Ladapo’s escalating vaccine war is a DeSantis campaign strategy, critics argue
2024/01/13
Ron DeSantis, left, observes as Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo addresses the media during a press conference in Kissimmee, Florida
- Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel/TNS
ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida Surgeon General Joe Ladapo’s campaign against COVID-19 vaccines has intensified in the past few weeks before Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crucial tests in the Iowa presidential caucuses and New Hampshire primary. And experts say that’s not a coincidence.
“It’s one thing for a large state’s leading health officer to be an advocate for shared values,” said Kenneth Goodman, the director of the University of Miami Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy. “It’s another to weaponize medical misinformation to trick citizens into voting for his boss.”
Ladapo called for a complete halt in the use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines earlier this month. A few days later, he called the mRNA vaccines “the antichrist” on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast.
Ladapo’s growing war against the vaccines comes in the wake of a surprise appearance with DeSantis on the presidential campaign trail in November. The New Hampshire event, dubbed a “Medical Freedom Town Hall,” was a rare move even as the lines between official and political events have been increasingly blurred by the DeSantis administration.
“It is a choice to be as public as Ladapo has been,” said Gregory Koger, a professor of political science at the University of Miami. “… It seems like an effort to kindle interest among a narrow fringe of anti-vaxxers.”
Ladapo claimed that DNA fragments used in the vaccine’s development could integrate into human DNA, resulting in various problems, including cancer. Federal leaders and others in the scientific community fired back, saying the possibility of that happening was theoretical and implausible.
Dr. Kenneth Alexander, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Nemours Children’s Health in Orlando, dismissed the allegation as recycled rhetoric from anti-vaccine circles. “These are the claims you’ve heard from anti-vax people for decades,” he said.
He emphasized that the COVID-19 vaccines are “probably the most studied vaccines in history,” with over a billion doses administered.
“I would argue that the U.S. has the best post-marketing surveillance of vaccines in the world. We’re not seeing any of this stuff,” he said.
DeSantis shifts his stance
DeSantis, who appointed Ladapo in late 2021, shifted from a governor who traveled the length of the state to promote the COVID-19 vaccines earlier that year to one who later called for a grand jury to investigate “wrongdoing” by their creators.
His eventual turn against what he calls “the jab” came after he gained national attention for his stance against most COVID restrictions, despite his shutdown of the state in May 2020 that closed bars and limited capacity at restaurants through the summer.
But the same “Free State of Florida” pandemic-era rhetoric that propelled him to prominence has since faded as an issue in the Republican presidential primary.
DeSantis trails former President Donald Trump by huge margins in most state polls and is battling former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for second place in Iowa and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy for third in New Hampshire.
“There probably is a narrow market for that,” Koger said of anti-vaccine sentiment. “He’s campaigning for small slices of the Republican electorate in both states, and in Iowa he needs to appeal to people who want to get up out of their homes on a cold January night and go to a high school gym for a couple hours.
“And anti-vax people might fit that description. … He can use every additional voter he can get.”
Dave Peterson, a political scientist at Iowa State University, said Iowa’s Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, a key DeSantis endorser, “was very, very similar to DeSantis on COVID, and part of her popularity in the party was her COVID policy. So maybe he is trying to remind them of that.”
But, he added, “at some point, a lot of folks have moved on from that. If that is a campaign strategy, it’s a surprise to me at least. I don’t think it would be a very effective one.”
DeSantis campaign spokesman Bryan Griffin did not respond to a request for comment on whether Ladapo was doing the campaign’s bidding.
‘It just doesn’t matter’
In New Hampshire, the “Live Free or Die” state, the Republican Party has a reputation for being individualistic and libertarian-leaning. But even there, said Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire, COVID is not a major issue.
“There is some of that kind of anti-vaccine sentiment up here,” Scala said. “But what I’ve been more struck by is how COVID has really declined in relevance for Republican voters in this cycle. … It’s certainly not any sort of magic rocket fuel. It just doesn’t matter.”
Ladapo’s campaign appearance in New Hampshire in November was part of the campaign’s repeated attempts to attack Trump, whose administration launched the vaccine initiative called Operation Warp Speed.
While Ladapo told the crowd he had “nothing against Mr. Trump,” according to CNN, DeSantis used the event to slam Trump’s pandemic record and vowed to radically reform the nation’s health agencies.
One group backing DeSantis even used artificial intelligence to create a fake image of Trump hugging his White House health adviser Anthony Fauci, a hated figure on the right.
“I think DeSantis was hoping he would be able to kind of connect Trump to Fauci and that would pay dividends, but I just don’t see it,” Scala said. “Part of that is, no one’s figured out how to make something stick to Trump.”
