Florida’s surgeon general picks a fight with the CDC, and DeSantis scores political points | Opinion

The feds took on Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo last week in a highly critical letter responding to the state’s top doctor’s fear-mongering claims about COVID vaccine risks.

Good. Voters across the country need to understand more about the fringe views of the man Gov. DeSantis chose to carry out his politically motivated, anti-vaccine message in Florida — before they have to evaluate DeSantis as a potential Republican nominee for the presidency.

Ladapo has put his anti-vaxx views on display for years. Before DeSantis picked him, he wrote opinion pieces in The Wall Street Journal and USAToday raising fears about COVID vaccine risks and touting hydroxychloroquine as a treatment — though it has been shown over and over to have no benefit to COVID patients.

He appeared in a 2020 video at an event organized by a group calling itself America’s Frontline Doctors — organized, in part, by the Tea Party Patriots — pushing hydroxychloroquine as a possible COVID treatment. One of the doctors appearing with him was Stella Immanuel, a Houston physician who reportedly has claimed that ailments like cysts and endometriosis are caused by sex dreams about demons and witches, among other preposterous ideas.

Ladapo, who is Harvard University trained, also refused to don a mask in the office of Florida Sen. Tina Polsky, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. That crossed the line even for Republican leaders. Then-Senate President Wilton Simpson called his behavior “unprofessional” and said it would “not be tolerated in the Senate.”

Ladapo’s excuse offered later, that he couldn’t communicate with the mask on, was utter nonsense. Surgeons wear masks during operations and somehow manage to communicate just fine.

His former supervisor at UCLA’s Department of Medicine recommended him for a post at the University of Florida, but said he shouldn’t become surgeon general, telling Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents that Florida “would be better served by a surgeon general who grounds his policy decisions and recommendations in the best scientific evidence rather than opinions.”

Political views

But Ladapo’s political views — and his willingness to pick a fight — were probably exactly why DeSantis chose him in 2021, despite his complete lack of experience in public-health administration. Florida’s governor, adept at seeing which way the Republican wind was blowing, was being talked about as a White House contender. If he wanted to court the anti-vaxxers of the extreme right, he’d have to find a way to get past his public statements that COVID vaccines were “saving lives” and “reducing mortality.”

Hiring a doctor with extreme views and a hunger for the spotlight was a perfect way to divert attention.

So now we have a scathing letter from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week, calling Ladapo out on his claims that the COVID vaccine poses a health risk and linking that to a lower-than-average vaccination rate for seniors in the state.

“As the leading public health official in the state, you are likely aware that seniors in Florida are under-vaccinated, with just 29% of seniors having received an updated bivalent vaccine, compared to the national average of 41% coverage in seniors,” the letter said. “It is the job of public health officials around the country to protect the lives of the populations they serve, particularly the vulnerable. Fueling vaccine hesitancy undermines this effort.”

They’re saying, essentially, that the top public health official in Florida isn’t protecting seniors, a particularly vulnerable population. Unfortunately, he’s doing the opposite.

The letter from the federal agencies was in response to one Ladapo wrote last month saying Florida had seen a big spike in “adverse” medical events reported to the national Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System after the release of COVID vaccines. “To claim these vaccines are ‘safe and effective’ while minimizing and disregarding the adverse events is unconscionable,” Ladapo wrote.

But the CDC and FDA said the Florida surgeon general was the one misinterpreting the information. In their letter last week, they noted that an increase in reported events was expected because, under the COVID vaccine Emergency Use Authorization, vaccine providers are required to report those events, most of which aren’t caused by the vaccine but are tied to pre-existing or underlying medical conditions.

Ladapo spoke at a meeting of the Senate Committee on Health Policy Monday and vowed to respond to the CDC and FDA letter, which he called “misleading” and, at times, “factually incorrect.”

That all sounds very official and medical, but what’s really happening here is actually just political. DeSantis talks about being anti-woke and anti-extremism, yet he has installed an extremist as Florida’s surgeon general.

That no longer surprises us in Florida, where DeSantis’ “I’m-not-an-extremist, you’re-an-extremist” attacks are coming at us at a furious pace as the 2024 election gets closer.

But for Republicans in other parts of the country who may not have been paying close attention to Florida, the Ladapo/DeSantis fight with the CDC and FDA should sound a serious warning note. The last time we had a guy in national office who cared more about being known as “a fighter” than about actually governing the country, it didn’t turn out so well.

This story was originally published March 14, 2023 at 4:27 PM.