed slightly from
previous shots, aren’t tested in large trials. Neither are annual
influenza vaccines. By the time such tests would be completed, flu
season would be over. But the original mRNA shots underwent clinical
trials, and as with flu shots, “a lot of evidence has been collected
in support of the ongoing use of the vaccines,” said Natalie Dean, a
biostatistician at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public
Health.
* THE SHOTS POSE A RISK OF INFECTIONS, AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE, AND OTHER
CONDITIONS. “I don’t know where these claims come from, but they
aren’t accepted by the general medical community,” said William
Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University School of Medicine infectious
disease specialist. Serious side effects do occur, rarely, as with any
medication. U.S. authorities were among the first to detect rare
occurrences of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart tissue, in
young adults who got the covid vaccine. Most patients recovered
quickly. Myocarditis is more commonly caused by covid infection
itself.
* THE SHOTS COULD CAUSE ELEVATED LEVELS OF SPIKE PROTEIN AND FOREIGN
GENETIC MATERIAL IN THE BLOOD. These concerns, which circulate on
social media, have been disproved or have not panned out. For example,
the billionths-of-a-gram quantities of bacterial DNA alleged to be
contaminating covid shots are dwarfed by our other exposures, Offit
said. “You encounter 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 assume he does.”
* AMERICANS FACE “UNKNOWN RISK” FROM TOO MANY BOOSTER
SHOTS. Scientists look at the possibility of “overvaccination”
every time they study boosters. So far, no safety risks have been
associated with multiple immunizations, Schaffner said.
* FLORIDIANS SHOULD GET EXERCISE AND EAT VEGETABLES AND “HEALTHY
FATS.” “These things will benefit your general health, but none
of them will prevent covid,” Schaffner said.

The bulletin urges all Floridians, including older residents, to avoid
mRNA vaccines and find alternatives. But it comes off as “not in
good faith” because it doesn’t specifically mention the only
non-mRNA vaccine available, from Novavax, Dean said.

Several critics of Ladapo’s bulletin said it read like a tryout for
a job in a Trump administration advised by longtime anti-vaccine
activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has said Trump wants him to help
vet senior health officials. Trump has said children receive too many
vaccines and suggested that vaccines cause autism, a myth debunked by
years of scientific research.

Ironically, although his administration oversaw the triumphantly rapid
creation of the first covid vaccines, Trump declined to receive his
shots in public, as presidents have done during past epidemics.

Ladapo’s vaccine statement “aligns with Project 2025,” Offit
said, referring to the conservative Heritage Foundation policy
blueprint. While the plan’s authors include officials from Trump’s
first term, he has said it doesn’t reflect his views.

The document calls the CDC “perhaps the most incompetent and
arrogant agency in the federal government.”

Organized resistance to vaccines has existed as long as vaccination
itself. Within six months of the release of the mRNA vaccines in
December 2020, about 70% of American adults were vaccinated. Those who
refused put themselves at greater risk of hospitalization
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death [[link removed]] if they
contracted covid, studies have shown.

Cheryl Holder, an internist who practices in Miami, said Ladapo’s
statements had dampened interest in vaccination overall. People who
are blasé about covid “also don’t want to take the tetanus
vaccine, and they don’t want to take the pneumococcal vaccine, or
the flu vaccine,” she said.

“We’re in the disinformation age,” Offit said. “It’s
certainly a lucrative business, more lucrative than the information
business. But what really bothers me is when you have people who are
credentialed stand up and say these ridiculous things.”

Ladapo, he noted, has medical and doctoral degrees from Harvard.

_Healthbeat is a nonprofit newsroom covering public health published
by Civic News Company [[link removed]] and KFF Health News
[[link removed]]. Sign up for its newsletters here
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_Arthur Allen: [email protected]
[[link removed]], @ArthurAllen202
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Daniel Chang: [email protected]
[[link removed]], @dchangmiami
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Sam Whitehead: [email protected]
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* COVID-19
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* vaccines
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* mRNA
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* Florida
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* Joseph Ladapo
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* Ron DeSantis
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