DeSantis now a vaccine denier in all but name
Gov. Ron DeSantis didn’t attend last Saturday’s anti-vaccine protest in Washington, but he was there in spirit.
A year ago, DeSantis couldn’t stop talking about COVID-19 vaccines. He touted them for Floridians 65 and over. He made appearances at pop-up sites to tout the injections. For one shining moment, the governor was following the science.
These days, however, DeSantis sounds more like a vaccine denier. He’s not following the science. He’s misleading about the science on his best days and all but lying on his worst days.
Last week, the governor said, “You see an unprecedented amount of people getting this omicron. And, of course, most of them, you know, have been vaccinated. So it’s not stopping the spread like they claimed.”
DeSantis did not specify who “they” were. But if “they” are public health experts like Dr.
Anthony Fauci — a favorite DeSantis target — “they” never claimed that vaccinations would prevent COVID-19.
It’s been an ever-increasing slide toward outright vaccine denial for DeSantis. Perhaps it began last April.
Appearing in Lakeland, the governor wondered why vaccinated Floridians still were wearing masks. “If the vaccine is effective,” DeSantis said, “it doesn’t make sense.” Vaccinated people, he added, “should act immune.”
In September, at a rally in Gainesville to protest vaccine/ testing mandates for public employees, the governor did not contradict a woman who claimed falsely that COVID-19 vaccines alter one’s RNA. A spokeswoman deflected questions.
Also in September, DeSantis nominated Joseph Ladapo to be Florida’s top health official. Ladapo has compared the push for COVID-19 vaccines to a “religion” and falsely claimed that masks don’t help to reduce virus spread.
Last week, announcing a program for more nursing certification, DeSantis criticized the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for health care facilities. Why force nurses, DeSantis asked, to get the vaccine?
“A lot of these nurses have had COVID,” the governor said. “A lot of them are younger. Some of them are trying to have families.”
The governor thus fed two myths: that contracting the virus confers lifetime immunity and that COVID-19 vaccines can make women infertile. Two recent reports show the danger of DeSantis’ comment.
A peer-reviewed study from Scotland in the journal Nature found that unvaccinated pregnant women who get COVID-19 are more likely to be hospitalized and to have babies that die after less than a month. Contracting COVID-19, another study published in Nature showed, can make men temporarily infertile.
In addition, a study financed by the National Institutes of Health found “no adverse connection” between COVID-19 vaccines and fertility. It did find that the virus can lower the sperm count of unvaccinated men.
Indeed, as evidence of the vaccines’ importance piles up, DeSantis ignores it. He continues to push monoclonal antibody treatments that don’t work against omicron.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week that booster shots are 90% effective at preventing COVID-19 cases that require hospitalization. Two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, the CDC reported, are 91% effective at preventing serious cases among 12- to 18-year-olds.
Finally, an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association rebuts DeSantis’ contention that vaccines don’t prevent infection. A study of roughly 2,000 health care workers found “convincing evidence” that a COVID-19 booster protects against infection, not just serious infection.
Even if DeSantis wanted to argue only against vaccine mandates, his case would be weak. They work, despite scare campaigns against them. New York City’s police union predicted that 10,000 officers would quit rather than submit. The actual number was 34.
But DeSantis now seeks to discredit COVID-19 vaccines.
It is beyond reckless for him to encourage behavior that endangers lives and strains hospitals and their staffs yet again.
On Wednesday, the Florida Senate Health Policy Committee will hold Ladapo’s first confirmation hearing. Perhaps Ladapo will echo another supposed doctor, Robert Malone, who said on Saturday that COVID-19 vaccines “are not working.”
It wouldn’t matter even if he did. Senate Republicans won’t embarrass DeSantis by rejecting Ladapo. Politics over public health.
DeSantis won’t be in that hearing room. Ladapo’s presence, though, means that the governor will be there in spirit.