ladapo frontline dr

see desantis

KID KILLER?

merri ok

frontline drs

see phobia fear scam // entine

SEE MEASLES “MINOR VIRUS”

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see am oversight on activist suppr hit and run

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an fla phoenix 5 26

“Convenient mythologies require neither evidence nor logic.” —*Edward S. Herman, “Manufactured Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media”

In a number of articles on its website, PEN America explains in striking detail the right-wing Trojan horse of “parental rights,” illuminating the threat caused by policymakers focused on this theater in the culture war.

PEN — which has gained a global reputation for standing “at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide” — argues that “parents’ rights” is not a source of freedom as claimed, but the crux of an ideological rigidity exercised by MAGA Republicans.

Replace the terms “books” and “literature” with “vaccinations” in the narratives, and the poisonous effects of “parents’ rights” and “medical freedom” on Florida’s public health system becomes clear.

Under the guise of “freedom,” the DeSantis administration including Surgeon General Joe Ladapo has established policies that have directly contributed to the measles outbreak that has spread across the state.

Yet, despite the proliferation of this disease, which has placed Florida fourth in the United States with 152 confirmed cases in 2025-26 and 145 confirmed cases so far this year, state officials have acted as if “there’s nothing to see here.”

Collier County is the center of an outbreak that began in January at Ave Maria University. The number of reported cases out of Collier has remained steady at 106, with most cases affecting those aged 15 to 24. According to the Florida Department of Health, Florida is up to 150 cases this year as of the week ending May 2. Officials note that there is “a continuing slowdown in infections after outbreaks earlier this year.”

Contagion

Measles is one of the most contagious communicable diseases on record. With the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, measles is easy to control. The MMR vaccine is credited with saving the lives of millions of people globally over the past 50 years.

Traditional medical experts warn that unvaccinated children need to stay home after measles exposure to stop transmission of this highly contagious disease. If not, chances of a prolonged outbreak increase significantly. Among unvaccinated people, nine of 10 who’re exposed will get infected.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican legislators, and some health officials might have avoided the outbreak had they treated it as a strictly health-related issue not a politically charged one. And if DeSantis and Ladapo weren’t so cavalier about tossing around inaccurate data, taking problems out of context, or selectively presenting information, Florida wouldn’t be in this situation.

Experts point to vaccine hesitancy and fear sown by MAGA Republicans as reasons why fewer parents are interested in vaccinating their children. According to Politico, vaccine hesitancy has “evolved into a central pillar of the MAGA movement’s health policy, often blending medical skepticism with a desire to dismantle public health regulations.”

Skepticism of COVID-19 vaccines, and a growing distrust of traditional childhood vaccines, are “closely tied to the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda led by figures such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” Politico writes.

The publication cites a 2023 Morning Consult poll showing that “as the number of voters more doubtful of vaccines has risen — despite scientific evidence that they’re safe and effective — it has come almost exclusively from one political party. While opposition to more established vaccines is still far from a majority position among Republicans, significant numbers question their safety and say Americans shouldn’t be encouraged to get them.”

Hubris

Katelyn Jetelina and Kristen Panthagani capture perfectly the hubris surrounding Florida’s widening measles epidemic.

Jetelina, an epidemiologist, and Panthagani, an emergency physician at Yale University, have written that by ignoring common sense and medical advice, Florida’s health officials risk a mushrooming measles outbreak. Negligence by Lapado, DeSantis, and the MAHA crew has endangered citizens and inflamed the outbreak.

“This is happening in a state with a growing skepticism of vaccinations and an ongoing debate between individualism and the good of the larger population that came to a head during the COVID pandemic,” the authors write in a 2024 opinion piece in Scientific American.

“But containing measles, which can spread quickly, should not be up for debate. Yet this is what is happening in Florida, and it’s putting children’s health at risk.”

A 2025 study from the Cureus Journal of Science and Medicine, published in PubMed, examines how “declining vaccine uptake and growing vaccine hesitancy created pockets of susceptibility that enabled the outbreak.”

DeSantis and Lapado are vigorously pushing to make it easier for parents to opt their children out of mandatory school vaccines — a proposal the Florida House refused to pass in the 2026 regular session and the just-completed special session.

‘Parental rights’

“Since 2021, the Sunshine State has led the country in advancing the parental rights agenda. Contrary to its name, this agenda has used fuzzy, coded language to manufacture moral panic, and to deliver control over what students can read and learn in schools not into the hands of all parents but to a particular segment of citizens — some not even parents but community members,” PEN America officials and researchers said.

“The cumulative effect has been to privilege some parents’ ideological preferences above all others, tie the hands of educators, and limit students’ access to information through curricular prohibitions and book bans.”

The same dynamic applies to health care and vaccines.

In its report on “parental rights” legislation, PEN cautioned that despite the fact that encouraging greater parental involvement in schools can seem like common sense, “these bills have an ulterior motive driving them: to empower a vocal and censorship-minded minority with greater opportunity to scrutinize public education and intimidate educators with threats of punishment.”

In Florida, the DeSantis administration and Republicans in the Legislature have taken up the battle cry. Ladapo and DeSantis announced in a press conference their intention of eliminating childhood vaccine mandates. Medical experts note that all 50 states enforce childhood vaccine mandates, with all states allowing medical exemptions and more than half — including Florida — allowing religious exemptions

Lyndon Haviland of the CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy blames the “perfect storm” of vaccine skepticism, failed leadership, and broken trust as the core reasons for the outbreak.

The eruption of measles in Texas, Florida, and elsewhere, she contends, aren’t isolated events.

Manufactured distrust

“Cases have also surfaced in Alaska, California, New Mexico, New York City, Georgia, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Concern that reports will continue to grow is rising,” she writes.

“It’s especially worrisome considering that the measles virus was completely eliminated in the U.S. as recently as the year 2000. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attributed this achievement to a “highly effective vaccine program in the United States, as well as better measles control in the Americas region.”

So, how did we get here?

“The answer: distrust. Distrust in health experts, who years ago were revered as national authorities on serious medical issues. Distrust in public health agencies, the CDC, and the Food and Drug Administration specifically, once respected as credible information resources. Distrust in the strength and rigor of vaccine testing protocols, the pharmaceutical industry itself and the broader politicization of public health.”

Haviland and other health experts fear ‘America, which was once considered a world leader in public health, has lost decades of progress in preventing the spread of a deadly disease with a provably safe therapy that has successfully saved millions of American lives.”

The focus on vaccine hesitancy “underplays the significant backlash against vaccines and the flood of anti-vaccine misinformation to which many Americans have been subjected,” Haviland continues.

“The reality is that Americans are increasingly adopting a more dismissive mindset in the way they view vaccine efficacy. Skepticism, rather than hesitancy, is a more accurate term to describe America’s perception of vaccines — and it shows no sign of slowing down.”

A certain arrogance

There is a certain arrogance the MAGA multitude carry. They act as though they have a direct line to God and the divine right to determine what’s best for the rest of us. Hence, the series of seemingly endless toxic, selfish crusades that former youth pastor and author John Pavlovitz argues “amplify baseless anti-science propaganda.”

This poisonous mindset has a human cost. Almost 90,000 people in the Sunshine State have died because of COVID; others have succumbed to preventable diseases like the flu.

There’s no telling when this measles outbreak will end but many in health circles and elsewhere will not stop fighting to protect America’s people against this destructive public health crisis.

Kevin Griffis, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy’s director for media relations and public affairs, in an April 22 opinion piece wrote, “Americans can handle hard truths. What they should not have to tolerate is selective concern dressed up as science. … Public health depends on trust. Trust depends on honesty.”

“When the nation’s top health official pretends otherwise — or claims ignorance when it is politically convenient, so as not to raise the ire of MAHA activists — it is not public health leadership. It is yet another example of politics and ideology trumping evidence.”

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SARASOTA, Fla. — Florida plans to end nearly a half-century of required childhood immunizations against diseases that have killed and maimed millions of children. Many critics of the decision, including doctors, are afraid to speak up against it.

With the support of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on Sept. 3 announced his plan to end all school-age vaccination mandates in the state.

“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” he told a cheering crowd of vaccination foes in Tallahassee. “Who am I, as a government or anyone else,” he said, “to tell you what you should put in your body?”

History shows that mandates increase the use of vaccines. Lower vaccination rates will mean increased rates of diseases like measles, hepatitis, meningitis, and pneumonia — and even the return of diphtheria and polio. Many of these diseases threaten not just the unvaccinated but also those they come in contact with, including babies and older people with weakened immunity.

But that scientific fact is being left unsaid in Florida. Health officials have largely been silent in the face of Ladapo’s campaign — and not because they agree with him. The University of Florida muzzled infectious disease experts, said emeritus professor Doug Barrett, formerly the university’s chief of pediatrics and senior vice president for health affairs.

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“They’re told not to speak to anyone without permission from supervisors,” he said. University spokespeople didn’t respond to requests for comment.

County-level Department of Health officials across the state got the same message, said John Sinnott, a retired professor at the University of South Florida who is friends with one of the county health leaders.

Sarasota County’s health department referred a reporter to state officials in Tallahassee, who responded with a statement that vaccines will “remain available” to families who want them. The state did not respond to other requests for comment or for an interview with Ladapo.

Many pediatricians are silent, too, at least in public.

“A lot of them don’t take a strong stance on whether kids need to be vaccinated,” said Neil Manimala, a urologist and the president-elect of the Hillsborough County Medical Association. “They don’t want to lose business. And there are enough anti-vax people who can lambaste you on Google, spreading stories about clinicians who ‘want to instill the poison jabs.’”

History of Modern Vaccine Mandates

Several states ended vaccination mandates early last century when smallpox was the only widely given vaccine, said historian Robert Johnston of the University of Illinois-Chicago. None has done so since other vaccines were added to the schedule. (Routine smallpox vaccination ended in 1972).

In the 1970s, persistent measles outbreaks provoked officials to strengthen child protection with enforced school mandates in every state. Today the partisan split on vaccine policy in the wake of the covid outbreak has changed the equation. This is nowhere more the case than in Florida, although legislators in Texas and Louisiana are also considering ending mandatory vaccination, and Idaho enables parents to get an exemption just by asking for it.

“This is really going to be a watershed moment for families who already were not sure they want to do vaccines and now are being told they don’t need them,” said Jennifer Takagishi, vice president of the Florida branch of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

It’s hard to know how fast vaccine-preventable diseases might return if Florida ends its mandates — or how the public will respond. Asked whether his office had modeled disease outcomes before his September announcement, Ladapo said “Absolutely not.” Parental freedom of choice isn’t a scientific matter, he said. “It’s an issue of right and wrong.”

Ladapo’s Department of Health did not respond a month later when asked whether it was making contingency plans for outbreaks. During a 2024 measles outbreak in Broward County, Ladapo sent parents a letter granting them permission to send unvaccinated children to school, defying the science-supported advice from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 1977, a measles epidemic that killed two children in Los Angeles County spurred a dramatic crackdown on vaccine-shunning across the country. But during an epidemic this year that killed two Texas children and 14 people in Mexico, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signed a bill making it easier for parents to opt out of getting required shots.

“When are we going to have enough of a groundswell of people dying or becoming severely ill that leads people to push back and say, ‘No, no, we want the vaccines?’” Takagishi said. “I don’t know if we know the tipping point yet.”

“I don’t have the answer,” said Emory University emeritus professor Walter Orenstein, who worked on measles for many of his 26 years at the CDC and led the agency’s immunization program from 1988 to 2004. “Measles resurgences created the political will to support our overall immunization program. For some reason it hasn’t worked this time. It’s just sad.”

Youngsters in Florida are already among the least vaccinated in the nation, because of relatively lax enforcement, the post-covid backlash against shots, and the libertarian attitude of state officials. Statewide, only about 89% of kindergartners are fully vaccinated, with Sarasota County having the lowest rate, at about 80%. To be safe from the spread of measles, a community must be 95% immunized.

With Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cutting vaccine research, filling the health agency with anti-vaccine activists and spreading doubt about vaccination’s safety and value, little stands in the way of decisions by Florida officials that are likely to cause rates to sink further.

Ladapo’s department is ending mandates for shots against hepatitis B, chickenpox, and the bacteria causing meningitis and pneumonia. Early next year, the Florida Legislature is expected to take up reversal of a 1977 law requiring kids at school and day care to be vaccinated against seven other diseases that can kill children: whooping cough, measles, polio, rubella, mumps, diphtheria, and tetanus.

After Measles, Which Disease Returns Next?

