Florida’s quack surgeon general allegedly faked COVID-19 reports; one county has now banned vaccines
Rebekah Sager, Daily
Kos Staff
Florida’s Lee County Republican Party took a vote and passed its anti-science resolution titled “Ban the Jab.” The measure bans the sale and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine and is now headed to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk.
According to WINK News, Dr. Joe Sansone,
a psychotherapist and the man behind the resolution, calls the vaccine a
“biological and technological” weapon.
Sansone, who is not an epidemiologist, writes that
“government agencies, media and tech companies and other corporations, have
committed enormous fraud by claiming COVID injections are safe and effective.”
“The Lee County Republican Party is going to
be on the vanguard of this campaign to stop the genocide because we have
foreign non-governmental entities that are unleashing biological weapons on the
American people,” Sansone said. “If you got this shot, you go
home and hug your pregnant wife—she can have a miscarriage through skin
contact.” What?
Sansone provides no evidence or studies to
prove his inane theories—because, of course, there are none.
Similar to offerings by the state’s Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo, who recommended that men between the ages of 18 and 39 not get the mRNA vaccine for COVID based on a “seriously flawed” study that it increases the risk of cardiac-related death.
“This is the first time that we’ve seen a
state government weaponize bad science to spread anti-vaccine disinformation as
official policy,” David Gorski, a surgical oncologist, and debunker of
anti-vaccine misinformation wrote in an op-ed for the Los Angeles
Times. He added that the move by Ladapo was “a
dangerous new escalation in anti-vaccine propaganda.”
But not only was Ladapo’s anti-vaxxer agenda
clear, but according to an anonymous source to Politico,
he allegedly falsified the report he used to make his recommendations.
The Florida Department of Health’s inspector
general received the information regarding the fake report, claiming that
Ladapo committed “scientific fraud” and “manipulated data.”
“The analysis performed in DOH did not find
this,” the source wrote, according to Politico. “He manipulated the final draft
of the analysis.”
The report was eventually closed last
November after the complainant didn’t follow up with questions. And Ladapo has
denied the accusations.
In March 2022, Ladapo, a rabid anti-masker,
also advised against children getting the COVID-19 jab.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) approved
the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children ages 5 to 17.
In an op-ed for The Wall Street
Journal, Ladapo repeatedly called the pandemic “Covid mania,”
saying it has “wreaked havoc on science and its influence on policy.”
“Vaccines are up to the person. There’s
nothing special about them compared to any other preventive measure,” he said
soon after being named to the position. “The
state should be promoting good health, and vaccination isn’t the only path to
that. It’s been treated almost like a religion. It’s just senseless. There are
lots of good pathways to health.”
The mostly-white Lee County boasts a
population of around 780,000 people. There’ve been nearly 240,000 cases of COVID and 2,550 deaths, The
New York Times reports.
Florida has lost over 86,000 lives to COVID and clocked over 7.47
million cases.