It used to be fairly easy to dismiss Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, as a clownish anti-vaccine quack posing a danger mostly to residents of his home state.
That has become harder to do as time goes on, as Ladapo has moved from promoting useless treatments for COVID-19, such as the drugs hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, to waging an ever-expanding fact-free campaign against the leading COVID vaccines.
This month, Ladapo established a new low for himself. In a public advisory issued Wednesday by the Florida Department of Health, he declared the vaccines “not appropriate for use in human beings” and counseled doctors to steer patients to other treatments. He explicitly called for a “halt in the use of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.”
“Scaring people unnecessarily like this has been hard to watch. … It is hard to believe that Dr. Ladapo actually issued that statement.” Vaccine authority Paul Offit.
Andrew Wakefield deservedly lost his for something similar, so yeah, he definitely should.
Then again, Wakefield was working under the British NHS rather than being the pet doctor of a fascist demagogue…
Yeah the process for losing credentials under the NHS isn’t going to have much in common with losing credentials in Desantis’ Florida. And if it does he’ll threaten them until they back down.