In the face of these attacks, scientists are attempting to predict which diseases are likely to make a resurgence and when.

A study published in April by Stanford epidemiologist Mathew Kiang and colleagues estimated that even at current vaccination levels, measles, declared eliminated from the United States in 2000, is likely to become a routine illness again. If measles vaccination rates drop by an additional 10%, there could be an average of about 450,000 cases yearly, with hundreds of deaths and cases of brain damage.

But the study may exaggerate the threat, said Shaun Truelove, an epidemic disease modeler at Johns Hopkins University who said he’s worried about losing public trust with alarmist predictions. Still, he said, an intensification of measles outbreaks seems certain. The country is already in the midst of its worst measles year in three decades, with more than 1,500 cases and current outbreaks in South Carolina and Minnesota.

“You don’t really need to model measles if vaccines stop,” Truelove said. “In the pockets where there are outbreaks, every kid who isn’t vaccinated will get infected.”

Measles is the “canary in the coal mine” for other vaccine-preventable diseases, said Sal Anzalone, a pediatrician with Healthcare Network in Naples, Florida. “When you start seeing measles, there’s more to come behind that.”

People who want vaccinations will still be able to get them if mandates are eliminated, Ladapo has said.

But the state’s message confuses parents, especially the poor and underserved, Anzalone said. It’s typically hard for them to get children to appointments unless they have to, he said, noting that 80% of his patients are insured through Medicaid. If policies put more of the payment burden on parents, fewer will vaccinate, he said.

And if vaccinations fall and infections increase, children won’t be the only people affected. Cancer patients and people in Florida’s numerous elderly communities would be at risk. Schools and businesses would be disrupted. Disease could disrupt the tourism industry, which brought 143 million people to the state last year. (The Florida Chamber of Commerce did not respond to requests for comment.)

“Infectious diseases don’t stop with the people who say they are willing to bear the risk,” said Meagan Fitzpatrick, a University of Maryland vaccinologist. Because of their unpredictable spread, she said, “with an infectious disease, vaccination is never an individual choice.”

Clinicians fear that an end to mandates could allow hepatitis B, a chronic liver disease, to return with force, since an estimated 2 million Americans carry the virus. They also foresee a return to the days when infants with high fever had to undergo a painful and risky lumbar puncture and blood draw to rule out meningitis, as well as a blood infection caused by the bacteria Haemophilus influenzae type B that routine vaccination has prevented since the 1990s.

Barbara Loe Fisher, who co-founded the modern movement against vaccine mandates in the early 1980s after her son suffered a reaction to the pertussis vaccine then in use (and since replaced with a safer shot), is skeptical that Floridians will abandon vaccination en masse, despite the end to mandates.

Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, moved from Virginia to southwestern Florida in 2020. She said she believes that vaccine injuries are undercounted and that children are vaccinated without informed consent. She acknowledged that mandates have increased coverage but said their removal will increase trust in public health and medicine.

“It is time to allow biological products like vaccines to be subject to the law of supply and demand,” she said, “just like any other product sold in the marketplace.”

Sinnott, for his part, anticipates measles will come roaring back, along with intensified whooping cough, influenza, and covid outbreaks.

“They think nothing will happen. Maybe they’re right,” said Sinnott, the retired professor. “It’s an experiment.”

Polio could return, and that is not an abstraction for Sinnott, 77.

He was 7 years old when he contracted the disease, spending six months in a wheelchair. In recent years he’s suffered from post-polio syndrome — difficulty swallowing, and tightness and pain in his limbs.

The first polio vaccine was licensed in 1955, the year he got sick. “I remember one time my mother telling me, ‘The line was too long,’” he said.

Sinnott forgives his parents, and parents today who waver on vaccination. He’s less tolerant of certain public health leaders. They should know better, he said.

*KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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AN 9 25

As the debate over vaccine mandates heats up in Florida, there’s a push in the Legislature and the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis to broaden the use of ivermectin.

A Republican legislator from Spring Hill has filed legislation to allow the over-the-counter sale of ivermectin suitable for human use even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19 in humans or animals.

Ivermectin is an effective treatment for parasites in animals and for use by humans to treat parasites such as head lice and scabies, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The FDA has not approvedIvermectin for treatment or prevention of COVID-19, and so far recommends against taking it for COVID-19, instead suggesting people get vaccinated for protection.

Nevertheless, there was buzz during the pandemic about using it for treatment for COVID-19.

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HB 29 sponsor Rep. Jeff Holcomb, R-Spring Hill, did not immediately return Florida Phoenix’s request for comment. If approved, Florida would join the ranks of Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Idaho, and Texas in approving the medication for over the counter sales.

The governor, First Lady Casey DeSantis, state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, and Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Shevaun Harris held a press conference at the University of South Florida Health College of Medicine to recognize World Cancer Research Day and to highlight $60 million in new cancer research grant opportunities.

There, the first lady said she expected some portion of the new grant funding to be used for cancer research on ivermectin.

“I know we should look at it. I know we should look at the benefits of it. We shouldn’t just speculate and guess,” DeSantis said.

Ladapo, seconded the idea.

“There’s been a lot of chatter about it, and this very simple drug that happens to be very safe, by the way, has unfortunately, you know it’s so much it’s been weighed down by all this politics, especially during the Biden administration.”

Ivermectin is not approved by the FDA for cancer treatment.

The FDA also warns large doses of ivermectin can be dangerous. “Even doses of ivermectin for approved human uses can interact with other medications, like blood-thinners. You can also overdose on ivermectin, which can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, hypotension (low blood pressure), allergic reactions (itching and hives), dizziness, ataxia (problems with balance), seizures, coma, and even death.”

Ladapo and DeSantis defend no mandate push

Meanwhile, Ladapo and his boss DeSantis defended their push to eliminate vaccine mandates from Florida law, rules, and regulations.

“I hope that we continue to reject the normal and we pursue a path that feels righteous, that feels like we’re actually, you know, aiming toward the thing that we want to improve,” Ladapo said.

“That opportunity is there. Thankfully, we have leadership, uniquely in this state, to do it. And I hope it spreads like, like all those minor viruses that my critics are afraid of, or something.”

The minor viruses Ladapo referred to includes measles. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 1,514 confirmed measles cases this year as of Sept. 23. Six of those confirmed cases were in Florida. There were 11 confirmed measles cases in Florida in 2024.

Measles and other disease outbreaks occur as the percentage of school-age children in Florida who are vaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella dips. While the target rate for MMR vaccination is 95%, Florida’s 2024-2025 rate was 88.8%.

That’s a near 5% point change from the 2019-2020 year, aKFF analysis shows, and well below the targeted 95% needed for herd immunity.

Ladapo and DeSantis avoided directly answering whether their children have been vaccinated. Ladapo said reporters should be asking substantive questions and likened the questions about the children to “silly games.”

“I actually don’t care about sharing information about that. I really don’t care at all. But I won’t. And I won’t because I’m not going to participate in the silly games that so much of the media chooses to partake in instead of the substantive parts of the issues.”

In addition to defending his anti-vaccine mandate push, Ladapo appears on board with the Trump administration’s announcement that autism rates are up because pregnant women are taking acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, during their pregnancies.

“They acknowledge that not all the studies show harm, but some of them do show relation. And it’s not a total explanation for autism by any means, but it does appear to be that it’s reasonable to conclude that it may be contributing to the prevalence of autism in children,” Ladapo said.

When asked whether he intended to issue any guidance he said: “We’re still looking at it. So, we may have some more guidance, but it would probably be very much in line with where the FDA is.”

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mma

How right-wing media sow distrust and confusion around vaccines and science

As Florida ends school vaccine requirements and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s leadership comes under fire, the right has repackaged anti-science talking points as well-meaning skepticism

Written by Gideon Taaffe, Isabella Sherk, Jack Wheatley & Jack Winstanley

Published 09/18/25

Amid the rise of the so-called “Make America Healthy Again” movement, right-wing media figures have employed a variety of tactics that sow doubt and confusion around vaccine efficacy and science more broadly. These efforts to capitalize on existing distrust of public health institutions and pharmaceutical companies have gained renewed momentum following Florida’s elimination of vaccine requirements for schools and comments made by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during a contentious Senate hearing.

MAHA acolytes have challenged well-studied topics by “just asking questions,” described vaccination requirements as impediments to freedom and parental choice, and exploited post-pandemic mistrust of public health infrastructure and pharmaceutical companies.

The MAHA movement is fueling mistrust in medicine amid a CDC leadership shake-up and Florida's elimination of vaccine requirements

- In early September, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced the state is working to eliminate all vaccine requirements for children in public schools, an announcement which quickly came under fire by doctors and public health experts. In his statement to the public, Ladapo said of vaccines, “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.” The American Medical Association released a statement opposing the move, stating: “This unprecedented rollback would undermine decades of public health progress and place children and communities at increased risk for diseases such as measles, mumps, polio, and chickenpox resulting in serious illness, disability, and even death.” NBC News, [9/3/25; The American Medical Association, 9/3/25]

- After the firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced scrutiny from both sides of the aisle at a contentious Senate hearing where many called for his resignation.Monarez’s firing spurred other top CDC officials to step down and caution the public over the state of the organization’s scientific independence. This, along with criticism for canceling $500 million in funding for mRNA research that produced the lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine, contributed to a dramatic hearing where senators sparred with Kennedy. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who voted for Kennedy’s confirmation, said the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendation that only people at high risk for complications and those over 65 need the vaccine effectively denies people access to the shot. NPR, [9/4/25; BBC News, 8/5/25; CBS News,8/28/25]

- At a September 17 Senate hearing, Monarez testified that Kennedy had told her “that the ‘childhood vaccine schedule would be changing starting in September’ and that she ‘needed to be on board with it.’” According to NPR, Monarez told the senators that Kennedy “just wanted blanket approval” adding, “Even under pressure, I could not replace evidence with ideology.” NPR, [9/17/25]

- The New York Times used AI to analyze 38 MAHA figures and organizations featured in around 12,000 videos and podcasts, concluding that these influencers amplify frustration with the health care system to reel viewers in “using wellness content as a trojan horse for conspiracy theories.” The Times noted that some of these figures are using these platforms to sell a product rather than to meaningfully address public health problems like poverty or lack of access to nutritious food and health care. One interviewee who got pulled down the MAHA rabbit hole said, “I thought if my daughter got vaccinated, she would die in her sleep that night.” The New York Times, [9/9/25]

## Tactic 1: “Just asking questions” about established science as a means to sow doubt

Right-wing media figures have presented uninformed, speculative questions about the safety of vaccines as legitimate criticism of the science, saying there’s nothing wrong with “wanting to ask questions” and often presenting their own queries as evidence that established bodies of research should be approached skeptically. In an essay for Big Think, Warren Berger argued that people falsely equate “questioning with critical thinking” and added that conspiracy theorists “act as if their uninformed, speculative questions demand that someone else provide answers.” Kelly Weirich, professor of philosophy at Pierce College, also stated that “while questions technically don’t make claims, they do affirm claims in a subtler way through the assumptions embedded in them.” University of Dayton lecturer Megan Donelson noted that the right’s tactic of “just asking questions” in this way “serves to undermine public trust in science and medicine.”

- Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones attacked Democrats questioning Kennedy, saying, “I guess the most frustrating thing about the entire hearing is there seems to be zero curiosity on why we're such a sick nation.” Jones continued, “I do have some genuine curiosity about the science about each vaccine. And it didn't seem like they were trying to get to the bottom of that or even hear him out.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/5/25]

- Fox & Friendsco-host Brian Kilmeade asked, “When do you give the vaccines? Are you giving them all at once? Does that play into autism?” He claimed that in a few weeks, Kennedy “will announce the cause of autism, or the likely cause, which I think is extremely beneficial for us.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/5/25]

- Jones later said that “there is something wrong with some of the vaccines,” adding that “not all of them are bad, but there are questions that Americans have about it.” He continued, “They should be able to give us answers. But we're not conducting our own studies. We depend on foreign people to do the studies, and there’s questions there.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/8/25]

- OnThe Five, co-host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery claimed, “I disagree with him [Kennedy] on a lot of stuff but at least he makes me think about vaccines.” She added, “I think that is the best thing we can do as a society. And have these honest discussions about how we look and what we are putting in our bodies, and the solutions we are giving our children when we are failing them — when all of these institutions are failing them.” Fox News, *The Five*, [9/4/25]

- Fox host and former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said she doesn’t agree with everything Kennedy says but likes his “healthy skepticism for the science, wanting to ask questions about your children, what we are putting in their bodies.” Fox News, *The Five*, [9/5/25]

- Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked MAHA podcaster Gary Brecka, “Are we overprescribing generally as a society and overvaccinating?” Brecka responded, “We are the most over-medicalized nation in the world,” describing the U.S. as “the sickest, fattest, most disease-ridden nation in the world.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [9/4/25]

- Newsmax host Rob Finnerty asked if it's possible that former President Joe Biden is “vaccine-injured” and suggested vaccination caused his cancer. Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [9/2/25]

- Fox News host Laura Ingraham noted that “Kennedy and others have raised questions about the number of new vaccines added to the recommended pediatric schedule.” Citing the supposedly “staggering” increase in recommended vaccinations, Ingraham argued that it “makes total sense” to change COVID vaccine approvals. Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [9/4/25]

## Tactic 2: Presenting vaccine requirements as impediments to freedom and parental choice
Criticisms against public health policy surged at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and rhetoric equating vaccine mandates to government overreach has persisted within the right-wing media ecosystem. The Nations Health, an outlet of the American Public Health Association, has highlighted several recent examples of the “medical freedom movement” undermining public health by removing fluoride from tap water and promoting alternative medicines. Additionally, the new CDC recommendations will make it more difficult for those who wish to get vaccinated for COVID-19, as the vaccines may no longer be covered by insurance companies.

- On his radio show, Fox host Sean Hannity celebrated the Florida mandate rescission, which he claimed was “giving people freedom and giving people choice, which I think is great.” Premiere Radio Network, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [9/4/25]

- Hannity: “Masks may be coming back to California while the free state of Florida is moving to end draconian vaccine mandates for your children in school.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [9/4/25]

- Right-wing influencer Benny Johnson wrote that “vaccine mandates are wrong” and “Florida is absolutely right to remove them,” adding, “Parents should have the final say over kids’ health, not the government.” Twitter/X, [9/4/25]

- Dr. Simone Gold, an anti-vaccine activist and January 6 participant, celebrated the FDA’s move to end Emergency Use Authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine, stating, “Mandates are dead. Freedom wins.” Twitter/X, [8/27/25, ABC News, 6/12/22]

- Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt emphasized parental choice while talking about COVID vaccines, saying, “As a mom, I’m going to decide what my child gets.”Earhardt: “There were a handful of us that didn't want our kids to have the COVID vaccine. That was my choice as a mom, because we interviewed so many kids — the kid who played soccer out on Long Island, who fell and had a heart problem, can’t play anymore, and his parents thought it was because of the vaccine. I just heard so many stories like that, I made the decision for myself.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/5/25]

## Tactic 3: Exploiting distrust of public health organizations, experts, and pharmaceutical manufacturers

The MAHA movement and Kennedy — who according to NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin “seems to assume bad intent among experts” and who has accused public health agencies of “deliberately manipulating the truth” — have seized on a wider sense of mistrust and confusion following the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a report from Politico, “An increasing number of families are projecting their attitudes toward the Covid-19 vaccine onto shots for measles, chickenpox, meningitis and other diseases,” and “parents who were hesitant to vaccinate their children before the pandemic have now been joined by people who think the government mishandled the crisis.” Now, despite evidence suggesting that the COVID-19 vaccine saved millions of lives, Kennedy and his MAHA acolytes are exploiting this distrust in public health institutions to appeal to a base that “felt angered by a lot of early pandemic policies” and “felt betrayed by the government.”

- Fox News contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier claimed, “The CDC lost all credibility throughout the COVID pandemic when they continued to universally recommend the COVID vaccine, even after the science changed.” She continued, “The problem here we have is that all of these vaccines are being lumped as though that they are created equally and they have the same benefit, and the reality is that's not true. So while removing all vaccine mandates for school-aged children is swinging that pendulum from one extreme to the other extreme, truly Americans — and especially our children — deserve more of a nuanced discussion about this.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/4/25]

- Right-wing podcaster Liz Wheeler wrote that fewer people now believe the government should “forcibly vaxx kids” because “70+ shots added to the schedule, an insane epidemic of autism, ADHD, cancer, neurological issues, & autoimmune diseases among CHILDREN.” She continued, “A generation of children have been hurt, and we all know it. If you think Bobby Kennedy doesn’t have America’s support, you’re crazy.” Twitter/X, [9/4/25]

- Wheeler reposted a video of Kennedy onFox & Friendsclaiming the CDC was hiding vaccine safety data from him. She wrote, “I wonder why?” Twitter/X, [9/7/25]

- The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles claimed the CDC “lost their credibility during COVID,” adding, “They lied to us about vaccines.” He continued, “They lied to us about the efficacy of the vaccine. They lied to us about the safety of the vaccine. They lied to us about everything regarding the vaccine.” The Daily Wire, *The Michael Knowles Show*, [9/2/25]

- Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty claimed, “Hundreds of millions of people were forced to get the vaccine” during the COVID pandemic, adding, “People have had adverse reactions to this vaccine we were told was safe that was forced upon us.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [9/4/25]

- TownHall writer Scott Morefield shared a Truth Social post from President Donald Trump in which he asked pharmaceutical companies to “justify the success of their various Covid Drugs,” adding, “This kind of spotlight on the efficacy of the mRNA jabs could cause the whole house of cards to come crashing down.” Morefield celebrated Trump’s post, stating, “I didn’t think Trump’s ego would ever allow him to do this, but he continues to pleasantly surprise me,” and ending with “Bravo!” Twitter/X, [9/1/25]

- Fox News host Jesse Watters questioned the vaccine recommendations for children, saying the “people at the CDC recommending it are at the CDC because the vaccine industry put them there,” and he accused senators of “blindly defending vaccine companies like it's their job.” Watters: “Why does a baby get 18 shots before they are 18 months old? It used to be eight — now it's 18. Why does a kid have 76 shots before they are old enough to vote? We never used to get that many, but the CDC recommends this. And the people at the CDC recommending it are at the CDC because the vaccine industry put them there. Maybe 76 is the right amount. Maybe it could be a little less or a lot less. We don't know. RFK is just trying to get a fresh set of eyes on it and look at the data. And senators are blindly defending vaccine companies like it's their job.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [9/4/25]

- Watters suggested that people advocating for vaccinations are doing so to keep getting “pharma cash.” Watters: “If Kennedy isn’t recommending healthy 18-year-olds get COVID boosters, then there's less pharma cash to spread around to the politicians. If a baby gets eight vaccines instead of 18, less cash to spread around to the politicians. If doctors tell patients to eat healthy and exercise instead of get the fat shot, less cash to the politicians. Same thing with sex changes, diabetes medication, and antidepressants. Did you know that the American Academy of Pediatrics, some of their biggest donors — vaccine makers? Take the COVID vaccine. Nothing they said about the COVID vaccine turned out to be true.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [9/4/25]

- Newsmax's Rob Schmitt described comments from senators questioning Kennedy as “enraged insults from politicians who have either been bribed to protect Big Pharma or those who have fully drunk their Kool-Aid.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [9/4/25]

### Greg Gutfeld once denounced Donald Trump’s “antiscience point of view” on vaccines and autism

09/09/25 10:09 AM EDT

### Fox News championed anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. Now he’s killing research into next-generation vaccines.

08/11/25 9:56 AM EDT

### Right-wing media downplayed the likelihood of a measles outbreak. U.S. cases just reached a new high since the disease was eliminated.

07/09/25

---

9 25

A dangerous group of whacko militants threatens to destroy Florida as we know it

:{D. Earl StephensSeptember 07, 2025

This article was paid for by AlterNet subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

Florida announced plans this week to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, INCLUDING FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN.

Read that again.

I had intended to write about the Epstein files today, and the incredibly brave survivors of alleged child rape, who gathered on Capitol Hill to tell their stories. They were there because it is beginning to look like our president who ran on releasing those files, instead has a starring role in them, and will do everything possible to make sure they never see the light of day.

That would generally would be a banner story. In a sane, just world, it would have the potential to end Donald Trump's presidency, and ultimately land him jail for the rest of his miserable life.

But because you hang around places like this and pay attention, you don’t need me to tell you that we are not living in a sane, just world.

Just how insane and unjust is the world? Consider that the possibility of the president being accused of sexual abusing underage women was by far only the second-biggest story of the day ...

Truth is, this vaccine news might be one of the most significant stories of the century, because of its gruesome ramifications on the future of our rattling civilization.

Bluntly: If Florida goes through with this death plan, it could potentially result in one of the largest losses of human life ever.

Look, vaccines have been a life-changing discovery, and one of mankind’s greatest achievements. The advent of vaccines has saved hundreds of millions of lives the past 100 years or so.

That we are reversing our thinking on the use of vaccines in America is almost too absurd to contemplate. The profound stupidity and danger this presents really can't be overstated.

MILLIONS of lives are at risk if Florida out-Floridas itself and actually puts this deranged plan into action.

We need only look at COVID to see this.

Despite what you’ll hear from many ghoulish, anti-life Republicans, millions of lives were saved thanks to COVID vaccines. Maybe even more startling, an estimated 317,000 lives in the United States alone would have been saved during the COVID outbreak had everybody just done their civic duty and gotten vaccinated.

If Florida goes ahead with this insane plan, just as sure as I am typing this, all kinds of otherwise preventable diseases will begin reappearing all over the place — measles and polio just to name a couple. And while our children will be most vulnerable, because Republicans never saw a kid whose life wasn’t worth jeopardizing, Florida’s huge population of retirees will also be under direct threat.

We will ALL be under threat.

Today’s gruesome news comes in the backdrop of the insane vaccine guidance being shoveled out to the American public by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., our secretary of Health and Human Services, who listens to everybody but professionals in the medical and scientists communities, ignores a century’s worth of vaccines’ positive results, and has been a vocal vaccine skeptic.

Last month, after Kennedy proudly announced the rollback of nearly $500 million in vaccine funding, I typed this:

“Instead of answers and more science and discovery to make sure we are ready for the next mass-medical emergency, Trump instead has inflicted us with this gruesome stray from the Kennedy dynasty, who is quickly becoming a one-man pandemic.”

Last week, Susan Monarez, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was forced out by Captain Death less than one month into her job for refusing to go along with this maniac’s plans to end us.

Four other leading officials at the CDC resigned because they too had come under extreme pressure from the sickening Kennedy. One of those officials said Kennedy’s team asked him to “change studies that have been settled in the past” to fit Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views.

Yep, “change studies.” Just make stuff up. I mean, it’s only people’s lives we are talking about …

So who are the players down in the Sunset State, who are putting this latest death plan into action?

Let’s start with Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, who made the announcement standing beside the state’s grotesque and Trump-slobbering Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Ladapo is a COVID vaccine-denier. A quack. A nut. A complete moron.

And dangerous as hell.

He has associated withccalled “America’s Frontline Doctors,” which is led by Texas physician Stella Immanuel, who has put forth the theory out loud and often that sperm from alien or demon sexual visitations are responsible for much of what ails us.

With qualifications like that, there is a good chance Ladapo has the inside track to the 2028 Republican Presidential nomination …

In announcing what will henceforth be known as the “Florida Death Plan” Ladapo said this:

“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?”

Who are YOU to tell us??? You are allegedly a doctor, sonny. Should we be going to an exterminator to get advice on medical issues?

Er … That actually might be advisable in Florida.

He added that the administration would be “working to end” all vaccine mandates, because “every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”

I’m not making this up.

Not a single word about the lives vaccines have saved, just lies and conspiracy theories, because that is the Republican way in 2025.

And then, of course, there’s DeSantis himself. A dumb man’s idea of a smart person. The ultimate Florida Man. A guy, who says, “Watch this!” while playing with matches and gasoline, as is the case with this maniacal, evil vaccine plan.

While standing next to Ladapo with that beachball-sized smirk on his face, Trump’s willing punching bag announced that his wife, Casey DeSantis, will head the commission on the Florida Death Plan, because if we are going to kill hundreds of a thousands of children best we have a dreadfully unqualified ghoul doing it.

Her beaming husband, Ron, ended the press conference by bragging:

“We’ve already done a lot. I don’t think any state has come even close to what Florida has done.”

He’ll get no argument there.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.

---

rww

Josh Fiallo @ The Daily Beast: Notorious Anti-Vaxxer Tops Trump and RFK Jr.‘s List For New CDC Boss

Rumor of Joseph Ladapo landing the gig comes after the president’s first pick for the role had his appointment suddenly pulled.

