Florida’s surgeon general said state health officials will warn anyone under 65 about getting the new Covid booster vaccine.
Dr. Joseph Ladapo – who was accused last year of promoting false vaccine data – today claimed there is a “complete lack of figures” on whether the updated vaccines work.
Dr. Lapado — who was hand-picked by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — also promoted the false claim that there was “not a drop of clinical trial data” supporting the vaccines.
Dr. Speaking on a vaccine panel today, Lapado said, “I just think that right now, with the amount of immunity that exists in the community, pretty much every human being walking has some degree of immunity.
“And the questions that we have about safety and about effectiveness, especially safety, I don’t think is a good decision for young people and people who are not at high risk at this point in the pandemic.”
Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo said the state will not recommend people under 65 get the updated Covid boosters
The graph above shows the number of cardiac arrest deaths among youth under the age of 34 for each year since 2000. This is from the CDC Wonder database. Data for 2021 and 2022 are provisional
Dr. Ladapo has repeatedly endorsed the claim that the vaccines cause widespread heart problems in young people, a link that has been repeatedly refuted by major studies.
Vaccines have been associated with a very small risk of myocarditis in young people, affecting around one in 30,000 under-40s after their second jab.
But cases are normally mild and go away on their own without medical intervention.
Covid infection is also more likely to cause myocarditis than the vaccines, studies show.
And data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that cardiac mortality among Americans under 34 is similar to pre-pandemic levels.
The updated Covid shots, which were approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just this week, are considered safe for anyone six months and older and are recommended for everyone in that age range.
However, at a vaccine panel hosted by DeSantis, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo said there is “a complete lack of data” on whether the updated vaccines work.
The top state health official was joined by several other doctors in claiming that the approval of booster shots is “irresponsible” and that the FDA and CDC are “failing” at their jobs.
Dr. Ladapo’s latest statement comes days after he warned Americans against taking the updated vaccine due to “red flags” over its safety and amid mixed recommendations from health experts on who should and should not roll up their sleeves to fight the to get latest booster.
DeSantis echoed Dr. Ladapo’s sentiments, writing in a press release sent after the panel: “I will not stand by and let the FDA and CDC use healthy Florida patients as guinea pigs for new booster shots that have not been proven to be safe or be effective.’
“I will not stand by and allow the FDA and CDC to use healthy Floridians as guinea pigs for new booster shots that have not been proven to be safe or effective,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wrote in a news release that was sent to the panel.
During the panel, Dr. Ladapo excoriated CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen for her statement on Tuesday, which said, “Vaccination remains the best protection against Covid-19-related hospitalization and death.”
“She made this statement without a single drop of clinical trial data on these products that have just been approved and which say nothing about their effectiveness or their safety in humans,” Dr. Ladapo said.
“We’ve just gotten to a point where the director of the CDC is making very clear statements when no data is available and somehow many people believe this to be true.
“It’s not something that should be ignored if the goal is to support people’s health.
“It’s a huge disservice to every American and, frankly, every human being who walks this planet and is worried about getting sick from Covid-19,” Dr. Ladapo continued.
Doctors joining DeSantis and Dr. Ladapo expressed concern about the lack of research on the new vaccines. Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco who participated in the panel, pointed to a small study conducted on one of Moderna’s boosters.
The study followed 50 participants and found that one person, or two percent of the study population, experienced adverse effects directly related to the vaccine.
Dr. Hoeg did not say what the adverse effect was.
‘At the moment we are completely deprived of useful data. It puts all of us in a very difficult position when it comes to whether or not to recommend these vaccines,” Dr. Hoeg said.
‘As far as we know, healthy people under the age of 65 have very little to gain from the vaccine. We don’t know what the benefits of the vaccine will be.”
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford University, told the panel: “There is no chance that a product like this would have come to market with the kind of data that is currently available.”
“I think it is an absolutely irresponsible move for the FDA to approve this product and for the CDC to recommend that everyone take it.”
‘It is absolutely essential for our regulators to require these pharmaceutical companies to produce better data if they want approval. That’s their job, and they’re failing at it.”
The FDA approved new boosters from Moderna and Pfizer on Tuesday, and the CDC urged every adult and child over six months of age to get the new vaccine, which is designed to target newer versions of the Omicron variant .
Health officials hope to boost immunity levels across the country before winter as Covid rates rise nationally for the first time this year – although top experts expect it will be a mild wave of the virus.
This is the second booster the CDC has recommended. Last year, the CDC also recommended the Covid bivalent booster for everyone six months and older.
But other countries have only approved it as the previous booster for older age groups, with Britain giving the green light for people aged 50 and over and Italy for those aged 60 and over.
However, there are signs that health chiefs will struggle to get Americans to turn up for the new Covid booster vaccine this year, after uptake languished last year.
Overall, only 17 percent of eligible Americans came forward for the bivalent vaccine, which protected against versions of Omicron.
Of people over 65 – who are most at risk of serious illness – almost six in 10 did not come forward to get the shot.
Some experts are already urging older Americans to come forward to get the updated Covid booster, with Dr. Paul Offit, who sits on the FDA’s vaccine advisory panel, told DailyMail.com last week that healthy adults under 75 don’t need to get the shot.
It comes as Covid statistics continue to rise in the US amid the emergence of new, more transmissible variants.
Covid hospital admissions have risen by almost nine per cent in a week, reaching 18,871 admissions in the seven days to September 2.