Covid-19: Florida surgeon general says state will be first not to recommend vaccination for children

A doctor who appeared in a video tweeted by Donald Trump questioning the need for covid lockdowns and promoting the use of unproven treatments has said, in his new post as Florida surgeon general, that the state will recommend against covid vaccination for healthy children. The move goes against the advice of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“The Florida Department of Health is going to be the first officially to recommend against the covid-19 vaccine for healthy children,” Joseph Ladapo said, standing next to Florida’s governor Rick de Santis at a panel discussion called “The Curtain Close on Covid Theater.” The name refers to an event last week at which the Republican governor chided university students who were wearing masks, saying, “Please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything. We’ve got to stop with this covid theatre.”

Ladapo, a Harvard educated physician specialising in internal medicine, first came to public notice in July 2020 when he appeared in a video retweeted by Donald Trump, which was viewed tens of millions of times before being deleted from social media networks as covid misinformation.

In the video, shot on the steps of the US Supreme Court, Ladapo and a small group of doctors criticised lockdowns and extolled the benefits of hydroxychloroquine, then being promoted by Trump and other right wing politicians such as Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro.

The group named themselves America’s Frontline Doctors, though few had ever treated covid. The video gained worldwide attention, particularly after it emerged that one of the doctors, Houston physician and pastor Stella Immanuel, had previously claimed that many gynaecological diseases are caused by “astral sex” with “tormenting spirits,” that vaccines are designed to make people less religious, and that shape shifting reptilians working for the US government are inserting space alien DNA into common medicines.

America’s Frontline Doctors was assembled by leading conservative and Republican organisations such as Tea Party Patriots and the evangelical Council for National Policy (CNP). A CNP conference call leaked by the Center for Media and Democracy showed that Trump campaign staff sought medically qualified voices willing to support the president’s call to reopen the economy. Those political staff would go on to write some of the group’s statements.

The group’s website carried several misleading statements about vaccines, leading to it being banned from most social media. Last year, America’s Frontline Doctors sued the US health department in an attempt to prevent authorisation of any existing covid vaccine in under-16s.1 Ladapo echoed that vaccine scepticism when he took up the post of Florida surgeon general.

“Vaccines are up to the person, there’s nothing special about them compared with any other preventive measure,” he said, suggesting exercise and healthy eating as alternatives. “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.”

Soon after his appointment, Ladapo attracted controversy for refusing to wear a mask while meeting a state senator who had breast cancer.

Announcing Florida’s new policy, Ladapo questioned the risks posed by the virus and the benefits of vaccination in children, despite CDC real world studies that show far more frequent illness in unvaccinated children.2 The CDC has noted that covid is now among the top 10 killers of US children aged 5-11.3

University of Florida professor of paediatrics Jeffrey Goldhagen told First Coast News that Ladapo’s decision was “a very sad day for the state of Florida and a worse day for children.”