Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis desperately wants to be a mini Donald Trump. In his latest attempt to emulate the worst person in the world, he’s going to be even more anti-vax than the Trump administration. Fam, is it good to stop vaccinating children for polio? The Sunshine State is going to find out!
State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who essentially got his job based on his anti-vax credentialsheld a press conference on Wednesday to brag about how he and DeSantis are going to steer the state into a public health crisis by eliminating all vaccine mandates.
Yep, all of them. Why? You’ll never believe the so-called doctor’s reasoning.
“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo said. Ah, yes. Wiping out communicable diseases is slavery, and exposing kids to polio and measles and chickenpox and Hepatitis B is freedom, baby.
Related | Florida defends the right to poison kids with raw milk
And let’s not forget Florida’s determination to make sure everyone gets COVID. Ladapo’s Department of Health currently recommends that no one get the coronavirus vaccine. The misinformation he spewed about COVID was so egregious that it netted him an official joint response from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2023, back when those government agencies were still run by people with actual medical expertise. The letter patiently explained how vaccines work and what adverse events are, a thing one should hope would not need to be explained to the top medical official in Florida.
Ladapo has some truly wild theoriesincluding that vaccines “contaminate human DNA,” a belief which actual medical experts called “scientific nonsense.” He’s a big fan of raw milk, so much so that even while there were 21 bacterial infections linked to one raw milk producer in Florida, he went on X to say, “I support the decision to consume raw milk when sought for potential health benefits and protective factors.”
Sure, the stuff is poison, but if you intend to consume it for health benefits and whatever “protective factors” are, then it will magically be fine. Totally how science works. Also very science-y? Banning fluoride in water. When DeSantis signed that ban, Ladapo was right by his side.
Ladapo already had an opportunity to see what a measles outbreak looks like back in 2024, when his state had the largest number of cases. His response to this totally preventable public health crisis? Telling parents it was just fine to decide to let their kids keep going to school, even if they had measles.
Now, Florida is poised to reintroduce polio to a whole new generation of American children who have no doubt been crying out for the privilege of being stuffed in an iron lung or to get to wear leg braces to school. Lucky ducks!
Ladapo is so out there that even though the Trump administration is stocked with anti-vaxxers, those crackpots’ actions don’t even come close. Vinay Prasad, the anti-vaxxer who is also the top vaccine regulator at the FDA, said he is “unsure” if people should receive the coronavirus vaccine at the same time as flu shots. This is a practice that has been done safely for years, but he’s demanding new clinical trials anyway.
At the top of the anti-vaccine conspiracy heap, we’ve got Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He does not care at all if you or your kids get sick. He’s a eugenics enthusiast continually crusading against the coronavirus vaccine, but thus far, he has not landed on the idea that preventing polio equals slavery.
Just give it some time.
