Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s top health department official are directly contradicting federal health recommendations and warning residents against getting a new COVID-19 booster, saying there’s not enough evidence it provides benefits that outweigh risks.

DeSantis, who is running for president, and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo discussed the vaccine with doctors Wednesday on a Zoom call livestreamed on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. It repeated much of what they said a week ago during a live event in Jacksonville, in which they warned against the vaccine that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended this week.

Ladapo’s previous warnings against COVID-19 vaccines prompted a public letter from federal health agencies saying his claims were harmful to the public.

  • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Florida Surgeon General who has no formal education in infectious diseases, gives advice about infectious diseases. Seriously, the guy’s medical background is “PhD in Health Policy, clinical training in internal medicine, and clinical studies for ‘weight loss, smoking cessation, and cardiovascular disease prevention among people with HIV’.”

    I may as well just go to my optometrist and ask what they think about the vaccine while I’m at it. Good professionals command what they have mastery over and become supportive on that which they are not. Shitty professionals run around acting like they know everything. This guy is very much the latter.

    • Joker@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      You would probably get more sound medical advice from your optometrist. Shit, I know chiropractors with more credibility. I wouldn’t trust this dude to check my blood pressure. He is a quack. The fact that he graduated from Harvard only means they made a mistake.

      • Illuminostro@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well, the only reason he got in is because he’s one of “those people.” My drunk Uncle Randy who collects Confederate flags told me so…

    • evidences@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I def misread the previous comment my response here is pointless

      The dudes a piece of shit but he definitely has an M.D. from Harvard.

      From his wikipedia

      Ladapo received a M.D. from Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in Health Policy from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 2008. Ladapo completed clinical training in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.

      • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        but he definitely has an M.D. from Harvard

        Yeah, of Internal Medicine. Infectious diseases is a specialty of that domain for the reason that most internists hand off to specialist for specific diseases and mostly deal with generalized management. I don’t go to a gastroenterologist for hip replacement. Someone who is into family medicine ain’t my first choice for diagnosis and treatment options for something like lymphoma, I’ll likely go to a specialist who knows what the hell they’re talking about for specifically dealing with the disease and they’ll hand off notes to my PCP for generalized management. Ladapo is no different here, Internal Medicine doctors are ones that usually look at a patient and try to figure out who to send them to for specialized care and then handle general management based on the notes from specialist.

        Ladapo is indeed a doctor. He’s got a domain of mastery. But that domain isn’t on infectious diseases, but instead of deferring to those who have devoted their lives to this specific domain of study, he’s just spouting off at the mouth about something in his professional career he’d refer patients off to a specialist for.

        So, I find it humorous to say the least that when he was an internists that whole being held accountable for running his mouth off about things was next to nothing and routinely handed off for specialty care. But now that he’s in a political position where he can be held less accountable for BS he spouts off, he’s got no problem indicating that he’s got the answers to it all.

        It’s just funny how once that accountability goes out the window, he’s less affable to defer to specialist’s wisdom.

        The quip about me heading to my optometrist is going a bit extreme indeed, but still, guy has a background in knowing when to hand off to others when he’s being held accountable, and now has a background of running his damn mouth when he’s no longer being held accountable for the crap he’s saying. But that said, guy better hope to hold tight to that political career now. Making a lot noise needlessly isn’t a look most hospitals like for their residents.

    • porkins@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      “There’s no reason to think they’ll be unsafe,” Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at NYU Langone Health in New York City, told NBC News. “But whether they’ll provide significantly more protection than the original vaccines? Of that I’m skeptical.”

      “… could prevent 100,000 more hospitalizations each year than if only the elderly were vaccinated…”

      Assuming the 100k was speaking to the US population of which there are 339M, we would be saving .0030% of the population. The CDC published adverse reaction stats across several decks such as this. To ballpark using their numbers, you can put it somewhere at around 400-500 hospitalizations for extremely adverse events with a portion of that being deaths or seriously messing the person up permanently, such as a portion of the stroke victims or some of the kids with myocarditis. It sounds like the thing people are in agreement on is for the most at risk to get it. Basically, experts in the field are weighing-in and there is a media bias to write-off even the good ones that don’t agree entirely with the government/corporate narrative. In many respects, this is a profit push. We could save .003% of the population from hospital visits in other contexts without putting 500 people at great risk. For $130 an American, you could do a lot. You could give everyone a heart monitor. You could provide mats for slippery areas around the house or provide driveway salt for the winter, etc. The reason that this is getting attention still is because of the money.