‘Derailing’ credibility
In New Hampshire, Ladapo claimed to be surprised to find himself on the campaign trail.
“On the spectrum of ‘where do you want to spend your time and your energy and your life,’ politics was about as far away as you can imagine for me,” he said, according to CNN.
But Ladapo has been at the center of a political firestorm over mRNA vaccines for years. His statements this month were just the latest in a series of recommendations criticized by some experts as contributing to vaccine hesitancy without adequate evidence.
Previously, Ladapo advised against COVID-19 vaccines for healthy kids, then men ages 18-39, and later recommended against them for those under 65, culminating in this month’s call to end their use entirely. All these recommendations contradicted guidelines from the CDC and FDA, prompting leaders of those agencies to publicly rebuke him.
While Ladapo has conducted analyses of vaccine safety data through the Florida Department of Health, which he says support his positions, others in the medical community have criticized these studies.
“I think they’re poorly done. They’ve been unpublished. And they’ve been misuses of databases,” Alexander said. “We’re doing bad research, and publishing bad guidance that contradicts what public health experts around the world are saying.”
In a prior interview with the Sentinel, FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf questioned the quality of an October 2022 report from the Florida Department of Health on the risk of cardiac-related death post-vaccine, stating it “lacked the quality of analysis needed to draw a conclusion.”
Public records from FDOH obtained by the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel showed that Ladapo removed analyses from the paper, pre-publication, that would have weakened the association between vaccination and cardiac-related death.
Ladapo said that was a normal part of the revision process, but others in the health research field previously told the Orlando Sentinel and Sun Sentinel his revisions took out necessary context and constituted scientific fraud.
Several instances where Ladapo cited peer-reviewed, published studies by other researchers to support his recommendations against the COVID vaccine were also met with rebuttals.
Researchers accused him of misrepresenting their conclusions, with one scientist accusing him of “cherry-picking” sentences from her paper to support his argument in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times.
In his appearance on Bannon’s show, he called the mRNA vaccines “the antichrist of all products. … It’s just complete disrespect to the human genome and the importance of protecting it and preserving it. And that is our connection to God.”
In the end, if Ladapo’s latest attacks on COVID vaccines were partly a continuation of his insertion into the DeSantis campaign, it would probably be for naught, Scala said.
“DeSantis’ campaign in New Hampshire is one long painful example of inability to move the needle,” Scala said. “This is just one more example.”
© Orlando Sentinel
ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida Surgeon General Joe Ladapo’s campaign against COVID-19 vaccines has intensified in the past few weeks before Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crucial tests in the Iowa presidential caucuses and New Hampshire primary. And experts say that’s not a coincidence.
“It’s one thing for a large state’s leading health officer to be an advocate for shared values,” said Kenneth Goodman, the director of the University of Miami Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy. “It’s another to weaponize medical misinformation to trick citizens into voting for his boss.”
Ladapo called for a complete halt in the use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines earlier this month. A few days later, he called the mRNA vaccines “the antichrist” on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast.
Ladapo’s growing war against the vaccines comes in the wake of a surprise appearance with DeSantis on the presidential campaign trail in November. The New Hampshire event, dubbed a “Medical Freedom Town Hall,” was a rare move even as the lines between official and political events have been increasingly blurred by the DeSantis administration.
“It is a choice to be as public as Ladapo has been,” said Gregory Koger, a professor of political science at the University of Miami. “… It seems like an effort to kindle interest among a narrow fringe of anti-vaxxers.”
Ladapo claimed that DNA fragments used in the vaccine’s development could integrate into human DNA, resulting in various problems, including cancer. Federal leaders and others in the scientific community fired back, saying the possibility of that happening was theoretical and implausible.
Dr. Kenneth Alexander, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Nemours Children’s Health in Orlando, dismissed the allegation as recycled rhetoric from anti-vaccine circles. “These are the claims you’ve heard from anti-vax people for decades,” he said.
He emphasized that the COVID-19 vaccines are “probably the most studied vaccines in history,” with over a billion doses administered.
“I would argue that the U.S. has the best post-marketing surveillance of vaccines in the world. We’re not seeing any of this stuff,” he said.
DeSantis shifts his stance
DeSantis, who appointed Ladapo in late 2021, shifted from a governor who traveled the length of the state to promote the COVID-19 vaccines earlier that year to one who later called for a grand jury to investigate “wrongdoing” by their creators.
His eventual turn against what he calls “the jab” came after he gained national attention for his stance against most COVID restrictions, despite his shutdown of the state in May 2020 that closed bars and limited capacity at restaurants through the summer.
