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.

  • @ironsoapEnglish
    21•1 day ago

    I read this on the 14th or so and did a face palm. Floridaland is for the alligators apparently.

    Additionally, the federal government has failed to provide sufficient data to support the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 boosters, or acknowledge previously demonstrated safety concerns associated with COVID-19 vaccines and boosters, including:

    • prolonged circulation of mRNA and spike protein in some vaccine recipients,
    • increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections, and
    • increased risk of autoimmune disease after vaccination.

    And my favorite:

    • Potential DNA integration from the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines pose unique and elevated risk to human health and to the integrity of the human genome, including the risk that DNA integrated into sperm or egg gametes could be passed onto offspring of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine recipients.

    Apparently we are at risk of covid immune babies!