New medical yes-man came from out west for DeSantis

Why, you might have wondered, would Ron DeSantis recruit someone from Lalaland with no expertise in public health or epidemiology and no administrative experience as his next surgeon general?

Why, amid an epidemic that has killed 59,000 Floridians, would our governor choose a cardiology researcher from UCLA, rather than, say, a specialist from the University of Florida Emerging Pathogens Institute or the University of Miami Department of Public Health Sciences?

The mystery became all-the-more confounding last week, after his nominee walked into the office of a cancer-stricken state senator and refused to don a mask. Why in the world would the governor hire a rude, reckless ideologue like Joseph Ladapo?

When DeSantis introduced Ladapo as his next surgeon general on Sept. 21, the governor insisted that it was just a coincidence that Ladapo also had been hired as a tenured professor by the University of Florida College of Medicine. “I don’t think anyone who interviewed him [at UF] knew he was going to be appointed to this,” DeSantis said. “It wasn’t anything we had done.”

That Ron. Such a fibber.

On Wednesday, the USA Today Network unearthed email exchanges between university administrators from early September discussing the med school’s need to find a faculty position — and fast — for Ladapo, who was described as the “potential FL surgeon general appointee.”

With one employee filling two positions, the governor and UF were able to contrive a dazzling salary package. According to the Orlando Sentinel, the med school will pay Ladapo $262,000 a year and the Department of Health will toss in another $250,000.

Aside from his academic duties, he’ll be running the Florida Department of Health, with 17,000 employees — a startling promotion for a former associate professor at UCLA “whose primary research interests include assessing the cost-effectiveness of diagnostic technologies and the population burden of cardiovascular disease.”

Ladapo’s actual job, of course, will be to provide medical gravitas in support of Ron DeSantis’ descent into pseudoscience. He was chosen because, unlike an actual public health expert, he’ll nod in agreement when the governor rails against vaccine and mask mandates.

If anyone doubts our new surgeon general’s disdain for medical science, just ask state Sen. Tina Polsky of Boca Raton. Last week, when Ladapo visited the senator’s office in Tallahassee, he refused to don a mask, though Polsky told him that she was suffering from a serious medical condition. She was diagnosed with breast cancer last month.

His callous reaction was widely condemned. Republican Senate President Wilton Simpson issued a statement warning, “what occurred in Senator Polsky’s office was unprofessional and will not be tolerated in the Senate.”

The impenitent Ladapo defended himself on social media. “Having a conversation with someone while wearing a mask is not something I find productive, especially when other options exist,” he wrote on his Twitter feed. “It is important for me to communicate effectively with people. I can’t do that when half of my face is covered.”

Since the 1920s, scalpel-wielding maskclad surgeons have managed to communicate crucial information in operating theaters, despite face-coverings. But that kind of logic would never have landed him a $512,000-ayear gig as Ron DeSantis’ talking parrot. Ladapo succeeds Scott Rivkees, the surgeon general who was essentially banished from public appearances by DeSantis in the spring of 2020 after he warned Floridians that they might need to continue social distancing for another year. Rivkees was right, but being right on medical science is not what DeSantis requires of a surgeon general.

No worries that Ladapo might pull a Rivkees and deviate from the bizarro school of medicine. Last year, he appeared in a

43-minute video doubting the efficacy of masks, claiming that COVID was less deadly than the flu and promoting (to the collective chagrin of mainstream medical scientists) the use of hydroxychloroquine as a cure for the virus. The same video also featured Dr. Stella Immanuel, another hydroxychloroquine advocate who also claims that certain gynecological ailments are caused by sexual intercourse with demons and witches.

In August, Charles H. Hennekens of Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine published a review of the major randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials of hydroxychloroquine in the American Journal of Medicine. He concluded, “Premature and avoidable deaths will continue to occur if people take hydroxychloroquine and avoid the public health strategies of proven benefit, which include vaccinations and masking.”

FAU’s esteemed Dr. Hennekens may be the third most widely cited medical researcher in the world, sure, but it’s easy to see why Ron much preferred Joe Ladapo to be his pet surgeon general.