Lives are necessarily sacrificed in the national defense, but no imaginable justification exists to risk lives for political ambition, like Gov. Ron DeSantis in his floundering quest for the presidency.
He's advocating not only an ultra-extreme, vaccine-shunning libertarianism in the face of COVID-19, but also policies that would leave the nation defenseless against the next inevitable pandemic. It's all about getting to the right of former President Donald Trump on a subject that appeals to the know-nothing wing of their party.
DeSantis and his quack Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo descended into the depths of irresponsibility when they called on Floridians under 65 to refuse the new mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.
The CDC, which is legally responsible for protecting the nation's health, is recommending the vaccine to everyone over six months who has not received a shot in the previous two months.
The death toll
COVID-19 has killed more than 90,000 Floridians since early 2020. It is rising again, as expected. Though it does not appear now to be as lethal as earlier strains, people are still dying from it.
The toll would be much higher, but for the vaccines that were developed in record time by the scientists DeSantis scorns and were distributed swiftly by the former president who's DeSantis' major obstacle to the Republican presidential nomination.
As with other viruses such as those that cause the common cold and the flu, COVID-19 mutates rapidly, enabling it to reinfect people despite lingering immunity from previous infections or vaccinations. But unlike colds and flus, COVID can cause lasting, serious complications known as long COVID.
The new vaccine is seen as the first of what will become annual reformulated shots, much like flu vaccines. This iteration is designed for specific new Omicron sub-variants.
But thanks greatly to science-defying influencers like DeSantis, too few people can be bothered to protect themselves and those around them. Fewer than 20% were vaccinated last fall.
An alternative reality
On COVID vaccination, irresponsible leaders and conspiracy theorists have beguiled people into an alternative notion of reality reflecting their politics. Republicans are "far more likely," according to a new Florida poll, to shun the vaccine and to believe dangerous nonsense about it. Some 84% of Florida Democrats are willing to receive boosters compared to only 53% of Republicans, the poll said.
According to the poll, conducted last month by Florida Atlantic University and the University of South Florida, one in four Floridians believe the vaccine alters DNA. Nearly as many believe it can cause infertility, and 14% believe the vaccine contains microchips. Slightly more than half of all respondents believe that COVID infection builds better immunity than the vaccine does; 42% believe the vaccine can cause infection and positive tests. The CDC says all of that is false.
Meanwhile, DeSantis has doubled down on his petulant attacks on the vaccine, on everyone who had a hand in it, and on his campaign promise — which should be taken as a threat — to hire Ladapo to run the CDC.
Ladapo's Florida Department of Health last week officially cautioned people under 65 against following the CDC's advice to receive the new vaccine. The document was riddled with inconsistencies, inaccuracies and unscientific assumptions.
Ladapo conceded that older people should at least discuss the new vaccine with their health care providers. But he couched even that minor miracle with speculative hokum. A government document that speaks of an "unknown risk of potential adverse impacts" (emphasis added) is hysterical propaganda, not science.
A history of distortion
Nothing that Ladapo puts out can be taken at face value because of how he distorted data last year to recommend that young men not get the then-current vaccines. The department withheld statistics showing that the risk of cardiac-related complications among that age group was much greater from contracting COVID than from being vaccinated against it.
Early in the pandemic, DeSantis did a lot right. He declared a state of emergency, urged people to be careful, advocated social distancing and eventually ordered lockdowns. As the first vaccines become available, he distributed them, although questions were raised about preferential treatment.
But DeSantis was hyper-sensitive to pressure from the public, from the business community and from parents of schoolchildren to get back to life as usual despite the new danger. He saw a political opportunity.
DeSantis segued swiftly into not only reopening schools and businesses in his tourist dependent-state. He prodded the Legislature to ban masking and vaccination requirements not only among government agencies but also in private enterprise. He found an outlier physician, a vaccine skeptic who would act on his anti-scientific agenda. Although Ladapo is a well-credentialed cardiac expert, he had no experience in epidemiology, the essential discipline of public health.
Ridiculing Dr. Fauci
DeSantis began ridiculing Dr. Anthony Fauci, a hero in the fight against COVID-19. In his campaign for president, DeSantis has been denouncing the very best thing Trump did with the powers that he had: the swift, damn-the-expense distribution of the vaccines that controlled COVID-19 and saved countless lives.
DeSantis' demonization of a public health triumph extended even to getting a compliant Florida Supreme Court to authorize a statewide grand jury investigation of COVID-19 vaccines and the companies responsible for them. Nothing has been heard from it so far. The concocted subject is far beyond Florida's legitimate reach.
Now DeSantis accuses the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC of using "healthy Floridians as guinea pigs for new booster shots." So says the man who's sacrificing them to his incandescent political ambition.
—The Editorial Board, The Sun Sentinel
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