Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s top health department official are directly contradicting federal health recommendations and warning residents against getting a new COVID-19 booster, saying there’s not enough evidence it provides benefits that outweigh risks.
DeSantis, who is running for president, and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo discussed the vaccine with doctors Wednesday on a Zoom call livestreamed on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. It repeated much of what they said a week ago during a live event in Jacksonville, in which they warned against the vaccine that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended this week.
Ladapo’s previous warnings against COVID-19 vaccines prompted a public letter from federal health agencies saying his claims were harmful to the public.
“There’s no reason to think they’ll be unsafe,” Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at NYU Langone Health in New York City, told NBC News. “But whether they’ll provide significantly more protection than the original vaccines? Of that I’m skeptical.”
“… could prevent 100,000 more hospitalizations each year than if only the elderly were vaccinated…”
Assuming the 100k was speaking to the US population of which there are 339M, we would be saving .0030% of the population. The CDC published adverse reaction stats across several decks such as this. To ballpark using their numbers, you can put it somewhere at around 400-500 hospitalizations for extremely adverse events with a portion of that being deaths or seriously messing the person up permanently, such as a portion of the stroke victims or some of the kids with myocarditis. It sounds like the thing people are in agreement on is for the most at risk to get it. Basically, experts in the field are weighing-in and there is a media bias to write-off even the good ones that don’t agree entirely with the government/corporate narrative. In many respects, this is a profit push. We could save .003% of the population from hospital visits in other contexts without putting 500 people at great risk. For $130 an American, you could do a lot. You could give everyone a heart monitor. You could provide mats for slippery areas around the house or provide driveway salt for the winter, etc. The reason that this is getting attention still is because of the money.