===

mma 10 24 no twt

A federal court issued an order blocking Florida state officials and in particular Gov. Ron DeSantis' health secretary Joseph Ladapo, from threatening TV stations over ads in support of Amendment 4, the constitutional ballot referendum that seeks to repeal Florida's near-total abortion ban, reported constitutional attorney Adam Steinbaugh.

DeSantis' administration sent letters to TV stations threatening to prosecute their employees for airing the ad, citing an obscure "sanitary nuisance" law intended to apply to physical health hazards like improperly sealed septic tanks. Specifically, they argued that the law might falsely persuade women who are eligible for abortion under health exceptions from seeking care.

The court didn't buy the argument and called out the state for violating the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

"While Defendant Ladapo refuses to even agree with this simple fact, Plaintiff's political advertisement is political speech — speech at the core of the First Amendment," said the ruling. "The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech 'false.'"

The ruling cited the conclusion of the Supreme Court in the 1945 case *Thomas v. Collins*: "The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion."

"To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it's the First Amendment, stupid," the ruling continued.

This comes after a tough day of oral argument, in which U.S. District Judge Mark Walker appeared visibly exasperated with Florida attorneys' arguments that the prosecution threats against TV stations were legitimate.

---

mma 10 24

Florida’s surgeon general is scheduled to speak at a conference with a Hitler-promoting antisemite

Written by Eric Hananoki

Published 10/17/24

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo is set to speak at a conference this weekend with Christiane Northrup, a health misinformer who has repeatedly promoted pro-Nazi and antisemitic material.

The 2024 “Back to Basics Conference: Summit on Family, Food and Healthcare” will be held in Waltham, Massachusetts, on October 19. The event claims to bring “together renowned experts in the fields of medicine, agriculture, parental and legal rights.” The conference's listed schedule as of today includes Ladapo and Northrup, who have each confirmed their attendance on social media.

Ladapo, Florida’s top health official, has gained notoriety for spreading misinformation as he openly criticizes and recommends against vaccines. Northrup is a discredited health commentator who has frequently promoted health misinformation and pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory.

The event will also feature Mary Holland — the CEO of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense — and anti-vaccine commentators Ryan Cole, Meryl Nass, and Leah Wilson, among others.

[pix poster]

From the Back to Basics Conference's website, accessed 10/17/24.

As Media Matters previously documented, Northrup has repeatedly promoted antisemitism:

In December 2021, Northrup shared a link to the film Europa: The Last Battle. The film is pro-Nazi propaganda that portrays Jewish people as the real villains of World War II and Hitler as someone who “ensured racial security for the people,” battled against supposed Jewish subversion, and actually wanted peace. It also features rampant Holocaust denial.
In February 2022, Northrup also shared a clip from Europa: The Last Battle and wrote: “The Bolshevik Revolution. Substitute the word Jew in here with Khazarian. These are not the Hebrews of the Bible.” The clip is virulently antisemitic and states near the beginning: “The fact that we will never learn in school is that communism actually was a Jewish totalitarian ideology invented by Jews, funded by Jewish bankers, and economically manifested by Jewish Bolsheviks.”
During an August 2022 interview, Northrup shouted out the antisemitic text Protocols of the Elders of Zion as the “playbook” of people she opposes.
Northrup has repeatedly promoted the antisemitic “Khazarian mafia” conspiracy theory, which essentially claims that a group of fake Jewish people stole Jewish identity centuries ago and now hides behind Judaism to control world affairs.

Northrup has also spoken at events with other prominent Republicans, including Eric Trump and Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump.

Ladapo has previously appeared with QAnon conspiracy theorists to push health misinformation. In October 2022, he was also a guest on the show of Stew Peters, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has become a pro-Hitler commentator.

---

lat no lnx Opinion

Editorial: Florida shows how to bungle a measles outbreak

(Jim Goodson / Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

By The Times Editorial Board

Feb. 28, 2024

As life-saving as the COVID-19 vaccines have been, the measles vaccine has been an even greater success story. Before the vaccine was developed in 1963, outbreaks that occurred every two to three years were killing 2.6 million people worldwide a year, most of them children. Others developed pneumonia, or suffered brain injury and deafness from measles-associated encephalitis.

It’s an incredibly contagious airborne disease. Put a person with measles in a room with 100 other people and 90 of them will be infected. But the vaccine is even more effective than the disease is transmissible. If all 100 people in that room were vaccinated, only four would be infected.

Pasadena, CA - October 12: Justine Castillo Martinez, LVN, right, takes a moment to show her patient Phillip Soon, 38, the syringe during a flu and COVID-19 vaccination clinic at Kaiser Permanente Pasadena on Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023, in Pasadena, CA. Soon was getting both the flu and COVID-19 vaccination. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Opinion

Opinion: The U.S. is facing the biggest COVID wave since Omicron. Why are we still playing make-believe?

Jan. 4, 2024

So it’s especially disheartening to observe the new measles cases in Florida — eight and growing at last count. It’s not the biggest measles outbreak in recent years, but the ho-hum attitude of the state’s top public health official, Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, is deeply troubling.

Most of the cases so far have been among students at an elementary school in Broward County. But one is a preschooler — an extremely dangerous age for complications — whose connection to the school is unclear. Something like this was bound to happen. Measles is infectious from four days before the telltale rash appears to four days after. That means parents often don’t know when their child might be infected and capable of transmitting the virus to others in and out of school.

LOS ANGELES, CA - AUGUST 03: Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a premier of a documentary film called "Midnight at the Border" at the Saban Theater on Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Business

Column: Measles is again on the march across the world, thanks to anti-vaxxers such as RFK Jr.

Dec. 19, 2023

Florida has a reasonable law requiring vaccination for children to attend private or public school. Unlike California, which allows exemptions only for children with legitimate health reasons, Florida lets parents opt out for religious beliefs, a common loophole throughout the country. And the vaccination rates at the elementary school in question was higher than the national average, at 97%.

The problem in quelling this outbreak, though, is the lackadaisical attitude of Ladapo, who has earned notoriety by promoting COVID-19 vaccine skepticism. Last month, he called for a halt to using mRNA vaccines to fight COVID-19. Still it was shocking that in the midst of the outbreak, he ignored the public health standard set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which calls for isolating unvaccinated people for 21 days after possible exposure, and is allowing parents to decide whether to send their unvaccinated kids to school. He didn’t even encourage parents of unvaccinated children to get a quick, preventive dose.

It’s a reprehensible endangerment of students at the affected school and the broader community, including babies too young to have been vaccinated. Children with compromised immune systems are at particular risk because they cannot safely be vaccinated. That includes children who are undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.

Children wait to get vaccinated at a health clinic in Apia, Samoa, on Nov. 18.

Opinion

Editorial: Measles outbreak in Samoa shows what can happen when vaccine opponents prevail

Dec. 7, 2019

A vaccine effectiveness rate of 96% is superb, but it still means that about 4% of children don’t get immunity from their shots. That’s why public health officials rely on “herd immunity,” meaning enough members of a community have been vaccinated to keep measles at bay. The reason more unvaccinated children haven’t been sickened in this country is because there are enough parents who do the right thing, vaccinate their kids and thus protect the other kids around them. But that may not be the case for long. Vaccine skeptics like Ladapo have been chipping away at Americans’ confidence in vaccines in recent years.

Outbreaks can happen even in a community with high vaccination rates — which is the case in this Florida school. But widespread vaccination — and proper isolation protocols — keep them small. Measles is not a minor inconvenience of childhood, and Ladapo’s let’s-downplay-the-science approach is not the way to protect the health of Florida’s children.

Column: As measles spreads, ‘herd stupidity’ grips Florida’s government

Feb. 27, 2024

Column: The only thing voters liked less than Ron DeSantis’ anti-woke crusade was Ron DeSantis

Jan. 22, 2024

===

tampa bay times is legit?

Published Feb. 10 2024

TALLAHASSEE — After a 14-month investigation, a statewide grand jury impaneled by Gov. Ron DeSantis published a report blasting mask and lockdown mandates adopted during the pandemic.

The panel, charged with investigating “criminal or wrongful activity in Florida relating to the development, promotion and distribution” of COVID-19 vaccines, made it clear that its work is far from finished and that it’s gathering “much more testimony and evidence.”

The grand jury process has been blasted by Democrats as a political stunt while its report — released last week — has been criticized by some scientists for being one-sided....

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alex Griffing @ Mediaite](https://www.mediaite.com/podcasts/floridas-controversial-surgeon-general-calls-covid-vaccines-the-anti-christ-in-bonkers-comments-to-steve-bannon/): Florida’s Controversial Surgeon General Calls Covid Vaccines ‘The Anti-Christ’ in Bonkers Comments to Steve Bannon.

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo joined former Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon on his hard-right War Room podcast Thursday and railed against the Covid-19 vaccines, which he called the “anti-Christ.”

---

Joseph Ladapo says anti-vaccine crusade was God’s plan. It cost him his peers’ trust

Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Dr. Joseph Ladapo as surgeon general of Florida on Sept. 21, 2021. (Governor's Office photo/TNS)

By Cindy Krischer Goodman | cgoodman@sunsentinel.com | South Florida Sun Sentinel and Caroline Catherman | ccatherman@orlandosentinel.com | Orlando Sentinel

:{May 13, 2023

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo marked the third anniversary of the pandemic in March by heaping praise on his boss, Gov. Ron DeSantis, for putting the “kibosh on vaccine mandates.” He then asserted that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine “has a terrible safety profile.”

“At this point in the pandemic, I’m not sure anyone should be taking them,” he said.

This type of COVID rhetoric had helped the former University of California-Los Angeles associate professor catch the eye of the Florida governor with big political ambitions.

Since his appointment as Surgeon General in September 2021, Ladapo, 44, has made a reputation for himself as a prominent DeSantis ally for his stance against the COVID vaccine, masks, other pandemic containment measures, and gender-affirming care for transgender children.

“He’s one of the folks who has been with me battling Dr. Fauci for many years,” DeSantis said Thursday when introducing Ladapo to a cheering crowd at a news briefing where he signed three new health care bills, including one giving providers a right to deny patient services based on beliefs. The battle reference was to former U.S. Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci, who served under Presidents Trump and Biden during the height of the COVID pandemic.

To examine Ladapo’s transformation from a doctor dedicated to noncontroversial research into an outspoken doubter of mainstream COVID-19 science, the South Florida Sun Sentinel and Orlando Sentinel interviewed 14 medical and research professionals throughout the state, including faculty members at the University of Florida; analyzed hundreds of pages of public records from UCLA, the Florida Department of Health, and UF; and reviewed dozens of op-eds and hundreds of social media posts by Ladapo.

His evolution placed him in a position of power that peers say came at the cost of the respect of many in the academic and medical communities. He now takes home a salary of about a half-million dollars annually, including what he earns from UF where he works as a professor in addition to his income as the state’s surgeon general.

Ladapo’s contract with UF requires him to spend 80% of his time in research and 20% of his time teaching at the school. But records show Ladapo has presented only two guest lectures, and official calendars reveal limited evidence of other work at UF during his 20-month tenure.

Not only is he not fulfilling his stated duties at UF, he’s facing a serious accusation of data manipulation from fellow health academics and researchers, and his colleagues say other professors would have faced termination if they had faced the same complaint. The University of Florida is not currently investigating these claims.

Five faculty members who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation said Ladapo’s UF colleagues are wary of collaborating with him. “They don’t want to work with him,” one said.

Ladapo did not respond to multiple interview requests nor an emailed list of questions from the South Florida Sun Sentinel and Orlando Sentinel.

While his UF peers keep a distance, Florida’s Republican lawmakers sang his praises earlier this month.

Florida Senate confirms Surgeon General Ladapo’s reappointment}:

Ladapo ‘cherry-picking’ studies to back no COVID vaccines for kids, researchers say

Experts express confusion, concern as Surgeon General Ladapo begins new COVID-19 study}:

Ladapo was confirmed for another year as the state’s top public health official on May 4 with a 27-12 Florida Senate vote along party lines.

“Thank you for pulling back the curtain and showing us some of the data that public health officials not only knew existed but refused to give us over these past few years,” Jonathan Martin, a Republican senator representing Fort Myers, told Ladapo in front of other lawmakers.

Sen. Tina Polsky, a cancer survivor who had clashed with Ladapo in 2021 when he refused to wear a mask while meeting with her, accused him of causing harm in his role as Surgeon General, a claim some Florida parents have made, too.

