Shots fired: Ron DeSantis, Joseph Ladapo cast doubts on flu, measles vaccines

TALLAHASSEE, FLA. 9/21/21-Gov. Ron DeSantis, left, speaks during a news conference where he named Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, MD, PhD, right, Florida Surgeon General and Secretary of the Florida Department of Health, Tuesday at the Capitol in Tallahassee. COLIN HACKLEY PHOTO

Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and Gov. Ron DeSantis are offering their takes on the potential perils of common vaccinations.

During a press conference Wednesday, the two held forth on the potential dangers of shots for measles and for influenza during their latest in a series of press conferences casting doubt on vaccinations.

Ladapo weaved in discussions of gender identity and the Holocaust into his remarks.

Ladapo said doctors in Texas were “moaning and groaning” about “how everyone should be taking the Measles vaccine.”

“These are the same people that tell you that boys can be girls, that men can be women, that an experimental vaccine the children do not need is actually something that’s critical to their health, that you need one or two or three masks depending on what time point in the pandemic you look, right?”

His wide-ranging comments eventually moved to the idea of “informed consent,” with the Surgeon General invoking the specter of the Nazi genocide in making his case against pediatric practices that don’t want to treat children who aren’t following their vaccination schedule.

“We can look back at some of the horrible things that happened during World War II, for example — and these concentration camps and some of the horrific things that physicians did to Jewish people and other people in those concentration camps — to see that that medicine and health care has needed help in the past,” Ladapo said, conflating the German-promulgated horrors with American health care by way of explaining the “fundamental tenet of ethical practice of medicine.”

“They have created a dynamic where it is impossible to obtain informed consent, is impossible to practice ethical medicine because they are using coercion,” Ladapo said.

Ladapo went on to address Florida’s incidences of measles, a disease he called “extremely contagious.”

“As long as the kid’s healthy, the kid can go to school,” he said.

Additionally, the Surgeon General recommended short-term vitamin therapy for those with measles.

“My friend Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been taking some heat for making a recommendation around vitamin A, but that’s completely a good idea for anyone who is severely ill for measles. It’s a great idea,” Ladapo said.

“You take it as recommended. You can do it with your physician. You know, you don’t take it for like weeks and weeks, but two days of vitamin A, which is the recommendation, there’s some evidence for it. There’s really no downside to doing that. So that’s absolutely a good idea for anyone who’s more sick from measles.”

Ahead of Ladapo’s measles meditations, the Governor led off the editorializing with a contrarian take on flu shots, musing about “how effective” they are and how the military “forced” him and others “to get the jab.”

The Donald Trump administration’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that this year’s “influenza vaccination was effective in preventing medically attended influenza-associated illness in children, adolescents, and adults in the United States” and argues that “increasing influenza vaccination could reduce influenza-associated illnesses, medical visits, hospitalizations and deaths.”

But DeSantis sees it differently, arguing that the flu shot “doesn’t exactly have a stellar record with efficacy.”

“And the question is, okay, well, why is this stuff being pushed on the society? Well, because people make money off of it. I mean, that’s why it’s being pushed. I think we all know that,” DeSantis said.

Ladapo and DeSantis made the comments in Tampa at Harpoon Harry’s Crab House.