It took a sociopath like Trump to turn his back to the seriousness of thousands dying in tents and shelters around the country when hospitals were full to call Covid a hoax. His dumb and selfish supporters believed him. All he cared about was winning the election, and holding big rallies and fundraisers during the height of the pandemic. He never once showed an ounce of remorse for the dying, and certainly didn't ask people to be safe and social distance to help stop the spreading. It was all about him, because he wanted to be able to hold rallies around the country during a pandemic, draw big crowds, have big fundraisers with donors and foreign officials, and gather politicians together at his country clubs to plot and plan their voting lies to spread propaganda. He had to plot ways to put in fake electors, or recruit people willing to change the vote if he lost. He knew he might lose, and was willing to lie, steal, cheat, and let needless people die if it helped him obtain his goals. Those same selfish and cult mentality MAGA folks decided to go full board against social distancing, masks, and vaccines. It's all because one selfish lying sociopath named Trump, incapable of feeling emotion or remorse for anyone else, wanted to pretend everything was fine, so he could prance around the country brainwashing as many as he could. He needed to sell his stupid Trump cult paraphernalia and make money at the hundreds of rallies. That selfish lying pri*k did absolutely nothing during the pandemic but put far too many people at risk, while brainwashing as many as he could into believing in horse medicine over science, into believing him and opportunists selling fake cures over surgeons, doctors, and nurses. He did all this while blaming China, and stirring up division between red and blue states. He even took it to extremes on who got more help, based on party. He put his twat son in law in charge of Covid. It's sickening how negligent he was as a President and leader during a time of crisis.
What? Nobody was a mask fan. Your anti - science claim is laughable. If you thought that meme was funny, it isn't my sense of humor that should be in question.
Well obviously children in Florida should never get the measles (MMR) vaccine Genius people have "done their own research"
Shortly before Joseph Ladapo was sworn in as Florida’s surgeon general in 2022, the New Yorker ran a short column welcoming the vaccine-skeptic doctor to his new role, and highlighting his advocacy for the use of leeches in public health. It was satire of course, a teasing of the Harvard-educated physician for his unorthodox medical views, which include a steadfast belief that life-saving Covid shots are the work of the devil, and that opening a window is the preferred treatment for the inhalation of toxic fumes from gas stoves. But now, with an entirely preventable outbreak of measles spreading across Florida, medical experts are questioning if quackery really has become official health policy in the nation’s third most-populous state. As the highly contagious disease raged in a Broward county elementary school, Ladapo, a politically appointed acolyte of Florida’s far-right governor, Ron DeSantis, wrote to parents telling them it was perfectly fine for parents to continue to send in their unvaccinated children. “The surgeon general is Ron DeSantis’s lapdog, and says whatever DeSantis wants him to say,” said Dr Robert Speth, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at south Florida’s Nova Southeastern University with more than four decades of research experience. “His statements are more political than medical and that’s a horrible disservice to the citizens of Florida. He’s somebody whose job is to protect public health, and he’s doing the exact opposite.” Ladapo’s advice deferring to parents or guardians a decision about school attendance directly contradicts the official recommendation of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which calls for a 21-day period of quarantine for anybody without a history of prior infection or immunization. It is also in keeping with Ladapo’s previous maverick proclamations about vaccines that health professionals say pose an unacceptable danger to the health of Florida residents. They include official guidance to shun mRNA Covid-19 boosters based on easily disprovable conspiracy theories that the shots alter human DNA and can potentially cause cancer – “scientific nonsense” in the view of Dr Ashish Jha, a former White House Covid response coordinator. Meanwhile, with measles having been eradicated in the US since 2000, the disease’s resurgence, paired with Ladapo’s latest misadventure, has prompted a new round of mocking commentary. Florida: Come for the Sunshine, Leave With the Measles, opined the Orlando Sentinel; “Measles? So On-brand for Florida’s Descent Into the 1950s”, was the take of the Tampa Bay Times. clarifying information” this week, in which it insisted that the stay-at-home recommendation had in fact been given to parents at Manatee Bay elementary school, and attempted to blame the media for “reporting false information and politicizing this outbreak”.
