DeSantis’ Surgeon General Says Being Pro-Vax Is ‘Almost Like a Religion’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed a new surgeon general who started his new job in the midst of the COVID pandemic by comparing support for vaccinations with religious fanaticism. 

Dr. Joseph Ladapo wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal last year about how masks were ineffective, and used his introduction Tuesday to downplay the role of vaccinations as part of public health strategy. 

“The state should be promoting good health, and vaccination isn't the only path to that. It's been treated almost like a religion, and that's just senseless, right?” Ladapo said. “There are lots of good pathways to health, and vaccination is not the only one.”

Florida has the second-highest COVID death rate per capita in the country throughout the pandemic. While cases and hospitalizations are trending downward as Florida slowly begins to recover from the Delta surge, more than 9,000 people remain hospitalized there and hundreds are dying every day. 

“Florida will completely reject fear as a way of making policies in public health. So we’re done with fear,” Ladapo said at the press conference. “That’s unfortunately been a centerpiece of health policy in the United States since the beginning of the pandemic, and that’s over here.” 

Ladapo is a former Food and Drug Administration staffer and New York University faculty member who then joined the faculty of UCLA's Geffen School of Medicine. He’s described on UCLA’s website as a “physician and health policy researcher whose primary research interests include assessing the cost-effectiveness of diagnostic technologies and reducing the population burden of cardiovascular disease.”  

Ladapo’s divergence from the scientific consensus on COVID isn’t new. He claimed that the “most reasonable conclusion from the available scientific evidence is that community mask mandates have—at most—a small effect on the course of the pandemic,” in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal last year. 

Ladapo also expressed opposition to vaccine mandates, dismissing “this idea that people don't get to make decisions related to their own personal health” as “wrong.”

DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw told the Hill that “like Governor DeSantis, Dr. Ladapo is not against vaccines or masks—he is against vaccine mandates and forced masking.”

Ladapo, who will join the faculty of the University of Florida in addition to his new job as the state’s top public health official, will no doubt be right at home in the DeSantis administration. 

Even as the Delta variant spread widely throughout Florida this summer, resulting in hospitals being stretched to capacity, DeSantis has fought local governments and schools that sought to require masks or require weekly testing for the unvaccinated.

DeSantis has gone so far as to try to withhold funding from school districts that require masks, and the issue has resulted in a legal back-and-forth between DeSantis and school administrators and boards, concerned parents, and the Biden administration. Earlier this month, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation forcing schools to allow parents an option to opt-out of mask requirements. 

DeSantis also took the opportunity Tuesday to slam Biden after the federal government changed how monoclonal antibody treatments are allocated, which the administration says it needs to maintain the supply and make sure the treatment is available for all states. DeSantis had boosted the public profile of the treatment, and Florida had been one of the top buyers of it among the states. 

“Why are they targeting Florida?” DeSantis said. “Biden, he loves talking about Florida. He hates Florida more than anything.”