I’m concerned that an important outlet for the medical quackery of Florida’s Surgeon General is about to go on … ahem … on hiatus.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo squeezed in a disinformation session on the podcast of Steve Bannon earlier this month, days before the election denier and border-wall-donation thiefis likely to trade his podcast microphone for an orange jumpsuit, or in Bannon’s sartorial style, perhaps several layers of orange jumpsuits.
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Bannon is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday for criminal contempt of Congress. Ladapo appeared on Bannon’s show to complain that Twitter had temporarily removed the Florida Surgeon General’s account because he advised young men in Florida not to get vaccinated for COVID-19.
“It’s almost criminal, really, in terms of how much disregard that they have for human rights,” Ladapo told the guy who knows a thing or two about being criminal. “And I’m not talking just about Twitterbut this whole body that thinks it’s OK to crush the voices of others because you don’t like their message.”
But it’s not really a question of “not liking” a message or “crushing voices.” It’s a question of spreading misinformation about a life-saving vaccination.
Ladapo, a political hire signalingnew direction
Ladapo became Surgeon General of Florida shortly after Gov. Ron DeSantis stopped advocating COVID-19 vaccinations, and started derisively referring to them as “jabs.”
I guess it works on some people to stress the avoidance of temporary arm discomfort over an agonizing descent into respiratory failure.
DeSantis found Ladapo after the doctor had joined a theatrical troupe of white-coated, anti-vaccine doctors calling themselves America’s Frontline Doctors, a group that was mostly just fronting potentially hazardous treatments of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
Ladapo had no experience treating actual COVID-19 patients, and the leader of that political group was recently sentenced to 60 days in jail for joining the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan.6of last year.
Ladapo’s former supervisor at UCLA warned Florida officials not to hire him, citing that Ladapo put his own anti-vaccine opinions ahead of scientific evidence.
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“Dr. Ladapo’s opinions, published in a number of popular media outlets, were contrary to the best scientific evidence available about the Covid-19 pandemic and caused concern among a large number of his research and clinical colleagues and subordinates who felt that his opinions violated the Hippocratic Oath that physicians do no harm,” his evaluation read.
But he was the right guy for DeSantis, who had decided to opt for “Don’t Fauci My Florida” beer kooziesales over consensus science.
(Side note: A working paper released last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that in the key nine-month vaccination period beginning April 2021, Republican-leaning counties in Florida had a 153 percent higher death rate fromCOVID-19 than Democratic-leaning counties.)
Ladapo's new assault against COVID vaccines
These days, Ladapo is going around claiming that young men as old as 39 years old are at great risk of dying from myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, if they get vaccinated from COVID-19.
While it’s true that young men have a higher risk for this side effect, it’s still very rare, mostly treatable and not as dangerous as the virus itself.
How rare? Here are the numbers.
There were 1,626 cases of myocarditis among more than 354 million primary doses given between December 2020 and August 2021, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. And just 37 cases of the heart ailment in more than 81 million booster shots from September 2021 to February 2022.
And yet, here was Ladapo on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News this month:
“If it had been known two years ago that this vaccine had increased cardiac deaths in young men by 84 percent, would they have approved it? The obvious answer is no,” Ladapo said.
“You would never give something to someone who is young and healthy and increase their risk of dying from sudden cardiac death by 84 percent,” he said. “Yes, Covid can be terrible, but we don’t give people medications that kills them.”
Where did Ladapo get that dire-sounding 84 percent figure? From a new study without listed authors that was not peer reviewed. And not even published.
Shoddy science behindfalse alarm
It’s basically just an anonymous Word document that’s being elevated to the prominence it doesn’t deserve by Ladapo, the leading health expert in Florida by way of political appointment.
This shoddy bit of research was met by instant criticism from other medical researchers as dangerous anti-vax propaganda from authors not even willing to put their names to their research or submit it for review and publication.
The study looked at the deaths of 20 people who died within 25 weeks of being vaccinated, focusing particularly at young men who died within the first four weeks after vaccination.
Dr. Kristen Panthagani, a Houston-based medical researcher and science blogger, wrote that the sloppily constructed study that relied on medical coding was flawed because “most of the diagnoses are far more likely to be caused by other ongoing disease processes rather than vaccination.”
And the study failed to compare the risks of the vaccine with the risks of the virus it protects against.
Nevertheless, Ladapo posted it and put out a press release urging young men in Florida not to get vaccinated.
“Florida will not be silent on the truth,” he Tweeted.
As for “the truth,”not even the anonymous authors of that study went that far, as evidenced by the telling disclaimer at the end of the paper.
“These data are preliminary, based on surveillance data, and should be interpreted with caution,” the disclaimer reads. “”These results have several limitations.”
Included in those limitations is “this study cannot determine the causative nature of a participant’s death.”
And yet, Ladapo’s going on national media warning men to reject getting vaccinated in order to avoid a fatal heart attack.
Ladapo’s latest anti-vax standconveniently dovetails with the release of his new book, “Transcend Fear.”
But now that he’s losing Steve Bannon, whose voice will soon be crushed by the limitations of podcasting behind bars, Ladapo will have to seek “the truth” elsewhere.
I guess that means Alex Jones. C’mon, Alex. What are you waiting for?
Call the Florida Surgeon General’s office and set up a guest spot.
Those books aren’t going to sell themselves.
Frank Cerabino is a columnistat the Palm BeachPost, part of theUSA TODAY Florida Network.You can reach himat fcerabino@gannett.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
