'Florida's New COVID Booster Guidance Is Straight-Up Misinformation': Feds

The Florida health department is telling older Floridians and others at highest risk from COVID-19 to avoid most booster shots, saying they are potentially dangerous.

Some clinicians and scientists denounced the message as politically fueled scaremongering that also weakens efforts to protect against diseases like measles and whooping cough.

One prominent Florida doctor expressed dismay that medical leaders in the state, leery of angering Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), have been slow to counter anti-vaccine messages from State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD, including the latest COVID bulletinopens in a new tab or window. Ladapo is a DeSantis appointee and the top official at the state health department.

The bulletin makes a number of 'false or unproven claims about the efficacy and safety of mRNA-based COVID vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna, including that they could threaten "the integrity of the human genome." ' Florida's guidance 'generally regurgitates ideas from anti-vaccine websites,' said John Moore, PhD, a professor of microbiology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.

Ladapo did not respond to a request for comment. DeSantis referred questions to the health department, which said the surgeon general's guidance and citations "speak for themselves" and pointed to a post he madeopens in a new tab or window on the social platform X accusing the CDC and FDA of "gaslighting Americans."

DeSantis has styled himself and his administration as a bulwark against vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and other restrictive public health protections adopted during the pandemic to curb infections and save lives.

The Florida Health Care Association, whose members run more than 600 long-term care facilities, declined to comment on Ladapo's bulletin. One nursing home chain, LeadingAge Southeast, said it was aware of both federal and state recommendations on COVID boosters and encouraged providers to "engage with their residents, families, and healthcare professionals to make informed decisions."

A spokesperson for the FDA, Cherie Duvall-Jones, said the agency "strongly disagrees with the State Surgeon General of Florida's characterization of the safety and effectiveness of the updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines." The vaccines met the FDA's "rigorous, scientific standards," she said, and she urged people to get boosters since the population's COVID immunity has waned.

Among its 'incorrect' claims, the Florida bulletin says the new mRNA boosters wrongly target a viral variant, Omicron, that is no longer circulating widely. This is false, since all major variants of COVID in the past 2 years evolved from Omicron and subsequent mutations.

Other claims in Ladapo's bulletin include:

• COVID boosters don't undergo clinical trials. It's true that COVID booster shots, whose mRNA sequences are changed slightly from previous shots, aren't tested in large trials. Neither are annual influenza vaccines. By the time such tests would be completed, flu season would be over. But the original mRNA shots underwent clinical trials, and as with flu shots, "a lot of evidence has been collected in support of the ongoing use of the vaccines," said Natalie Dean, PhD, a biostatistician at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta.
• The shots pose a risk of infections, autoimmune disease, and other conditions. "I don't know where these claims come from, but they aren't accepted by the general medical community," said William Schaffner, MD, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville. Serious side effects do occur, rarely, as with any medication. U.S. authorities were among the first to detect rare occurrences of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart tissue, in young adults who got the COVID vaccine. Most patients recovered quickly. Myocarditis is more commonly caused by the COVID infection itself.
• The shots could cause elevated levels of spike protein and foreign genetic material in the blood. These concerns, which circulate on social media, have been disproved or have not panned out. For example, the billionths-of-a-gram quantities of bacterial DNA alleged to be contaminating COVID shots are dwarfed by our other exposures, Offit said. "You encounter foreign DNA all the time, assuming you live on the planet and eat anything made from animals or vegetables," he said. "I don't know Dr. Ladapo, but I assume he does."

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccine/112069