[cont]...Department officials repeated the claim in a subsequent statement. “The media has continued to peddle the narrative that Dr Ladapo has defied science in his recent letter. In reality, he has used available data and immunity rates to drive policy decisions impacting Manatee Bay Elementary,” the deputy press secretary Grant Kemp said. “97% of students at Manatee Bay Elementary have received at least one dose of the MMR immunization. Outbreaks are occurring in multiple states, and the national immunization rate for measles is less than 92%.” Reporting false information, incidentally, is something Ladapo is familiar with himself. He was found to have personally manipulated data in a 2022 study of Covid-19 vaccines to wrongly assert they posed an elevated risk of cardiac illness or death in young men. To Speth, and numerous other medical experts, Ladapo’s risky succession of positions denying even the most obvious benefits of immunization and vaccination is a symptom of a wider political assault by the right wing, which carries deadly potential. Its origins, Speth believes, lie in a long-discredited study by the disgraced British former doctor Andrew Wakefield falsely tying the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism, but which was enthusiastically embraced by anti-vaxxers and other extremists in the US. “The Wakefield study was a gross fraud, yet today up to 25% of our population believes it, and opportunistic politicians seize on the sentiment to tell people what they want to hear about the danger of vaccines,” he said. “Republicans are at war with medical science, and that’s a horrible tragedy. But I feel like Cassandra, talking about the public health threat. We’re going to start seeing a lot more children die of infectious diseases that could be prevented if they were vaccinated.” Ladapo has been hailed a “superstar” by DeSantis, who sidelined then dumped his predecessor, Scott Rivkees, for contradicting the governor’s position on social distancing and face masks during the Covid-19 pandemic. Ladapo became a vocal cheerleader of the governor’s anti-mask, vaccine and lockdown decrees; and was a prominent member of Frontline Doctors of America, a fringe cluster of radical physicians that pushed ineffective medicines such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as a cure for the virus. To pretend that the vaccine is unnecessary to eradicate measles is completely illogical, because that’s the reason it’s been gone from our country Tina Polsky The group’s founder, Simone Gold, received a 60-day prison sentence in 2022 for taking part in the 6 January Capitol riot. Additionally, Ladapo was a signatory to the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter claimed to have been signed by 15,000 scientists and medical professionals calling for a herd immunity approach to Covid, but which included a multitude of spoof names including Dr Johnny Bananas, Dr Person Fakename and Dr I P Freely. Democrats in Florida say Ladapo’s handling of the measles outbreak is one more reason why they believe he is unsuited for a job in which he earns in excess of $600,000 a year, paid almost equally by the state and University of Florida, where he was given tenured professorship as an incentive to come. “What’s so sad about it is it’s completely preventable,” said state senator Tina Polsky, who has been one of Ladapo’s staunchest critics. “In a moment of crisis we need the best level-headed people to be running that department of health, and now we’re in our next crisis after Covid and we have someone who doesn’t want to follow accepted scientific guidelines in charge. “To pretend that the vaccine is unnecessary to eradicate measles is completely illogical, because that’s the reason it’s been gone from our country. It will have some devastating outcomes, it’s going to scare a lot of people, and kids are going to be out of school, which has its own negative outcomes.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/03/florida-measles-outbreak-preventable
this isn't the first time Joseph Ladapo's controversial claims have come under fire. He gained prominence for his controversial views despite not having any background in infectious diseases. In one opinion piece in 2020, he cited ‘My experience caring for patients with suspected or diagnosed Covid-19 infections at UCLA’ and in another article for USA Today in March 2020, he said: 'I spent the past week taking care of patients with Covid-19 at UCLA’s flagship hospital.' Multiple previous colleagues at UCLA have spoken up about his claiming, saying Dr Ladapo had not treated any Covid patients and accused him of misleading the public. Before being confirmed by the Senate in February 2022, Dr Ladapo's former UCLA supervisor declined to recommend him due to his reliance on ‘opinion’ rather than 'scientific evidence.'
He is a brilliant guy who decided to sell himself for political fame. He won’t be the last to “go against dogma”. @AroundTheWorld does it everyday. So do many nurses, PAs, and other medical industry reps. Science has always been political but this is politicization beyond disagreeing with the interpretation of the data. Often times it is flat out denial of the observations and instead going for more fringe alternatives due to the need to reject perceived authority/expertise. Unfortunately in this particular instance personal choice just means measles mumps and rubella will be endemic in the US again for the groups who go unvaccinated or were unable to acquire immunity from the vaccine.
Ladapo was 100% right about opening up during Covid. He was also 100% right about no more lockdowns, letting children go back to school without masks and no mask mandates. Hysterical leftists who still wear masks in 2024 can whine about it as much as they want, but Ladapo easily trumps them intellectually and as far as science goes.
Yes but no. The hospital systems nationwide were still overwhelmed by the COVID surge Dec 21/Jan 22 despite society being somewhat normal and vaccines being available compared to Dec 20/Jan 21 when people were still super vigilant and society was still in lockdown mode. This was not some liberal elite making people afraid. It was watching tens of thousands die in NY April 2020. It was seeing thousands die a day for weeks. People are generally terrible at risk odds, but if you told me I had to eat a single M&M from a bag of M&Ms but one of those M&Ms could kill me, I’d pass. Same went for COVID. Society voluntarily suspended worldwide because COVID was more infectious and more deadly than anything they’d ever seen before. But by Feb 2022 after that winter surge, COVID has been in the rear view and a repeat infection while still potentially deadly has been a lot less potent. So yes to no more masks no more virtual learning and yes to living life. We will blame the kids shortfallings on COVID but we as a society would still would’ve failed those kids by planting them in front of iPads playing YouTube because it was easier with or without COVID.
I would never vote for Trump but I give him credit for Operation Warp speed and maintaining his pro-Vaccine stance. His project allowed us to save lives and end the pandemic.
Depends about what. He wasn't always right and is guilty of pushing crap that wasn't accurate or right. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kulldorff He pushed false crap.