She unsuccessfully implored her fellow lawmakers on the state committee on ethics and elections to remove him as Florida’s surgeon general.

“Since he has been in that position, I don’t feel like he’s done anything to help our health,” said Polsky, a Democrat representing parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties. “The child immunization rate is down. His focus on COVID is very dangerous. I think he is unfit for that position. He is a dangerous leader and he is hurting the health of Floridians.”

Scientists such as Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist and the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Fellow at the American Council on Science and Health, say the surgeon general has engaged in “professional misconduct that has harmed the citizens of Florida.” Miller believes Ladapo’s role as a UF professor could be his last.

“I think he will have great difficulty being hired by another university after this gig is over,” said Miller.

Scott Rivkees, the first Florida surgeon general appointed by DeSantis, does not agree with the guidance from his replacement – or his research methods. He has written several editorials and told a Sun Sentinel reporter he is concerned about the long-term consequences and “an erosion of respect in the experts.”

“I have concerns about the anti-vaccine messaging,” he said, adding that it puts older, vulnerable Floridians at risk. “We have to ask ourselves, who are we going to listen to? … With the rise of misinformation, look to your healthcare provider as your authority.”

Ladapo, who a Florida political analyst thinks could ride DeSantis’ coattails in his push toward the White House, and possibly become U.S. Surgeon General, is seen as the governor’s partner in fighting what they call the federal government’s fear-guided policies.

“If DeSantis can knock off Trump, it could become an issue of who is appointed as U.S. Surgeon General. There’s a high probability it would be Ladapo, assuming he wants the position,” said University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett.

Ladapo, the person

Throughout his medical career Ladapo has published op-eds in national publications, but their tone began to change during the pandemic. He started speaking out against COVID-19 amid the first wave of lockdowns, about four years after he began working as an associate professor at UCLA. He was convinced that lockdowns were fear-based, ineffective policies. As a father of three boys, he railed against lockdowns for schoolchildren.

The cover of the book written by Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo (Courtesy)

“We must not let ill-informed, fear-fueled policy compound the casualties of COVID-19,” he wrote in USA Today in March 2020.

Ladapo said in his book, “Transcend Fear: A Blueprint for Mindful Leadership in Public Health,” published in August 2022, that he gained the courage to share his opinions on the COVID-19 response after a spiritual awakening from a five-day counseling session in Chinese meridian theory and the qualities of chi.

The son of Nigerian immigrants, Ladapo grew up in Louisiana and Georgia. He has a background in cardiovascular and HIV research and has held a medical license for about 12 years. He has a medical degree and a doctorate in health policy from Harvard, and although he has worked in several hospitals, he has leaned more toward research and academia.

His wife, he said, has had a big influence on his beliefs.

In a December interview with Republican politician Dr. Ben Carson, Ladapo said his wife encouraged him to speak out about the COVID-19 vaccine.

“Even though I’m chatting with you here, it’s really a mom-and-pop operation. It’s my wife and I,” Ladapo told Carson. “… She has been so vocal against these things for kids since … it was just a twinkle in the eyes of the CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna. She just knew that they were up to absolutely no good and she was right.”

Brianna Ladapo, who has a memoir coming out this year, describes herself in her Amazon author bio as an “intuitive spiritual healer, movement therapist, and teacher.” She majored in English at Harvard and has also studied traditional naturopathy, plant and herbal medicine, and shamanism.

Brianna Ladapo is also the one who convinced Ladapo to go to the counseling that he believes was God’s plan to give him the courage to speak out against COVID-19 policy. He believes the federal government is not giving Americans all the information they need.

In 2020, Ladapo signed the Great Barrington Declaration along with 47,000 other medical practitioners, which called for people to build an immunity to COVID through natural infection when possible in order to reach herd immunity, rather than isolating or wearing face masks.

These outspoken opinions that clashed with public health guidance ultimately isolated him from other professors at UCLA.

In a background check for Ladapo’s confirmation, a former supervisor told the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that he leads with opinions over evidence and his stances on COVID-19 upset his UCLA colleagues. That supervisor, Dr. Carol Mangione, wrote one of three recommendations that got him the state job.

“Prior to the pandemic, my relationship with UCLA had been very good,” Ladapo wrote in his book. “But by late summer 2021, as a result of the stances I had taken on COVID-19 policies, things had deteriorated into something resembling a bad marriage.”

Along came DeSantis.

Ladapo, the professor

When DeSantis announced Ladapo as Florida’s surgeon general, he also announced that the former UCLA-tenured associate professor would become a tenured professor at the University of Florida and spend 20% of his time doing that job. UF would pay his $15,000 relocation fee.

Ladapo makes $262,000 a year as a UF professor, including $75,000 for a role in which he’s charged with “developing policies and interventions to reduce healthcare disparities for UF Health.” He earns another $250,000 for his role as the state’s surgeon general, putting his total salary at $512,000 a year.

Ladapo’s contract at UF requires him to do research and clinical teaching, but the only documented research at UF is Institutional Review Board approval for a single study on reducing cardiovascular risk in HIV-infected adults, the university said in response to multiple public records requests.

When questioned about his job duties at UF, Ladapo told lawmakers on April 24 he has given academic talks and taught in two courses at the university – one on health policy and one on HIV. UF public records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel indicate he gave a single guest lecture in each of those courses, which were taught by other professors.

He told lawmakers at the April 24 ethics committee meeting he has plans to teach in the future.

From the date of his hiring, fellow professors at UF expressed resentment.

A group of them claimed his hiring process was rushed and political and asked for an investigation.

“The vetting of Dr Ladapo in the UF Department of Medicine was at best atypical and cursory and at worst a total sham. In my decades at UF I’ve never seen anything like it,” an anonymous faculty member said in a March 2022 report investigating whether the hiring process was normal.

The UF chairman of the board of trustees, Morteza Hosseini, a large DeSantis political donor, pushed for Ladapo to be hired, public records show. Ladapo was granted a full professorship with tenure within only two weeks of deliberation.

A fact-finding committee found the process “appeared to violate the spirit” of UF hiring regulations and procedures by not giving faculty sufficient time and information to evaluate him for tenure. The findings of this report did not change his position on the UF faculty.

Dr. Robert Cook, a UF professor who hosted Ladapo for a guest lecture in his graduate course on the epidemiology and biology of HIV/AIDS, said Ladapo was knowledgeable on the subject, gave a good talk and stayed afterward to speak with students.

Cook said Ladapo appears to be involved in the state’s continued efforts to end the HIV epidemic and seems to genuinely care about the issue.

“Politically, there’s a lot you can either agree with or disagree with. But in terms of how he has approached HIV in Florida, all I can say is I think he’s done a fair job with that,” Cook said.

Ladapo, the researcher

Ladapo came to the role of Florida’s surgeon general with a background as a researcher, doctor and college professor at top universities such as New York University and UCLA.

Before he arrived in Florida, Ladapo had been an author on about 80 peer-reviewed research papers, according to his resume. In their recommendation letters for his Florida position, his colleagues at UCLA called him “a nationally known expert in health services research with expertise in economics.”

In Florida, he accumulated tens of thousands of Twitter fans, and Tucker Carlson, the former Fox host of the highest-rated primetime cable news show in the U.S., announced he saw Ladapo as the head of the U.S. Health and Human Services someday.

“I cannot wait until you run HHS. I will come to your swearing-in. Doctor, thank you,” he told Ladapo on a December 2021 show.

Riding on the momentum of his rising fame, Ladapo began in early 2022 to issue guidance against COVID-19 testing and vaccination for healthy kids, contradicting guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In March 2022, Florida became the first and only state to recommend against COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and later became the only state not to pre-order vaccines for children under 5.

After researchers claimed he was misinterpreting their data in his recommendations, Ladapo turned to conducting his own research.

In two separate studies on behalf of the Florida Department of Health, Ladapo cast doubt on the safety of COVID mRNA vaccines and the research behind them. First came an October 2022 study by the FDOH that Ladapo cited to recommend against vaccines for young men due to cardiovascular risk.

The study states there is an increased risk of cardiac-related deaths in the four weeks following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination.

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo at a 2021 bill signing with Gov. Ron DeSantis on Nov. 18, 2021, in Brandon.

Chris O'Meara/AP

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo at a 2021 bill signing with Gov. Ron DeSantis on Nov. 18, 2021, in Brandon. (Chris O’Meara/AP file)

However, public records from FDOH obtained by the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel but first reported by Politico and The Tampa Bay Times in April, revealed Ladapo removed statistical analysis from the October study prior to its publication that weakened evidence of an association between cardiac-related death and vaccination. He also removed evidence that the risks of cardiovascular issues from COVID-19 are higher than cardiovascular risks from the vaccine.

“His conclusions are not based on the statistics,” said Dr. Frederick Southwick, an infectious disease doctor with UF Health. “He fudged it so even when it wasn’t true, he said it was true.”

This could constitute scientific misconduct, Kenneth Goodman, founder and director of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy and director of the university’s Ethics Programs, said in an email to the Orlando Sentinel.

“If any college professor found a student had done such a thing, one, he’d fail, and two, he would likely be reported to an academic council for disciplinary action. There are students who have done this and been expelled,” said Goodman, who helped develop a course in the Responsible Conduct of Research for the CDC.

An allegation of scientific fraud – like the one Ladapo is accused of by Florida ethics experts, other public health researchers, and fellow faculty members – can end careers. This type of conduct can taint the reputation of any institution or collaborators that the accused party has worked with, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“If a scientist fabricates data on an NIH grant, for example,” Goodman said, “it could lead to a ban on federal funding and a variety of internal disciplinary consequences.”

The Florida Office of Inspector General originally dismissed a November complaint of scientific fraud after an anonymous source failed to follow up. The Inspector did not respond to numerous requests by the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel on whether a new investigation is underway.

Ladapo tweeted this response in late April: “PhD-trained physician revises report based on his scientific expertise = ‘scandalous altering of results’ 🤣 Fauci enthusiasts are terrified and will do anything to divert attention from the risks of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.”

In defending his research and his conclusion, Ladapo has repeatedly pointed to a peer-reviewed study out of England that he said found similar results.

The study found very different results. Statistical analyses from this study concluded only non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccines carried an increased risk of cardiac death, and only in women. The study linked COVID-19, but not COVID-19 vaccines, to an increased risk of death.

This incident has sparked editorials calling him a menace, a nonprofit calling for an ethics investigation by the Florida Board of Medicine, and a UF professor asking the director of UF Research Integrity, Security and Compliance if there would be ramifications.

Public records show Cassandra Farley, the director of UF Research Integrity, Security and Compliance, said in a May 2 email to a faculty member that UF has no standing to consider these allegations because the research wasn’t conducted at the university.

“There is a lot of disgust and anger at the special treatment he has gotten,” said Kayser Enneking, an anesthesiologist and professor at UF College of Medicine. “He is a UF employee so he should be following the same rules as everyone else. If the data was manipulated, it is an incredibly serious infraction. It should be investigated and certainly could be grounds for firing.”

Ladapo’s October research was followed by a February analysis of the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System. He found that VAERS reports in Florida increased after COVID-19 vaccines became available. This prompted him to write a letter to the Food and Drug Administration and CDC and put out a health alert to Florida medical providers.

“The State Surgeon General is notifying the health care sector and public of a substantial increase in Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports from Florida after the COVID-19 vaccine rollout,” Ladapo wrote in his alert.

The CDC and FDA responded within hours of Ladapo’s warning, saying that the incidents included in the VAERS database are self-reported and unverified, leading to misinterpretation because of the sheer number of shots given out and the new awareness of the database.

“The claim … is incorrect, misleading and could be harmful to the American public,” a response letter signed by the FDA and CDC directors read.

On top of allegations of data manipulation, other leaders in the public health field, including FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf, have criticized his research in interviews with the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel as being poorly designed, lacking transparency and failing to undergo peer review.

Rivkees, the former state surgeon general, agrees and said the Florida’s Department of Health dataset isn’t big enough to draw the conclusions Ladapo made, noting that the FDA and CDC have a bigger dataset that found vaccines were safe.

Jason Salemi, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida, said in an email to the Orlando Sentinel that public health surveillance is not always peer-reviewed, but he thinks Ladapo’s 2022 study would have benefited from it.

“External peer review, though an imperfect process, helps ensure that analyses of surveillance data and research are accurate, unbiased, and meet the standards of the scientific community. For this study, a reasonable expert in the field would have pointed out concerns about the analysis,” Salemi wrote.

