Florida has much going for it, but the state’s public health system doesn’t make the list. The opprobrium is largely due to its head, Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo. He is infamous for his failure to manage his state’s COVID crisis, which experts believe led to thousands of unnecessary deaths.
Just last month, Ladapo’s department issued updated guidance on COVID care, again questioning the safety of the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, including their administration to older adults and people with underlying health problems.
This weekend, the anti-science zealot is taking his vaccine conspiracy theories on the road, speaking at an alternative healthcare conference in Waltham, Massachusetts. Among the star attractions: Christiane Northrup, a crackpot “health educator” who believes that intuition and magic can cure disease, promulgates health misinformation, and is promoted by the QAnon crazies. As though that weren’t enough, she is an unapologetic pro-Hitler, antisemitic conspiracy theorist.
Crackpots all, but none have had the life-and-death influence of Dr. Ladapo. The Harvard-trained cardiovascular specialist has long questioned the safety of COVID vaccines, and early in the pandemic joined a petition opposing the FDA’s rapid Emergency Use Authorizations of the desperately needed Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines. He justified his position by claiming his views are “part of God’s plan.”
Ladapo’s delusions about COVID-19 vaccines are expansive. In February [of 2023], he sent a letter to then-FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky that was filled with baseless claims about the supposed dangers of the mRNA vaccines. Some of the data in the letter appeared to be completely fabricated – that is, inconsistent with safety data found elsewhere.
During a September 2023 roundtable convened by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Ladapo said repeatedly that there is “not a drop of clinical trial data” to support the latest round of COVID vaccines, and he warned healthy adults under the age of 65 not to take them. The first part of that statement was a flagrant falsehood; the second part was medical malpractice guaranteed to spread COVID and increase hospitalizations and deaths.
Later that year, during an interview on Fox News, he went even further, condemning the public health establishment because, in the absence of evidence, he claimed, “they’re pushing [the new round of mRNA vaccines] on human beings. That is an anti-human approach … an anti-human policy.” He said he would not recommend the vaccines “to any living being on this planet.” That wholly unhinged and unethical statement has made this physician and health czar a favorite on far-right talk shows.
Ladapo might think that God told him to make such statements, but they are baseless and directly contradict the CDC and FDA and their respective advisory committees, all of which recommend the new round of vaccines for everyone over the age of six months. And as long as we’re invoking the Almighty in public health policy, consider this from an article by Dr. David Hooker, a pastor who teaches biomedical science at Monash University in Australia:
“I give thanks to God that we have developed Covid-19 vaccines far more rapidly than vaccines of previous decades… Thank God that mRNA vaccines can be produced in larger amounts, more simply, and with greater precision than older whole-virus vaccines. Thank God for his provision of medical science and the good that comes of it.”
Deception about vaccine side effects
Ladapo fails to understand (or intentionally ignores) the purpose and mode of reporting of vaccine side effects, or “adverse events,” to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). He has cited numbers of the vaccines’ adverse effects reported to VAERS, but as is spelled out clearly on the CDC website:
VAERS is the nation’s early warning system that monitors the safety of vaccines after they are authorized or licensed for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). VAERS is part of the larger vaccine safety system in the United States that helps make sure vaccines are safe. The system is co-managed by CDC and FDA.
VAERS accepts and analyzes reports of possible health problems — also called “adverse events” — after vaccination. As an early warning system, VAERS cannot prove that a vaccine caused a problem. Specifically, a report to VAERS does not mean that a vaccine caused an adverse event. (Emphasis in original).
Ladapo’s condemnation of the mRNA vaccines was based almost entirely on reports to VAERS that he appears to have deliberately taken out of context.
The heads of the FDA and CDC did not allow Ladapo’s disinformation to go unchallenged. They sent him a scathing four-page letter, condemning his assertion that COVID-19 vaccines are “harmful.” These are some excerpts, all of which are verbatim and retain the emphasis in the original:
- The claim that the increase of VAERS reports of life-threatening conditions reported from Florida and elsewhere represents an increase of risk caused by the COVID-19 vaccines is incorrect, misleading and could be harmful to the American public.
- Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination do not mean that a vaccine caused the event.
