Florida's new COVID booster guidance is straight-up misinformation

Less than half of Americans plan to get COVID or flu vaccines this year, survey finds 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. Ladapo did not respond to a request for comment. DeSantis referred questions to the health department, which said the surgeon general's guidance and citations "speak for themselves" and pointed to a post he made on the social platform X accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and FDA of "gaslighting Americans." DeSantis has styled himself and his administration as a bulwark against vaccine mandates, lockdowns and other restrictive public health protections adopted during the pandemic to curb infections and save lives. COVID vaccination has become a partisan issue, with surveys by KFF, the health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News, finding that Republicans have far less confidence in the safety and efficacy of the shots than Democrats. But vaccine historians consulted for this article could not recall any previous state health leader urging residents to shun an FDA-approved and CDC-recommended vaccination. "It's unprecedented," said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Florida medical leaders should speak out more forcefully against Ladapo's attacks on public health, said Jeffrey Goldhagen, a pediatrician and professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville. Ladapo urged people under 65 to avoid COVID shots last year and has rejected public health protocols for fighting measles outbreaks.

"What you see is a pattern of fear and neglect of professional responsibilities across the state, in part because of the fear of this governor and the vindictiveness of this governor," said Goldhagen, a former health department director in Jacksonville. He specifically criticized the Florida Medical Association, a trade group for physicians, noting that Ladapo is a nonvoting member of the group's board of governors. The association did not respond to emails requesting comment. The Florida Health Care Association, whose members run more than 600 long-term care facilities, declined to comment on Ladapo's bulletin. One nursing home chain, LeadingAge Southeast, said it was aware of both federal and state recommendations on COVID boosters and encouraged providers to "engage with their residents, families and health care professionals to make informed decisions." A spokesperson for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Cherie Duvall-Jones, said the agency "strongly disagrees with the State Surgeon General of Florida's characterization of the safety and effectiveness of the updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines." The vaccines met the FDA's "rigorous, scientific standards," she said, and she urged people to get boosters since the population's COVID immunity has waned. Among its incorrect claims, the Florida bulletin says the new mRNA boosters wrongly target a viral variant, Omicron, that is no longer circulating widely. This is false, since all major variants of COVID in the past two years evolved from Omicron and subsequent mutations. "You start off with that and then you go into head-exploding-emoji territory," Moore said. "It's a litany of lies out of the anti-vaxxer playbook." Other claims in Ladapo's bulletin include: * COVID boosters don't undergo clinical trials. It's true that COVID booster shots original mRNA shots * It's true that The shots pose a risk of infections, autoimmune disease and other conditions. "I don't know where these claims come from, but they aren't accepted by the general medical community," said William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University School of Medicine infectious disease specialist. Serious side effects do occur, rarely, as with any medication. U.S. authorities were among the first to detect rare occurrences of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart tissue, in young adults who got the COVID vaccine. Most patients recovered quickly. Myocarditis is more commonly caused by COVID infection itself.

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