Driven by the radically contagious delta variant, COVID-19 is spreading briskly through Polk County residents. Now sending the highest never number of people to the hospitals, most of them younger than 50 and almost all of them unvaccinated.
The message at a news conference was called by the leaders of Lakeland Regional Health, Watson Clinic, and the Florida Department of Health (DOH) Polk County office.
The main way to prevent the spread is by getting more people vaccinated, PERIOD.
Ledger headlines state, “As health officials push COVID-19 vaccine, Polk County commissioners cling to false information”.
But there wasn’t a health official in attendance at this commission meeting to respond to the father’s comments or provide him with information driven by data, science, and first-hand experience.
Instead, the commissioners dispensed their own thoughts and opinions about the virus and its vaccine. In doing so, they made untrue statements — such as children don’t get COVID — and amplified some common misconceptions, such as characterizing the vaccine as “experimental.”
One commissioner, who’s paid by taxpayers for his government role, told The Ledger reporter that he doesn’t trust the government.
Commissioner Neil Combee said, “We do know that children do not get COVID-19. They’re not getting the Delta variant.”
However, of the new 989 cases in Polk County on Wednesday, 14% were in children 14 and younger, according to the Florida Department of Health in Polk and Hardee counties.
“To individuals who say, ‘Oh kids don’t get this,’ it’s absolutely untrue,” the department’s director, Dr. Joy Jackson, said at a press conference Thursday. “Kids can get infected, kids can transmit infection.”
Last Tuesday, three of the five Polk County Commissioners called the vaccine “experimental.”
That’s also false, as all three vaccines authorized for emergency use in the USA underwent clinical trials involving tens of thousands of people and have proved effective.
“The vaccine is working,” Mary Mayhew, the CEO of the Florida Hospital Association said. “If we are going to stop the mutations and the spread of this virus, we need to get people who can be vaccinated to get vaccinated.”
That includes children ages 12 and up, said Dr. Mobeen Rathore, a pediatrician, and professor of Pediatrics at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville. He’s also a former president of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“We are seeing a lot more kids being admitted to the hospital, being very ill, going into ICU and going onto ventilators,” Rathore said. “We need to do everything in our power to protect our children.”
The best way to do that is with masks and the vaccine, he added.
It’s time to wake up the Polk Commissioners so they can be on the same page.
Who are the 3 commissioners so I can email them and thank them for standing with the people! This is an experimental shot that isn’t FDA approved.
It is experimental if it wasnt it would have FDA approval already
Very sad that these elected officials are so misinformed and spewing such misinformation to the populace. They have done a great disservice to the people they serve. They should do their own research before opening their mouths. They should have also had health officials at the meeting. If this is how they run our county government, we are all in trouble. Do the research, commissioners! Facts, not opinions!
You can fix stupid this county it’s full of stupid people