- Adverse events must be compared to background rates in the population.
- In addition to VAERS, FDA and CDC utilize complementary active surveillance systems to monitor the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.
- Based on available information for the COVID-19 vaccines that are authorized or approved in the United States, the known and potential benefits of these vaccines clearly outweigh their known and potential risks.
- The most recent estimate is that those who are up to date on their vaccination status have a 9.8-fold lower risk of dying from COVID-19 than those who are unvaccinated and 2.4-fold lower risk of dying from Covid-19 than those who were vaccinated but had not received the updated, bivalent vaccine.
To state the obvious, the nation’s top public health officials should not have to explain the vaccine facts of life to a state surgeon general.
Finally, in their letter to him, FDA Commissioner Califf and CDC Director Walensky admonished Ladapo:
- As the leading public health official in [the] state, you are likely aware that seniors in Florida are under-vaccinated, with just 29% of seniors having received an updated bivalent vaccine, compared to the national average of 41% coverage in seniors. It is the job of public health officials around the country to protect the lives of the populations they serve, particularly the vulnerable. Fueling vaccine hesitancy undermines this effort.(Emphasis in original.)
- Unfortunately, the misinformation about COVID-19 vaccine safety has caused some Americans to avoid getting the vaccines they need to be up to date. (Emphasis in original.)
Their letter concluded: “Misleading people by overstating the risks, or emphasizing the risks without acknowledging the overwhelming benefits, unnecessarily causes vaccine hesitation and puts people at risk of death or serious illness that could have been prevented by timely vaccination.”
Lapado’s defense in part is that he does not trust federal officials. Even if were justified, there are other sources of reliable information. Numerous studies from academia, some summarized by Yale Medicine, confirm the efficacy of the original vaccines and the subsequent boosters; and an analysis by The Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit that conducts independent health care research, estimated the vaccines’ impacts on COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths over two years:
There’s more. Ladapo’s announcement in October 2022 that young men should not get the COVID-19 vaccine, ran counter to medical advice issued by the CDC.
And still more. There is evidence that Ladapo improperly manipulated a Florida data analysis that purportedly showed that the risk of cardiac-related deaths increased significantly for some age groups after receiving a vaccine. Early drafts of the analysis showed that a COVID infection could increase the risk of a cardiac-related death more than vaccination, but that information was omitted from the final version published by his Florida Department of Health. (Emphasis added.)
“This is a grave violation of research integrity,” said Dr. Matt Hitchings, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida, where Ladapo is also a professor. It seems that sections of the analysis were omitted simply because they did not fit the narrative the surgeon general was pushing, he added.
Many other scientists, professors, and epidemiologists are equally dismayed. Dr. H. Holden Thorp, the editor-in-chief of the prestigious journal Science, condemned Ladapo for blatant misrepresentations that likely cost the lives of thousands of patients.
Ladapo’s murderous crusade has continued. Last month, his department sent out a public health bulletin entitled, “Updated Guidance for COVID-19 Boosters for the Fall and Winter 2024–2025 Season,” which is riddled with misinformation and spurious warnings. It concludes, “Based on the high rate of global immunity and currently available data, the State Surgeon General advises against the use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. That statement constitutes flagrant malpractice and malfeasance.
Ladapo’s anti-COVID vaccine campaign has dramatically undercut support for childhood vaccines in Florida. The result is reflected in this headline and sub-headline of a September story in the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper:
Ladapo is at least indirectly responsible not only for many of the more than 90,000 COVID deaths in Florida during the pandemic thus far but also for the current strain on the state’s healthcare infrastructure.
As FDA Commissioner Califf and CDC Director Walensky said in their response to Ladapo’s letter, “It is the job of public health officials around the country to protect the lives of the populations they serve.” Ladapo is doing exactly the opposite, especially given recent new data on the post-infection advantages afforded by COVID vaccines. New variants are becoming dominant, protection from previous rounds of vaccinations is waning, COVID precautions have largely been abandoned, and a winter surge might be approaching.
Florida needs more evidence-based policies toward vaccines – and a new Surgeon General.
Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Fellow at the American Council on Science and Health. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Find Henry on X @HenryIMiller.