Ladapo told lawmakers on April 24 that with public health surveillance there is nothing unusual about his study being issued without peer review.

The findings were unpopular, he said, because they were not what health officials, politicians and organizations such as the CDC and FDA wanted to hear: “It was recast as something that was unusual whereas it’s completely usual,” Ladapo told lawmakers.

Ladapo, the surgeon general

In response to requests from the Orlando Sentinel about what Ladapo has done for the department, FDOH spokesperson Nikki Whiting provided a list of ongoing projects, including the Opioid Recovery Network, HIV testing, and maternal health. She did not share Ladapo’s specific role, nor did he provide them when questioned by lawmakers in April.

The FDOH lists seven main health priorities ranging from Alzheimer’s to maternal health. Ladapo has been most visible on the podium at news briefings on COVID-19.

Critics assert that Ladapo’s crusade against mRNA vaccines for kids has contributed to a drop in overall childhood immunization in the state. While the rate has fallen from 96.1% in 2019 to 94.3% in 2021 in Florida, vaccination rates are dropping similarly nationwide.

Florida’s COVID-19 vaccine rate was on par with the rest of the nation during the shots’ initial rollout, but now lags behind other states, CDC data indicates. About 17% of U.S. residents have gotten an updated booster shot, compared with about 12% of Florida residents.

COVID-19 vaccination rates for children 6 months to 4 years old range from 2% to 36% by state. Florida is at 4%, according to a February CDC report.

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo attends a news conference with Gov. Ron DeSantis on Jan. 3, 2022 at Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale. DeSantis announced that more monoclonal antibody treatments would be coming to Florida with additional sites in South Florida. (Tribune News Service file)

Outside of COVID but still in lockstep with DeSantis, Ladapo has been at the forefront of the clash in Florida over gender-affirming care for minors.

He released a memo to healthcare providers in April 2022 advising against social gender transition, surgery puberty blockers and hormone therapy, and led the state efforts to block Medicaid coverage for such treatments. DeSantis had been pushing anti-transgender laws for years, alongside other Republican politicians.

“It’s just a highly experimental therapy that has very poor evidence and I think is totally inappropriate to be doing with children,” Ladapo said in a state legislative committee meeting on April 24.

Ladapo’s positions on gender-affirming treatment contradict those of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association.

As surgeon general, he has been named in a March lawsuit from families for his role in discouraging gender-affirming care for minors.

During his tenure as surgeon general, Ladapo has maintained an active Twitter presence, responding to critics or criticizing the federal government. He also uses the social platform to promote healthy behaviors through the Healthier You campaign and shares snapshots of his vegetable-heavy cooking and his morning swim with his 160k followers.

Often he is at news conferences promoting Ron or Casey DeSantis’ health-related initiatives such as funding for cancer research, mental health or nursing education.

While Ladapo participates in announcing these initiatives, his focus has largely been on COVID-19.

Ladapo continues to stand by his positions and says alternative perspectives in medicine should be welcomed.

“I love the discussion that we’ve stimulated. Isn’t it great when we discuss science transparently instead of trying to cancel one another?” he tweeted in October amid criticism of his research.

If DeSantis becomes the Republican nominee for U.S President, a national audience may decide.

Political analysts have previously told the Sun Sentinel that DeSantis’ pandemic strategy will be pivotal in his campaign for the U.S. President. DeSantis often makes fun of former leader of the U.S. pandemic response Fauci and praises his own decisions on lockdowns, mandates and COVID treatments that flout federal public health guidance.

“At the time, everything we were doing in Florida, we were getting attacked by bureaucrats like Fauci … ” DeSantis said at a news briefing Thursday, “But we stuck to our guns because we believed we were doing the right thing for the state.”

Ladapo, with his Ivy League pedigree, medical background, and refusal to yield to criticism of his positions, gives legitimacy to DeSantis’ statements. Wearing his signature bright-colored shirts, he stands tall by DeSantis’ side at coronavirus news conferences, as he did Thursday.

In introducing Ladapo, DeSantis said: “You’ve seen him fighting the good fight not just on behalf of evidence-based medicine but on behalf of medical freedom.”

At the podium, Ladapo made fun of public health officials who had different views on COVID vaccines and lockdown supporters. “These people were on the other side … they had media with them and unfortunately many of my medical colleagues. They were one voice and they were strutting, chest out, with ‘this is what we have to do.’ And, now all those people cannot run fast enough away from these positions. They are a little late and very wrong.”

Ladapo went on to warn the audience against proponents of COVID precautions: “All that stuff is prime and ready for rollout out again next time they even get the whiff of an opportunity.”

Going forward, will an anti-COVID vaccine medical professional be an asset or liability to DeSantis as he tries to appeal beyond his conservative base in an expected presidential campaign?

“Could someone attacking DeSantis make that an issue, I think they could,’” said Jewett, the political science professor at UCF. “There are plenty of questions about some of the actions he has taken as Florida’s surgeon general. I can see effective ads built around those actions.”

Sun Sentinel health reporter Cindy Goodman can be reached at cgoodman@sunsentinel.com or Twitter @cindykgoodman. Caroline Catherman is the Health reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, and can be reached at ccatherman@orlandosentinel.com

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politico

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Professors at the University of Florida had high hopes for Joseph Ladapo. But they quickly lost faith in him.

In 2021, the university was fast-tracking him into a tenured professorship as part of his appointment as Florida’s surgeon general. Ladapo, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ pick for the state’s top medical official, dazzled them with his Harvard degree and work as a research professor at New York University and UCLA.

Professors had anticipated Ladapo would bring at least $600,000 in grant funding to his new appointment from his previous job at UCLA. That didn’t happen. They expected he would conduct research on internal medicine, as directed by his job letter. Instead, he edited science research manuscripts, gave a guest lecture for grad students and wrote a memoir about his vaccine skepticism.

Ladapo’s work at UF has generally escaped scrutiny. Yet interviews with more than two dozen current and former faculty members, state lawmakers and former agency heads, as well as reviews of internal university emails and reports, show that staff was worried that Ladapo had bypassed a crucial review process when he was rushed into his coveted tenured position and, moreover, was unsuited for the position.

His dual role at UF shows how DeSantis and state Republicans have used the flagship public university to further their political goals, with uncertain benefits for students and other faculty. The university also hired as its new president former Nebraska GOP Sen. Ben Sasse, who joins several former Republican lawmakers in leadership roles in Florida higher education, including former state Sen. Ray Rodrigues, who is chancellor of the university system.

Ladapo has made headlines across the country for his contentious stances on Covid mandates and vaccines as surgeon general. He has bucked the medical establishment by claiming Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are dangerous for healthy young men and warned people under the age of 65 from getting the most recent Covid boosters. He was also criticized for supporting hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug heralded as a coronavirus treatment by former President Donald Trump. A study later found the drug didn’t prevent Covid-19.

While the state has provided other appointees with the same type of tenured position, Ladapo had warning signs from the start. It usually takes months to properly interview and analyze candidates for tenured professorships, but Ladapo’s application took less than three weeks.

“A lot of people thought he had been vetted by the College of Medicine like anyone who goes through the tenure process,” said one current UF professor who was not authorized to speak and was granted anonymity to freely discuss the matter. “That would have caught a lot of red flags.”

Some also bristled that Ladapo, in an email to the heads of the medical school, said he’d only visited the sprawling Gainesville campus twice in his first year on the job, showing a lack of familiarity with Florida’s flagship medical school.

Ladapo declined to comment for this story, and UF Health officials would not answer questions about his time as a professor. A spokesperson for UF did not respond to specific questions about the story.

The DeSantis administration did not respond to a request for comment.

Ladapo’s two confirmations by the state Senate included committee hearings that allowed senators to ask him questions about his performance at both jobs. State Sen. Tina Polsky (D-Boca Raton) said she had asked Ladapo during last year’s confirmation about his performance at UF, and he did not give a clear response despite follow-up attempts.

“You know he never taught a class per se, and it was just his typical word salad answers for everything,” Polsky said. “It’s really frustrating.”

Polsky said in light of the intense criticism and controversy over Ladapo, she was not surprised to hear about his problems at UF.

“It was very par for the course,” Polsky said. “This guy is a charlatan, he’s not looking out for anyone’s health and he’s going to campaign with DeSantis.”

Two roles

Ladapo was the perfect fit as surgeon general for DeSantis. Like the governor, he had gained prominence by criticizing safety measures early in the pandemic, including questioning the effectiveness of boosters or the need for mandatory masking. Both of them also supported the Great Barrington Declaration, which called on governments to adopt the herd approach for Covid-19, which occurs after enough people in the population recover from the virus and develop antibodies to fight it off in the future.

And while the UF staff was initially enthusiastic about Ladapo, faculty staff began expressing concerns almost immediately over how quickly he was given a tenured position, his inability to bring over pledged grant funding, conflicts with colleagues and issues with how much time he spent at the university versus his job as surgeon general.

Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona makes remarks during a press conference in 2008 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. | Tim Sloan/AFP via Getty Images

Former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, said the arrangement allowing Ladapo to be Florida’s top health official and a professor at UF could create conflicts of interest — or at the very least be viewed as one.

Carmona, a professor of public health at the University of Arizona before becoming U.S. surgeon general, said he placed his university job on hold after his appointment to avoid the appearance of a conflict — especially if his position involved decisions that would impact his university employer. Other conflicts could arise if, in a state position, he advocated for a political stance that was at odds with the university.

“When you are in a political office, you cut your ties,” Carmona said. “Basically I still talk to my colleagues, but my responsibilities were left because my allegiance has to be with the United States of America.”

Florida law allows state employees to split their time between two positions if they are recruited to lead an agency under a two year temporary “interchange agreement.” The agreement allows the employee to collect salaries from both jobs.

Ladapo earns a $250,000 salary as surgeon general and a $262,000 salary from UF, according to state and university records.

But some of Ladapo’s UF College of Medicine colleagues were concerned he bypassed crucial vetting during his whirlwind hiring process, regardless of whether it was legal.

A report by an ad hoc committee created by the UF Faculty Senate to review Ladapo’s hiring just months after he came aboard determined that — although parts of Ladapo’s speedy hiring process was not unprecedented for the university and some rules were routinely ignored — the school violated its own policies as school leaders charged on with Ladapo’s application.

“The irregularities noted above were of concern to the members of this committee and appeared to violate the spirit, and in review the exact letter, of UF hiring regulations and procedures, particularly in the vital role faculty play in evaluating the qualifications of their peers,” the report states.

Another professor who agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said the process used to grant Ladapo’s tenure at UF was an affront to academic transparency.

“Dr Ladapo has undoubtedly sullied the academic reputation of the University,” the professor said. “He continues to detract from the incredible science and outstanding clinical work being done by real UF scientists and clinicians.”

United Faculty of Florida-University of Florida President Meera Sitharam, the union head representing the institution, said she wondered why the science and public health communities have not investigated Ladapo for scientific fraud, amid a report from POLITICO that he personally altered the results of a Covid study at the state Department of Health.

After that April POLITICO report was published, Ladapo tweeted: “Fauci enthusiasts are terrified and will do anything to divert attention from the risks of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines— especially cardiac deaths. Truth will prevail.”

“For some reason the medical and public health communities aren’t outright investigating him … probably because he isn’t operating as a scientist or a faculty member,” Sitharam said in an email. “He is operating in the murky world where public health is held hostage to political fortunes, which is in part because public trust in health related institutions has been deeply eroded.”

Funding issues

Some of the most serious issues arose over money. Ladapo had initially promised UF that he would transfer grant funding from UCLA, where he had been working, to the Florida school, according to emails obtained from UF.

The funding was awarded by the National Institutes of Health for a research project. But, according to emails between Ladapo and school officials, it never materialized.

A search of an NIH database shows Ladapo is still one of three researchers assigned to a smoking cessation study at UCLA, which receives more than $600,000 in grant funding each year. Another $600,000 NIH grant awarded to UCLA in 2020 lists Ladapo as the sole researcher, and it includes his UF address.

In a June 2022 email, Department of Medicine Vice Chair Mark Brantly told Ladapo that he had reassigned a UF researcher who had been helping with the UCLA project because there was no grant funding.

“When we first discussed this matter you gave me the impression that your funding would follow you from UCLA,” Brantly wrote to Ladapo. “If you are having an issue with transferring your grant funds I strongly encourage you to talk with your NIH program project person.”

In response, Ladapo asked Department of Medicine Chair Jamie B. Conti to intervene. She declined.

