DeSantis’ surgeon general and health department draw fire for amplifying vaccine doubts

Florida’s top public health official and the department he oversees issued a “health alert” this week amplifying doubts about the safety of COVID-vaccines. The move drew fire, including from peers at the state university that picks up part of the tab for his salary.

A tweet by Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo and a similar one from the health department’s official account questioned the safety and effectiveness of COVID vaccines, a position that puts him at odds with the scientific consensus. The tweets coincided with a letter on health department letterhead over Ladapo’s signature to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration calling for “unbiased research...to better understand these vaccines’ short- and long-term effects.”

Those two agencies oversee a dataset called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). It is a collection of complaints involving adverse effects in conjunction with receiving a vaccine. The complaints are tallied but not individually investigated, except where patterns emerge warranting further study. The largely unvetted data has been used by vaccine skeptics and others to undermine confidence in the safety of vaccines.

“Florida saw a 1,700% increase in adverse event reports after COVID-19 vaccinations. Does that sound safe and effective? I didn’t think so either. That’s why we released this health alert. Just because ‘correlation ≠ causation’ doesn’t mean we should abandon common sense,” Ladapo tweeted.

That tweet came a day after a different one, in which he took shots at both “Big Pharma” and the White House.

“While the Biden administration and Big Pharma continue to blindly push mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, Florida remains dedicated to responding to public health concerns guided by data and common sense.”

The CDC, on its website, says reports of adverse events after vaccination “do not mean that the reported problem was caused by a vaccine.”

Rather, it says, reports are “signals that alert scientists of possible cause-and-effect relationships that need to be investigated.”

Anyone can submit a report to VAERS, the CDC says, including healthcare professionals, vaccine manufacturers, vaccine recipients and parents or family members of people who have received a vaccine.

Ladapo’s tweets tapped a vein of invective from vaccine critics, who posted responses calling the surgeon general a hero doing battle with the “pharmafia.” Conversely, others accused the Harvard medical school graduate of “cherry-picking” data to support a political narrative that has gained resonance among Republican voters.

“It is clear that the governor and the surgeon general have other interests than promoting the health of Floridians,” said Dr. Kenneth Goodman, founder and director of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy, when asked to comment.

Ladapo shared a bar chart that showed a sharp increase in adverse effect reports in 2021. COVID vaccines were not available until December 2020, which was followed by millions of Floridians seeking the vaccine — and a predictable rise in “adverse event reports.” But Ladapo claimed that the spike in reports could not be fully explained by the increase in vaccinations.

After they became widely available in 2021, COVID vaccines and were praised by many, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, who said at the time they were “saving lives.” He handpicked Ladapo in September 2021 for the surgeon general post.

Before his hiring was approved by the Florida Senate, Ladapo stirred controversy by refusing to put on a mask during a meeting in the office of a Democratic senator from Boca Raton who was dealing with a serious health issue. Ladapo said he could not “communicate clearly” while wearing a mask.

Though he once encouraged Floridians to be vaccinated, the governor has increasingly expressed vaccine skepticism, including requesting a grand jury investigation of “any and all wrongdoing” with respect to the vaccines. His evolution has created political space between him and Donald Trump, who considered Operation Warp Speed, the COVID-vaccine development campaign undertaken as the pandemic surged, a signature achievement.

DeSantis is widely expected to become a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, which would put him on a collision course with Trump.

The implication that the vaccine should be avoided is irresponsible, according to Goodman.

In response to a request for comment, the health department referred the Herald to a press release on its website, which says, among other things: “Although the initial response [to the pandemic] was led by a sense of urgency and crisis management, the State Surgeon General believes it is critical that as public health professionals, responses are adapted to the present to chart a future guided by data.”

This is not the first time Ladapo has used his social media platforms to promote vaccine skepticism.

On Oct. 7, 2022, he tweeted out a link to an analysis on COVID-19 Moderna vaccines that he said showed an increase in cardiovascular death among men ages 18-39.

Critics told the Miami Herald that the analysis, resulting in the health department recommending that men in that age group not get the vaccine, was not peer reviewed, did not reveal its author or authors and did not adequately explain its methodology.

In conjunction with his role as surgeon general, Ladapo holds a faculty position at the University of Florida College of Medicine. However, his colleagues do not necessarily share Ladapo’s views regarding the COVID-19 vaccine, according to a statement from Gary Mans, a vice president with UF Health, the acclaimed medical network.

“The bulk of scientific evidence to date strongly demonstrates the safety and benefits of COVID-19 vaccination and shows the value of public health measures to mitigate the spread of viruses,” he said. “UF Health continues to support current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations on vaccination, and we recognize that peer-reviewed publications and data analyses are the gold standard in ensuring accurate conclusions are drawn from the research questions scientists are asking.”

A spokesman for Ben Sasse, the former Nebraska senator recently approved as UF president, indicated Sasse had no comment beyond what UF Health has said in the past.

The cost of Ladapo’s salary is split between the university and the health department.