{"id":28672,"date":"2023-01-06T23:10:17","date_gmt":"2023-01-07T04:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=28672"},"modified":"2023-01-06T23:10:21","modified_gmt":"2023-01-07T04:10:21","slug":"ladapos-covid-guidance-was-termed-to-be-highly-questionable-by-university-of-florida-colleagues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/01\/06\/ladapos-covid-guidance-was-termed-to-be-highly-questionable-by-university-of-florida-colleagues\/","title":{"rendered":"Ladapo’s COVID guidance was termed to be ‘highly questionable’ by University of Florida colleagues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo\u2019s controversial guidance<\/a> discouraging COVID-19 vaccines for younger men is of \u201chighly questionable merit,\u201d a task force<\/a> of University of Florida medical school doctors has concluded. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The task force critique by his own colleagues at UF found that\u00a0Ladapo<\/a>\u00a0committed \u201creporting bias by cherry-picking results; focusing only on evidence that supports his stance, ignoring contradicting evidence and failing to appropriately acknowledge the limitations of his own data set.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The panel also said Ladapo’s research is flawed because it “forms conclusions on the basis of exceptionally small event rates that distort the magnitude of risk and do not consider the magnitude of benefit.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ladapo in October issued Florida Health Department guidance advising males aged 18 through 39 to avoid COVID-19 mRNA vaccines \u2013 commonly the widely-used Pfizer and Moderna shots.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Health Department published its own analysis showing what it called an increase \u201cin the relative incidence of cardiac-related death\u201d among males in that age group, about a month after they\u2019d received the vaccine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ladapo, who is on the faculty at the University of Florida College of Medicine, is an appointee of Gov. Ron DeSantis and an outspoken vaccine skeptic. The faculty critique was first reported by the Washington Post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jae Williams, a Health Department spokesman, said that Ladapo stands by the guidance. He also said the UF panel appeared out to “vilify their colleague’s work by gaining national media attention when their stated purpose is to ‘promote the advancement of medicine… by promoting mutual fellowship and good feeling among the faculty.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The panel said that Ladapo conducted \u201ccareless, irregular or contentious research practices,\u201d and recommended that his actions be reviewed by UF\u2019s research integrity office.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No further action is expected from UF<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in a statement, David Norton, UF\u2019s vice president for research, said Wednesday that the research integrity office has \u201cno standing\u201d to look into the committee\u2019s accusations because Ladapo issued the guidance as a state official, not a faculty member. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even before he was named Florida\u2019s top doctor in 2021, Ladapo was outspoken on COVID-19, mostly by way of downplaying the benefits of mask-wearing, openly condemning business and school lockdowns, and signing onto the Great Barrington Declaration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The declaration, signed by prominent researchers who cast doubts on vaccines or social precautions, advanced the concept of herd immunity \u2013 sickening a large enough segment of the population \u2013 as a way to emerge from the pandemic.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DeSantis continues to rely on a few of the Great Barrington leaders in COVID-19 roundtables, the most recent one held just last month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost 84,000 Floridians have died from COVID-19. More than 7.2 million have been sickened by the virus, with an average 3,040 cases per day reported last week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

CDC: Vaccines effective and safe<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says COVID-19 vaccines are effective and that their use remains the safest strategy for protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 69% of Florida\u2019s population is considered fully vaccinated, although a much smaller percentage have kept up on booster shots. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, DeSantis just before Christmas got the Florida Supreme Court to endorse his request to establish a statewide grand jury<\/a> that will investigate what he called \u201ccrimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the COVID-19 vaccine.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DeSantis has appointed a majority of the seven-member court, so the decision to comply with the governor\u2019s request wasn\u2019t a surprise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Republican governor, just sworn in for a second term Tuesday, is widely seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2024. He is clearly siding with those who\u2019ve promoted vaccine suspicions and conspiracies, saying that with the grand jury investigation \u201cwe\u2019ll be able to get more information and bring legal accountability for those who committed misconduct.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DeSantis\u2019 focus includes companies that manufacture vaccines and the recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He also has endorsed the view of skeptics who accuse vaccine manufacturers of withholding data regarding links between vaccines and heart problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More DeSantis distance from Trump?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hurry-up development and initial distribution of the COVID-19 vaccinations were a signature accomplishment of former President Trump\u2019s administration. Trump in many opinion polls among Republican voters remains a favorite for the 2024 presidential nomination, which DeSantis now also is expected to seek. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attack on vaccines is another potential point of separation between DeSantis and Trump, formerly allies now more frequently at odds.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ladapo has a deep bond with critics of COVID-19 vaccines. He appeared in the fall<\/a> on a podcast of an Ohio doctor who perpetuates the claim that vaccines cause autism.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last month, he was the guest speaker at a Miami dinner<\/a> hosted by the Brownstown Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank<\/a> that maintains policy responses to the pandemic are a \u201cfailed experiment in full social and economic control.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the dinner, Ladapo was photographed with Dr. Paul Alexander, a Brownstone Fellow. Alexander has written that certain public health officials who have promoted the COVID-19 vaccine and preventative measures aimed at curbing infections should be hanged if a judge finds they caused the \u201cdeaths of innocent [people].\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jeffrey A. Tucker, founder, and president of the Brownstone Institute said his think tank involves people of different beliefs and backgrounds and said Alexander could have been speaking metaphorically.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cWe\u2019re a venue for a wide variety of perspectives, and I\u2019m not here to control what people say or do,\u201d Tucker said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo\u2019s controversial guidance discouraging COVID-19 vaccines for younger men is of \u201chighly questionable merit,\u201d a task force of University of Florida medical school doctors has concluded.  The task force critique… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-and-world-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}