“I am working actively on this issue with NIH’s Office of Research Integrity but it is not entirely under my control,” Ladapo wrote to Conti.

Brantly and Conti did not respond to questions about the emails with Ladapo, which POLITICO received through public records requests.

The same professor with the College of Medicine who raised issues over vetting said they were skeptical that Ladapo was the high-performing researcher he had sold himself as, and bucked at the salary he was receiving — especially with the medical school facing a projected $41.5 million shortfall. Like others, the professor was granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

“We keep getting all of these emails about doing more to help this $42 million shortfall, and then you have this guy who’s not doing anything,” the College of Medicine professor said. “I don’t know what he’s doing but it’s not research.”

The anticipated $41.5 million shortfall was the result of rapid growth by the College of Medicine over the past few years. The college also increased wages, Gary Mans, assistant vice president of UF Health, said in an email.

Ladapo’s responsibilities at the College of Medicine shifted significantly by the spring of this year. The university initially hired him to spend most of his time continuing his career’s work as a researcher in the UF Health internal medicine division.

His most recent quarterly effort report from spring of this year, however, shows he now spends most of his time in an undefined administrative role.

“I don’t know what he is doing but it definitely isn’t research,” said a separate College of Medicine professor not authorized to speak.

About a year after he was hired, Ladapo was defending his role at UF after meeting with the school’s vice president of health, David Nelson. Among the topics they discussed was Ladapo’s wish to host a series of seminars on the critical evaluation of scientific evidence.

He wrote in an email to Nelson and College of Medicine deans that he spent his first several months editing research manuscripts and finishing his book called “Transcend Fear,” in which he explains how he grew skeptical of most vaccines.

Ladapo, who also was required to fulfill a teaching requirement, wrote that he spoke at a UF Health Cancer Center Tobacco Control Working Group meeting in January, and he gave a lecture in an HIV course in July.

“I traveled to Gainesville on both occasions,” Ladapo wrote.

Ladapo also asked in the email to Nelson and the College of Medicine about creating a seminar and course on the critical evaluation of scientific evidence. He and the university haven’t yet created the course.

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politicvo 4 23

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo personally altered a state-driven study about Covid-19 vaccines last year to suggest that some doses pose a significantly higher health risk for young men than had been established by the broader medical community, according to a newly obtained document.

Ladapo’s changes, released as part of a public records request, presented the risks of cardiac death to be more severe than previous versions of the study. He later used the final document in October to bolster disputed claims that Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were dangerous to young men.

The surgeon general, a well-known Covid-19 vaccine skeptic, faced a backlash from the medical community after he made the assertions, which go against guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and American Academy of Pediatrics. But Ladapo’s statements aligned well with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ stance against mandatory Covid-19 vaccination.

Researchers with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and University of Florida, who viewed Ladapo’s edits on the study and have followed the issue closely, criticized the surgeon general for making the changes. One said it appears Ladapo altered the study out of political — not scientific — concerns.

“I think it’s a lie,” Matt Hitchings, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida, said of Ladapo’s assertion that the Covid-19 vaccine causes cardiac death in young men. “To say this — based on what we’ve seen, and how this analysis was made — it’s a lie.”

Ladapo used the final document in October to bolster disputed claims that Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were dangerous to young men. | Jenny Kane/AP Photo

The newly released draft of the eight-page study, provided by the Florida Department of Health, indicates that it initially stated that there was no significant risk associated with the Covid-19 vaccines for young men. But “Dr. L’s Edits,” as the document is titled, reveal that Ladapo replaced that language to say that men between 18 and 39 years old are at high risk of heart illness from two Covid vaccines that use mRNA technology.

“Results from the stratified analysis for cardiac related death following vaccination suggests mRNA vaccination may be driving the increased risk in males, especially among males aged 18-39,” Ladapo wrote in the draft. “The risk associated with mRNA vaccination should be weighed against the risk associated with COVID-19 infection.”

In a statement to POLITICO, Ladapo said revisions and refinements are a normal part of assessing surveillance data and that he has the appropriate expertise and training to make those decisions.

“To say that I ‘removed an analysis’ for a particular outcome is an implicit denial of the fact that the public has been the recipient of biased data and interpretations since the beginning of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine campaign,” he said. “I have never been afraid of disagreement with peers or media.”

He also said that he determined the study was worthwhile since “the federal government and Big Pharma continue to misrepresent risks associated with these vaccines.”

The DeSantis administration referred questions to Florida’s Department of Health.

Ladapo, a Harvard-trained doctor who held professorships at UCLA and NYU, specializes in cardiovascular diseases and gained attention nationally during the pandemic after he authored op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today questioning the safety of Covid-19 vaccines and the effectiveness of mask-wearing and lockdowns.

He was also a supporter of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that former President Donald Trump often praised as a treatment for Covid. The FDA later withdrew emergency authorization for its use.

Ladapo was picked by DeSantis in September 2021 to become the state’s surgeon general as DeSantis waged war against President Joe Biden’s Covid-related restrictions and ordered the state to ban mask-wearing requirements in schools and employer-issued vaccine mandates.

Ladapo drew criticism in part because he was affiliated with the conservative America’s Frontline Doctors, a group founded to fight Covid restrictions by anti-vaccine advocate Simone Gold. Ladapo devoted an entire chapter to his friendship with Gold in a memoir he published last year titled “Transcend Fear.”

Yet the researchers who viewed a copy of the edits said Ladapo removed an important analysis that would have contradicted his recommendation. Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, called Ladapo’s changes “really troubling.”

POLITICS

‘I don’t think he cares about people’: DeSantis struggles with former Hill colleagues

:{:{BY EUGENE DANIELS | APRIL 21, 2023}:

“He took out stuff that didn’t support his position,” Salmon said. “That’s really a problem.”

Hitchings chastised the integrity of Ladapo’s study after it was released last fall but is now much more critical.

“What’s clear from the previous analysis, and even more clear from Dr. L’s edits, is that absolutely there was a political motivation behind the final analysis that was produced,” Hitchings said. “Key information was withheld from the public that would have allowed them or other experts to interpret this in context.”

Ladapo’s edits also shed new light on an anonymous internal complaint he faced last year. The complaint, which the Florida Department of Health’s inspector general investigated, accused Ladapo of “scientific fraud” for allegedly manipulating the final draft of the study.

The inspector general stopped probing the complaint after the anonymous person failed to respond to emails. In a previous interview with POLITICO, Ladapo said the accusations were “factually false.”

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wiki 1 24

joseph Abiodun Ladapo (born December 16, 1978)^[1] is the surgeon general of Florida.^[2] He has attracted attention for spreading misinformation on COVID-19 and promoting vaccine hesitancy.^[3][4][5]

After immigrating to the United States from Nigeria, Ladapo earned an M.D. and a Ph.D. in Health Policy from Harvard University. He served as a professor of medicine at New York University before being tenured at the University of California, Los Angeles.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ladapo promoted unproven treatments, opposed vaccine and mask mandates, questioned the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, and contradicted professional medical organizations.^[6][7][4] Ladapo has also opposed gender-affirming care and counselling for transgender and nonbinary minors.[8][9][10^]

Early life and education

Ladapo was born in Nigeria, the son of a microbiologist.^[11] He immigrated to the United States at age five with his family. In his memoir, Ladapo said he had been traumatized by sexual abuse from a babysitter.^[4] He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry from Wake Forest University in 2000, and was a varsity track athlete.^[12][4] Ladapo received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in Health Policy from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 2008, having initially begun within the Master of Public Policy program for health policy at Harvard Kennedy School from 2003 to 2004.^[12] Ladapo completed clinical training in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.^[13]

Career

After Harvard, Ladapo worked at the NYU School of Medicine, Bellevue Hospital, and Tisch Hospital in New York City.^[when?][14] He received tenure at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he was a researcher, seeing patients about one day per week.^[4]

COVID-19 pandemic and Florida surgeon generalship

:{:{Around early 2020, Ladapo began to write op-eds for The Wall Street Journal on the emerging COVID-19 pandemic, notwithstanding a lack of specialization in infectious diseases, and gained prominence as a skeptic of mainstream consensus on prevention and treatment.^[4] In these columns, Ladapo promoted unproven treatments, including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, questioned the safety of vaccines, and opposed lockdown and mask mandates deriving from his "experience in treating COVID-19 patients at University of California, Los Angeles."^{[4][6][15][7][16}] }:

However, UCLA's staff scheduling roster did not have him assigned to treat any COVID-19 patients, and several of his colleagues said he had never treated any COVID-19 patient.^[17][18] Later that year, Ladapo signed the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued for reaching COVID-19 herd immunity by the fringe notion of "focused protection", where the less vulnerable people were allowed to be infected. ^[16]}:

Ladapo's op-eds caught the interest of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.^[16][4] On September 21, 2021, he was appointed the Surgeon General of the state, replacing Scott Rivkees, pending confirmation by the Florida Senate. Simultaneously, he was appointed an associate professor at the University of Florida Health in a fast-tracked hiring process initiated after the Board of Trustees chair — a DeSantis advisor — presented his resume before the UF Health president.^[19] Faculty members have since alleged that university administrators suppressed information about Ladapo's views on COVID-19 before the vote on his tenure.^[20]

:{:{On appointment, Ladapo said he would move Florida public health away from a fear-based and “senseless” over-focus on mandating vaccines and toward medical choice and a focus on total health and numerous interventions to achieve it.^[13]}:

:{:{He repealed quarantine rules for schoolchildren exposed to COVID-19 as his first executive action.^[15] The following month, Ladapo refused to wear a mask while meeting State Senator Tina Polsky, who was set to undergo radiation therapy;}:^[21] he defended his actions on the ground that masking hindered effective communication.^[22]

The Senate confirmed Ladapo on February 23, 2022; during background checks, his former UCLA supervisor refused a positive recommendation and said that Ladapo's "hands-off" approach towards tackling COVID-19 had not only distressed colleagues but also violated the Hippocratic oath.^[23][24][25]}:}:

:{:{In March 2022, Ladapo recommended that healthy children in Florida not be vaccinated against COVID-19; thus, Florida became the first state to contradict relevant guidelines by the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics}:.^[26][27]

:{Experts cited by Ladapo disagreed with his stance and accused him of cherry-picking their work.^[28] In October 2022, Ladapo cited an anonymous non-peer-reviewed analysis — claiming high cases of cardiac-related deaths among men who took mRNA COVID-19 vaccines — to suggest that men aged 18 to 39 not be vaccinated.^[29][4] Medical professionals rejected his analysis as methodologically flawed and unscientific; David Gorski stated that it was the first time in American history that a "state government weaponized bad science to spread anti-vaccine disinformation as official policy."^[30][31]

In January 2023, the Faculty Council of the University of Florida College of Medicine concluded upon an investigation that Ladapo's recommendation was based on "careless and contentious research practice" and might have violated the university policies on research integrity.^[32] An April 2023 article in Politico found that Ladapo had altered a study on COVID vaccines conducted by the state by replacing language suggesting the vaccines posed no significant risks for young men with the aforementioned language suggesting men 18-39 not be vaccinated.^[33]}:}:

Across 2022, Ladapo has also focused on opposing transgender health care, accusing professional organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society of being politically motivated to support such causes. He opposes gender-affirming care and counseling, hormonal therapies, related medications for transgender and nonbinary children and teenagers, and social-transition tools such as pronoun and name changes.^[8][9][10]

On March 10, 2023, Ladapo was publicly rebuked by the CDC and FDA for disseminating vaccine misinformation in response to a letter he wrote to the agencies which had misinterpreted data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).^[34]

References

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book skyhorse

fascinating look into the life of a state surgeon general and how his public health decisions provide a blueprint for fearless leadership and better national health policy.

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo shares the inspiring story of how he came to be who he is. After experiencing abuse as a child, Dr. Ladapo was incapable of connecting emotionally with other people. He was dissociated from virtually everything in his life and numbly powered through college, medical school, and residency to become a doctor and university professor. It wasn’t until he fell in love with his wife that he was forced to come face-to-face with the enormous emotional and spiritual disruption caused by his deeply buried trauma. Just before the pandemic, Dr. Ladapo worked with a former Navy Seal who used a mix of ancient disciplines and modern techniques to help free him from this trauma—and subsequently, his fear.

