Florida’s Ladapo rejects CDC, FDA guidance on vaccines (again)

Early last year, with Covid cases still frustratingly high, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) encouraged everyone over the age of 5 to get vaccinated. A New York Times report noted at the time that “vaccinating children can also protect family members who are not eligible for vaccination — including children younger than 5 — or who are at increased risk for serious illness if infected. More children were hospitalized during the Omicron surge than at any other point in the pandemic.”

The CDC’s recommendations were accepted by 49 states. The exception was Florida.

There was an obvious explanation for this: Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo holds a series of fringe views, and as part of official duties, he’s urged the public not to trust scientists, physicians, and other public health officials.

A year and a half later, too little has changed. NBC News reported:

In case this isn’t obvious, the FDA recommended these boosters, and CDC approval soon followed. Ladapo, true to form, rejected their findings, raising baseless concerns “about safety and about effectiveness.”

In the not-too-distant past, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was a proponent of Covid shots — the vaccines “are saving lives,” the Republican said two years ago — but criticized what he derided as vaccine “mandates” and “passports.” Those days are clearly over: DeSantis tapped Ladapo to oversee the Sunshine State’s public health system and shifted from balking at requirements to balking at vaccines themselves.

As NBC News’ report added, the White House was quick to issue a statement from the CDC’s director, Dr. Mandy Cohen.

“As we head into the fall and winter seasons, it is important that Americans get the updated COVID-19 vaccine. They are proven safe; they are effective, and they have been thoroughly and independently reviewed by the FDA and CDC,” Cohen said. “Since this Administration’s launch of the largest adult vaccination program in our nation’s history, COVID-19 vaccines have saved millions of lives and kept countless people out of the hospital. Public health experts are in broad agreement about these facts, and efforts to undercut vaccine uptake are unfounded and dangerous.”

Among my principal concerns is that regular, everyday folks in Florida may not realize why it would be in their interests to ignore Ladapo’s deeply strange perspective.

Circling back to our earlier coverage, let’s not forget that Ladapo’s former supervisor at UCLA discouraged Florida officials from hiring the controversial doctor, explaining that he relies on his opinions more than scientific evidence. The UCLA supervisor added that Ladapo’s weird theories “created a stressful environment for his research and clinical colleagues and subordinates,” some of whom believed the doctor “violated the duty in the Hippocratic Oath to behave honestly and ethically.”

It was not the first time Ladapo’s work at UCLA generated scrutiny. It was during his tenure in California when the physician also claimed in a USA Today op-ed that his perspective on Covid treatments had been shaped by his experience “taking care of patients with COVID-19 at UCLA’s flagship hospital.” Two weeks later, Ladapo added in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he had his experience “caring for patients with suspected or diagnosed Covid-19 infections at UCLA.”

Thanks to reporting from The Rachel Maddow Show, those claims have since been called into question. As my colleague Kay Guerrero explained in a report in November, “Several former colleagues of Dr. Joseph Ladapo ... say he misled the public about his experience treating Covid-19 patients.”

One UCLA source also said, in reference to Ladapo, “A lot of people here at UCLA are glad that he is gone because we were embarrassed by his opinions and behavior. At the same time, we don’t wish this on the people of Florida. They don’t deserve to have someone like him making their health decisions.”

The reporting came on the heels of a Ladapo press conference in which he was critical of Covid testing.

A few months prior, Ladapo questioned the efficacy of Covid vaccines, denounced vaccine requirements, referenced unsubstantiated conspiracy theories to argue against the vaccines, and encouraged Floridians to “stick with their intuition,” as opposed to following the guidance of public health officials who actually know what they’re talking about.

As regular readers may recall, it was around the same time when Ladapo started pushing “innovative” Covid treatments with little track record of success, to the frustration of state physicians and medical experts.

Before taking office, the doctor also spent much of the pandemic questioning the value of vaccines and the efficacy of masks, while simultaneously touting ineffective treatments such as hydroxychloroquine.

It led the editorial board of The Orlando Sentinel to describe Ladapo as a “COVID crank” who’s been “associated with a right-wing group of physicians whose members include a physician who believes infertility and miscarriages are the result of having sex with demons and witches during dreams.”

DeSantis and Republican state senators wanted him to be state surgeon general anyway.

Many Florida families will see Ladapo’s title and assume the state’s official surgeon general must know what he’s talking about, or he wouldn’t be the state’s official surgeon general.

Traditionally, that might’ve been a safe assumption. In Florida in 2023, skepticism of Ladapo’s advice is probably the safer course.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.