One more day. New York Times profile of a scientist, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who doesn’t buy into COVID-hysteria. Ladapo, who is also the Surgeon General in Florida (home of COVID-hysteria), has been added to the mix. Times’ least-favorite governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, who reopened the state ahead of blue states, while keeping cases and deaths within bounds.
Miami bureau chief Patricia Mazzei tried to put the doctor on the defensive in “The Doctor Giving DeSantis’s Pandemic Policies a Seal of Approval.”
Joseph A. Ladapo, Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, strongly opposed mask mandates and lockdowns. He supports vaccine campaigns only if they are voluntary.
Ladapo, who is black, immigrated from Nigeria as a child, but that background didn’t give him the usual politically correct amnesty from Times Covid was criticized for its wrong-thinking. The paper, usually hypersensitive to identifying People of Color, didn’t even mention it. Undoubtedly, it was an accidental oversight.
For a Republican governor whose brash opposition to conventional public health wisdom has helped fuel obvious presidential ambitions, the appointment of Dr. Ladapo signals Mr. DeSantis’s determination Continue to fight a pandemic in Florida that already has claimed 68,000 lives — This time the governor will be able to claim a medical seal.
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Florida ranks among the 20 worst states for its pandemic death rate and among the 12 worst for its case rate, but Mr. DeSantis has argued that the state also suffers when its economy and schools are restricted.
Even given that incredibly broad measure of Florida being in the “20 worst states,” out of 50, the paper’s own figures put Florida’s performance ahead of blue states New Jersey, Michigan, and Massachusetts. Florida is home to the largest proportion of seniors, which are the ones most susceptible to the virus.
Mazzei was also forced to deal with her condemnation due to the fact that liberal, excessively anti-scientific mandates had quickly evaporated, even though she tried to hide it.
Some of Dr. Ladapo’s positions, like his opposition to lockdowns and mask-wearing in schools, have been conservative stances for some time and are beginning to be accepted by liberal leaders now that more people are vaccinated and cases are plummeting. These views, however, were not common among the physicians who headed public health policy at that time.
Ladapo seemed to be ahead of the curve. There was more nitpicking.
Though Dr. Ladapo has acknowledged that vaccines are highly effective at preventing hospitalization and death, he said in October that “adverse reactions” to vaccines should receive more attention and urged people to “stick with their intuition and their sensibilities.”
Mazzei buried deep the inconvenient fact that for all DeSantis’s supposed anti-vax posing, Florida’s vaccination rate is slightly above the national average.
About 66 percent of Floridians are fully vaccinated, compared with 64 percent of all Americans, but the state ranks lower than average when it comes to booster shots. Mr. DeSantis will not say if he has gotten boosted, even after Mr. Trump seemed to swipe at him, calling politicians who would not reveal their full vaccination history “gutless.”
The lack of support for improving vaccination rates in vulnerable populations has left physicians discouraged.
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