But the same “Free State of Florida” pandemic-era rhetoric that propelled him to prominence has since faded as an issue in the Republican presidential primary.
DeSantis trails former President Donald Trump by huge margins in most state polls and is battling former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for second place in Iowa and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy for third in New Hampshire.
“There probably is a narrow market for that,” Koger said of anti-vaccine sentiment. “He’s campaigning for small slices of the Republican electorate in both states, and in Iowa he needs to appeal to people who want to get up out of their homes on a cold January night and go to a high school gym for a couple hours.
“And anti-vax people might fit that description. … He can use every additional voter he can get.”
Dave Peterson, a political scientist at Iowa State University, said Iowa’s Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, a key DeSantis endorser, “was very, very similar to DeSantis on COVID, and part of her popularity in the party was her COVID policy. So maybe he is trying to remind them of that.”
But, he added, “at some point, a lot of folks have moved on from that. If that is a campaign strategy, it’s a surprise to me at least. I don’t think it would be a very effective one.”
DeSantis campaign spokesman Bryan Griffin did not respond to a request for comment on whether Ladapo was doing the campaign’s bidding.
‘It just doesn’t matter’
In New Hampshire, the “Live Free or Die” state, the Republican Party has a reputation for being individualistic and libertarian-leaning. But even there, said Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire, COVID is not a major issue.
“There is some of that kind of anti-vaccine sentiment up here,” Scala said. “But what I’ve been more struck by is how COVID has really declined in relevance for Republican voters in this cycle. … It’s certainly not any sort of magic rocket fuel. It just doesn’t matter.”
Ladapo’s campaign appearance in New Hampshire in November was part of the campaign’s repeated attempts to attack Trump, whose administration launched the vaccine initiative called Operation Warp Speed.
While Ladapo told the crowd he had “nothing against Mr. Trump,” according to CNN, DeSantis used the event to slam Trump’s pandemic record and vowed to radically reform the nation’s health agencies.
One group backing DeSantis even used artificial intelligence to create a fake image of Trump hugging his White House health adviser Anthony Fauci, a hated figure on the right.
“I think DeSantis was hoping he would be able to kind of connect Trump to Fauci and that would pay dividends, but I just don’t see it,” Scala said. “Part of that is, no one’s figured out how to make something stick to Trump.”
‘Derailing’ credibility
In New Hampshire, Ladapo claimed to be surprised to find himself on the campaign trail.
“On the spectrum of ‘where do you want to spend your time and your energy and your life,’ politics was about as far away as you can imagine for me,” he said, according to CNN.
But Ladapo has been at the center of a political firestorm over mRNA vaccines for years. His statements this month were just the latest in a series of recommendations criticized by some experts as contributing to vaccine hesitancy without adequate evidence.
Previously, Ladapo advised against COVID-19 vaccines for healthy kids, then men ages 18-39, and later recommended against them for those under 65, culminating in this month’s call to end their use entirely. All these recommendations contradicted guidelines from the CDC and FDA, prompting leaders of those agencies to publicly rebuke him.
While Ladapo has conducted analyses of vaccine safety data through the Florida Department of Health, which he says support his positions, others in the medical community have criticized these studies.
“I think they’re poorly done. They’ve been unpublished. And they’ve been misuses of databases,” Alexander said. “We’re doing bad research, and publishing bad guidance that contradicts what public health experts around the world are saying.”
In a prior interview with the Sentinel, FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf questioned the quality of an October 2022 report from the Florida Department of Health on the risk of cardiac-related death post-vaccine, stating it “lacked the quality of analysis needed to draw a conclusion.”
Public records from FDOH obtained by the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel showed that Ladapo removed analyses from the paper, pre-publication, that would have weakened the association between vaccination and cardiac-related death.
Ladapo said that was a normal part of the revision process, but others in the health research field previously told the Orlando Sentinel and Sun Sentinel his revisions took out necessary context and constituted scientific fraud.
Several instances where Ladapo cited peer-reviewed, published studies by other researchers to support his recommendations against the COVID vaccine were also met with rebuttals.
Researchers accused him of misrepresenting their conclusions, with one scientist accusing him of “cherry-picking” sentences from her paper to support his argument in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times.
In his appearance on Bannon’s show, he called the mRNA vaccines “the antichrist of all products. … It’s just complete disrespect to the human genome and the importance of protecting it and preserving it. And that is our connection to God.”
In the end, if Ladapo’s latest attacks on COVID vaccines were partly a continuation of his insertion into the DeSantis campaign, it would probably be for naught, Scala said.
“DeSantis’ campaign in New Hampshire is one long painful example of inability to move the needle,” Scala said. “This is just one more example.”
© Orlando Sentinel
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