Putting Floridians at Risk

Florida’s vaccine policy is ill-founded and potentially dangerous.

On October 23, 2023, the Surgeon General of Florida, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, issued a “Provider Alert” to health care professionals in his state. Ladapo recommended that the new Covid boosters be given to everyone over 65. This recommendation differed from the CDC recommendation, which was to boost everyone over 6 months of age. Governor Ron DeSantis agreed: “Once again, Florida is the first state in the nation to stand up and provide guidance based on truth, not Washington edicts.”

In his “Provider Alert,” Ladapo stated that Covid boosters don’t work. He cited a study from Qatar where researchers had evaluated 2.2 million people who either did or didn’t receive a third dose. The goal of Covid vaccines is to prevent severe disease—to keep people out of the hospital, out of the intensive care unit, and out of the morgue. The Qatar study showed exactly that. Protective efficacy against severe disease was about 75 percent. Protection against mild or asymptomatic infection waned but, as noted by the authors, “the cohort size was much smaller at these late time points and confidence intervals were wide,” and therefore much less reliable. Ladapo had ignored the main point of the study—that the vaccine was highly effective at preventing severe disease—and chose to focus on smaller, less significant, less clinically relevant data.

Ladapo also claimed that Covid boosters are unsafe, stating that, “mRNA COVID-19 vaccines present a risk of subclinical and clinical myocarditis and other cardiovascular conditions among otherwise healthy individuals.” A vaccine is considered to be safe if it’s benefits clearly outweigh its risks. But no vaccine—indeed no medical product—is absolutely safe. Myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, occurs in about 1 in 100,000 mRNA vaccine recipients.  Myocarditis following Covid infection occurs in roughly 1 in 5,000, a 20-fold increase compared with vaccination. Also, whereas myocarditis following vaccination is typically short-lived and self-resolving, myocarditis caused by Covid is more serious. Therefore, regarding myocarditis, the benefits of mRNA vaccination outweigh the risks.

Ladapo’s recommendation to boost everyone over 65 doesn’t make sense. First, if he believes that Covid boosters are ineffective and unsafe, then he shouldn’t recommend them for anyone. Second, if Ladapo believes that boosters should be targeted only to those at greatest risk, why limit the vaccine to those over 65. Other groups are also at risk, such as people with comorbidities such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease or lung disease or people who are immune compromised or people who are pregnant. Third, technically, everyone over 65 is not necessarily at high-risk of severe Covid. Recent data from the CDC showed that 99 percent of those over 65 hospitalized with Covid have at least one comorbidity and 90 percent have at least two. By recommending the vaccine for otherwise healthy people over 65, Ladapo is including many people who are less likely to benefit.

In the name of standing up to the “Washington edicts,” Governor DeSantis and his state’s Surgeon General have put many Floridians at unnecessary risk and inexplicably offered the vaccine to some who are not at high risk.