When the pandemic hit Los Angeles, Dr. Ladapo found himself well-equipped to observe the panic and fear that overtook the hospital where he was working—and the country—without becoming part of it. From this state of emotional clarity, he recognized that it was too late to take any public health measures that would significantly change the deadliness of the pandemic, and that it was more important to face the challenge squarely and focus on building capacity to treat patients without destroying society in the process. His message that panic, fear, and politics were fueling harmful decisions—like disavowing the possibility that hydroxychloroquine could effectively treat COVID-19—made him the target of fierce criticism.

In Transcend Fear: A Blueprint for Mindful Leadership in Public Health, Dr. Ladapo describes his views on public health restrictions, early home treatment, and COVID-19 vaccines, along with how Florida officials made public health decisions that set it apart from other states—and nations. Based on this experience, Dr. Ladapo explains how states can make better public health decisions in the future, recommending that health officials obtain training in decision analysis and expand their consciousness of how fear can shape perspectives and create dangerous outcomes—particularly during a crisis.

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blurbs

Review

"In two years of interviewing public health officials, Dr. Joe Ladapo was the most impressive I met, and the most decent. I suspect it won't be long before every American knows his name."

—Tucker Carlson

“This gripping biographical narrative lets the world understand the complex reality that has unfolded in the life of Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD. He stands as an impressive physical and intellectual force yet has been formed and molded into a respectful, careful, and quietly courageous leader in public health. The narrative quickly brings the reader through the life of Ladapo, his family, and Governor Ron DeSantis as characters working to save Floridians and the nation at large from the catastrophic federal response to the pandemic that has unfolded before our very eyes. Ladapo is a wonderful writer and has taken brave steps in disclosure that many public figures could not bring themselves to do in spoken words or print. This book will stand as an important inflection point for Dr. Ladapo and America’s public health community at a time of continued crisis and upheaval in our country. So, sit back and enjoy this wonderful story about one of America's finest heroes in contemporary history."

—Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH, coauthor of Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Biopharmaceutical Complex

“I searched the nation for ethical and honorable physicians to tell the American people the real public health truth. By reviewing decades of research prior to Covid and observing real-time scientific data, Dr. Ladapo spoke boldly and accurately. He reminded us that masks are unable to stop the spread of a tiny respiratory virus; he reminded us that early treatment is always superior to negligence; and he reminded us of Public Health 101: locking down healthy people is never going to be an effective—or legal—public health measure. Dr. Ladapo was different because he refused to delegate his personal responsibility to think critically—even in the face of overwhelming pressure to follow the herd.”

—Simone Gold, MD, JD, founder of America’s Frontline Doctors and CEO of GoldCare™ Health & Wellness

“Joe Ladapo has been one of very few public voices of reason throughout the Covid pandemic. While other leaders in the field of public health have panicked, forgotten their training, and allowed their thinking to be clouded by fear, he has consistently demanded that we look at the actual evidence, and do a careful weighing of benefits and harms before putting in place massively disruptive public health interventions. With Joe at the center of Florida’s public health decision making, it is not hard to understand why the state has come out of the pandemic looking so good.”

—Sebastian Rushworth, MD, author of Covid: Why Most of What You Know Is Wrong

“Dr. Joe Ladapo is the best Surgeon General in the country. During the COVID crisis, Dr. Ladapo provided the country with a credible outside voice that consistently put forward a vision of health that encompassed psychological, physical, and social well-being. This vision contrasted sharply with the vision of public health focused on the avoidance of a single pathogen that mainstream public health adopted. The results of the lockdown focused public health are plain to see in the form of lost schooling for kids, shuttered businesses, inequality increased on a vast scale, and worse health. The lockdowns did not even prevent more than a million Americans from dying with COVID. We should have listened to Dr. Ladapo.”

—Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, Stanford University professor of health policy

About the Author

Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD is the surgeon general of Florida and professor at University of Florida College of Medicine. He received his MD from Harvard Medical School and a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Ladapo worked as an associate professor of general internal medicine and a health policy researcher at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. He lives in Tampa, Florida with his wife and children.

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ggl 1 24

Symptoms and treatment

Because of the increase in cases, health officials across the country should consider whether a person traveled to Florida when examining potential leprosy cases, according to the report.

The report looks into the case of a 54-year-old man in Florida who got a leprosy diagnosis. He claimed he had not traveled outside of the state, been exposed to armadillos, and or had prolonged contact with people from countries where leprosy is common. Since the man’s case avoided all of the common risk factors of the disease, the researchers linked the case to another study of Florida cases where there was no zoonotic contact.

Additionally, the report highlights that leprosy cases among people born outside of the U.S. are declining, which increases the evidence for leprosy becoming endemic to the southeastern U.S. Finding the cause of the infection is difficult because leprosy grows slowly and the symptoms take a long time to develop, according to the CDC. However, a person with the disease cannot spread it to others they have casual contact with, such as shaking hands or hugging.

Symptoms of leprosy that affect the skin include discolored patches of skin; growths; thick, stiff or dry skin; painless ulcers on the soles of feet; painless swelling or lumps on the face or earlobes; loss of eyebrows or eyelashes.

Nerve damage can take the following forms: numbness of affected areas of the skin, muscle weakness or paralysis, enlarged nerves, and eye problems that may lead to blindness.

Nowadays, the disease is treatable but requires a combination of two to three antibiotics taken over a period of one to two years, according to the CDC.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter

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ars tech

Florida man's unexplained case of leprosy last year adds to mounting evidence that the rare and often misunderstood bacterial infection has become endemic to the central part of the Sunshine State—and that it may, in fact, lurk in the environment there, possibly in the soil.

In a research letter appearing in the August issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases,three dermatologists detailed the man's case and their concerns for local transmission. They note that the 54-year-old man, like several others in the state who contracted the disease, reported no established risk factors that might explain their infection. He hadn't traveled abroad, where he could have picked up the infection, or had any exposure to armadillos, which live in Florida and naturally carry the bacteria that cause leprosy. He also didn't have any prolonged contact with people from leprosy-endemic countries or connections to anyone known to have leprosy.

But he did spend a lot of time outdoors; he worked as a landscaper. In fact, many of the recent Florida cases lacked traditional risk factors but reported spending a lot of time outdoors. The similarity "supports the investigation into environmental reservoirs as a potential source of transmission," the doctors wrote.

In an interview with the Sun Sentinel, the authors speculated further that the man could have picked up the infection through contact with contaminated soil. The infectious earth could have been seeded with leprosy-causing bacteria from armadillos that commonly live in the area. Soil samples from India, where leprosy is endemic, have previously been found harboring leprosy bacteria, they noted.

"Could it be in the soil in Central Florida? We don’t know," Charles Dunn, a dermatologist and co-author of the study, told the Sentinel. "It is one of the interesting factors to consider in the thought process. We are hoping the scientific community leans into our report."

In the meantime, Dunn and his co-authors advise dermatologists to be aware of the possibility. "Travel to this area, even in the absence of other risk factors, should prompt consideration of leprosy in the appropriate clinical context," they wrote in the research letter.

No travel advisory

The suggestion has apparently raised undue concerns that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now working to assuage. The CDC recently added an advisory on its webpage about leprosy—aka Hansen's disease—noting that the agency "has not issued a travel advisory for Florida, or any other state, due to Hansen’s disease (leprosy)."

The agency also highlighted a series of potentially comforting facts about the disease, which is caused by the slow-growing bacterium Mycobacterium leprae. First, leprosy is rare in the US, even in Florida. There are fewer than 200 cases nationwide most years. Although Florida accounts for a disproportionate number of those cases, with most concentrated in the central part of the state, the case counts are small. So far in 2023, there have been 16 leprosy cases reported in Florida, nine of which were locally acquired cases.

Leprosy is also not very contagious, despite what the severe stigma and ostracism of the past may have led you to believe. It takes prolonged contact with someone infected—often over months—to contract the bacterial infection, the CDC says. Additionally, researchers have estimated that more than 95 percent of people exposed to the bacterium will be resistant to infection via innate, cell-mediated immune responses.

If an infection establishes, it develops slowly, often with an incubation period of three to five years, though it can be as long as two decades. For some, the infection can spontaneously heal after that point. For others, though, it can progress to damage the skin and nerves, causing numbness and hallmark growths, nodules, lesions, discoloration, and ulcers. If left untreated, it can lead to facial disfigurement, chronic ulcers, blindness, paralysis, and loss of function in hands and feet. The slow progression, rarity, and nondescript early skin symptoms mean that some with the disease are misdiagnosed—sometimes for many years.

Once the infection is correctly identified, it can be effectively treated with antibiotics and completely cured. The treatment usually involves two or three antibiotics taken between one and two years, though.

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raw 1123

Church of Bleach” family gets years in prison for deadly “miracle” solution

A federal judge in Miami has handed down years-long prison sentences to a Florida father and his three adult sons who were convicted in July of using a faux church to sell an industrial-strength bleaching agent as a "miracle" solution they falsely...

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https://www.alternet.org/ron-desantis-surgeon-general-altered-key-data-on-19-vaccines-safety-report/

no lnx

DeSantis’ surgeon general 'personally altered' key data on COVID-19 vaccines’ safety: report

Ron DeSantis’ surgeon general 'personally altered' key data on COVID-19 vaccines’ safety: report

Alex Henderson April 26, 2023

Throughout most of his career, Dr. Anthony Fauci, now 82, was hardly an object of hatred among Republicans. Fauci, who began working for the United States' federal government in the late 1960s, served under several conservative GOP presidents without any problem: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

The younger President Bush, in fact, praised Fauci when he gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award in 2008. George W. Bush's exact words: "As a physician, medical researcher, author, and public servant, Dr. Anthony Fauci has dedicated his life to expanding the horizons of human knowledge and making progress toward groundbreaking cures for diseases. His efforts to advance our understanding and treatment of HIV/AIDS have brought hope and healing to tens of millions in both developed and developing nations. The United States honors Anthony Fauci for his commitment to enabling men, women, and children to live longer, healthier lives."

But that was before Donald Trump's presidency, the far-right MAGA movement and the COVID-19 pandemic. Attacking Fauci's response to the pandemic became a badge of honor among MAGA Republicans, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — whose surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, disagreed strongly with Fauci and President Joe Biden on the value of COVID-19 vaccines. DeSantis and Ladapo made vaccines a culture war issue in Florida, and according to Politico reporter Arek Sarkissian, Ladapo "personally altered a state-driven study about COVID-19 vaccines" in 2022 "to suggest that some doses pose a significantly higher health risk for young men than had been established by the broader medical community, according to a newly obtained document."

READ MORE: Inside Ron DeSantis' plan to take on Trump from the right: report

Politico published Sarkissian's report on Ladapo and the study on April 24. And CNN's Jamie Gumbrecht offered additional reporting in an article published on April 26.

Gumbrecht explains, "Politico said it obtained a document as part of a public records request that shows Ladapo's changes to the eight-page analysis. The changes deleted comments that said a link with slightly increased risk of cardiac-related deaths after COVID-19 vaccination was 'no longer significant' for multi-dose vaccines and 'there is little suggestion of any effect immediately following vaccination.' The document shows an added line that says mRNA vaccines may be driving an increased risk of cardiac-related death in males, especially those ages 18-39."

The CNN reporter adds, "The version released publicly in October 2022 said COVID-19 vaccination was 'associated with a modestly increased risk for cardiac-related mortality 28 days following vaccination,' and says the vaccines may be driving the risk, especially among younger men."

Gumbrecht notes that the "Florida analysis" of last year "was not peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal, but was posted online by the Florida Department of Health and shared in a news release" published on October 7, 2022.

READ MORE: Inside Ron DeSantis' plan to take on Trump from the right: report

The Florida Health Department, on April 26, said it stands by Ladapo's 2022 statements. But Gumbrecht points out that the Sunshine State "is an outlier in its recommendations against the COVID-19 vaccine for young men and healthy children" and is "at odds with" the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)."

Fauci and Biden, in contrast to Ladapo, have been aggressive proponents of COVID-19 vaccines — which they believe have saved countless lives. Both Fauci and Biden had mild COVID-19 infections in 2022 and believe that their infections might have been worse had they not been vaccinated.

COVID-19 has been the world's deadliest health crisis since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918/1919. According to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, COVID-19 has killed more than 6.8 million people worldwide since it was first reported in Wuhan, China in late 2019. That death toll includes over 1.1 million people in the United States.

But much has changed since the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Although COVID-19 is still highly contagious, most of today's COVID-19 infections are not fatal and do not require hospitalization. Many COVID-19 restricts around the world have been lifted.

READ MORE: Inside Ron DeSantis' plan to take on Trump from the right: report

Read CNN's full report at this link and Politico's full report at this link.

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