In what has become a pattern of spreading vaccine misinformation, the Florida health department is telling older Floridians and others at highest risk from COVID-19 to avoid most booster shots, saying they are potentially dangerous.
Clinicians and scientists denounced the message as politically fueled scaremongering that also weakens efforts to protect against diseases like measles and whooping cough.
A prominent Florida doctor expressed dismay that medical leaders in the state, leery of angering Gov. Ron DeSantis, have been slow to counter anti-vaccine messages from Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, including the latest COVID bulletin. Ladapo is a DeSantis appointee and the top official at the state health department.
The bulletin makes a number of false or unproven claims about the efficacy and safety of mRNA-based COVID vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna, including that they could threaten “the integrity of the human genome.” Florida’s guidance generally regurgitates ideas from anti-vaccine websites, said John Moore, a professor of microbiology at Weill Cornell Medicine.
This shit is getting old. I was in the Novavax trial here in Australia and one of the things the clinicians said that stuck with me is that they were “surprised that there wasn’t much interest”.
See, Novavax is a traditional vaccine, not an MRNA vaccine. It is (and has been) approved everywhere.
They expected that all the antivaxxers who were afraid of “changes to their DNA” would come in for this traditional vaccine.
Except they didn’t. Because it isn’t about MRNA, it’s about being part of a group, part of people who “understand you” and echo and validate the fears you have about living in this world.
This is killing people.
What are they trying to accomplish with this disinfo? It’s bizarre.
Normalizing distrust for any large institutions, even including themselves. If you want to pave the way for a strongman ruler, you first have to break down all the alternatives until one individual’s strongman rulership becomes the most preferential option.
Which works because most people are idiots who don’t see the breaking down of the existing institutions as the obviously malicious activity.
Human history, from a distance, does not always fail to look like idiots purposefully making decisions that ruins everything for themselves.
Loving this dystopian timeline we’re in. It’s just tits.
DeSantis was trying to win the 2024 Republican nomination with Covid response as his centerpiece. So he appointed a nutjob to the role.
Nut job is just proceeding to nutjob.
For one, it’s about the rights NEED to always be against anything from the left.
For another, this is the start of the disinformation laundering chain. Faux News can now run stories about how “Florida surgeon general is fighting back against liberal disinformation!” Their position gives “legitimacy” to the claims…
Same with the rest of their culture war.
It has never been about governing or public health. Ever.
This is about latching onto fear and hate and further polarizing people. Because feeding that hate is what their base wants, and raises your status in their hate group.
It has always been about selfish attempts at taking the reigns of the hate train. The destruction in their wake is just the cost to play to them.
Fascism needs you to fear the “others”. Health and money are the two biggest problems in people’s lives right now so making the “others” look like they’re coming after those things you already are very close to losing is an easy way to scare people. So taxes, vaccines, etc., are big targets. And as a bonus, they then get to take those things from the people instead; and people willingly hand them to them…for safe keeping or something…I don’t know…
I mean, it’s clear that they’re trying to dissuade people from getting the vaccine. This surgeon general was known at the time he was appointed to be anti-vax: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/22/1039613351/desantis-florida-surgeon-general-vaccine-mandates
Control, plain and simple. GOP as a whole only has one goal: power by any means, and a controlled populace is a disempowered populace.
Kill off their people so they can start collecting back Medicare costs.
I understand politicians may decide it’s fair game to play games with reality, but having this come from what people expect to be a medical authority is going too far.
I read this on the 14th or so and did a face palm. Floridaland is for the alligators apparently.
Additionally, the federal government has failed to provide sufficient data to support the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 boosters, or acknowledge previously demonstrated safety concerns associated with COVID-19 vaccines and boosters, including:
- prolonged circulation of mRNA and spike protein in some vaccine recipients,
- increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections, and
- increased risk of autoimmune disease after vaccination.
And my favorite:
- Potential DNA integration from the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines pose unique and elevated risk to human health and to the integrity of the human genome, including the risk that DNA integrated into sperm or egg gametes could be passed onto offspring of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine recipients.
Apparently we are at risk of covid immune babies!
Apparently we are at risk of covid immune babies!
Ohh noooo we can’t have people with natural immunity, they need to earn that themselves like those that came before them. No hand-outs! We didn’t get that when we grew up we earn our immunity the old fashioned way, by exposure!
/s in case it wasn’t clear.
