Twitter temporarily took down a post by Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on guidance against COVID-19 vaccines for those under 40. The move comes as medical experts and scientists criticize the Florida Department of Health recommendations for being based on weak data that never saw peer review.
Ladapo on Friday issued new guidance recommending against mRNA vaccinations for COVID-19. “Studying the safety and efficacy of any medications, including vaccines, is an important component of public health,” Ladapo said. “Far less attention has been paid to safety and the concerns of many individuals have been dismissed — these are important findings that should be communicated to Floridians.”
The Department of Health release claimed an 84% increase had been found in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination. That followed what the agency described as analysis through a self-controlled case-series.
But the methodology drew immediate criticism from experts.
The guidance was based on cross-referencing data from the state’s reportable disease repository, the Florida State Health Online Tracking System and death records from the state’s vital statistics.
Dr. Kristen Panthagani, an emergency medicine resident at Yale who has written widely on COVID-19 vaccination data, noted the analysis appeared to be a Microsoft Word document that listed no authors and had not faced any kind of peer review.
“They looked at death certificates, and any death that had an ICD 10 code under ‘Other forms of heart disease’ (ICD I30-I52) was included,” Panthagani said in a social media post.
“1. ICD-10 codes are not necessarily accurate or specific. 2. There isn’t a clear rationale why they included these specific ICD-10 codes vs other cardiac-related codes (i.e. ischemic heart disease is not included?). 3. “Cardiac arrest” is included, which simply means ‘the heart stopped’ and can be the terminal event for many different diseases, not just cardiac issues. Overall, it is a somewhat random list defined not by a hypothesis, but by the arbitrary structure of hospital billing. In short, this list is too broad to be meaningful, excludes some cardiac issues but not others, and most of the diagnoses are far more likely to be caused by other ongoing disease processes rather than vaccination.”
Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the Science family of medical journals, called the analysis a “bogus study.”
“Unreal that University of Florida allows this to go unchecked,” he tweeted.
The concerns prompted Twitter to take down a tweet from Ladapo as misinformation, as shown in a screenshot shared by Bryan Griffin, Press Secretary for Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“Twitter censored data posted by the Florida State Surgeon General that showed an increase risk of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination,” he said. “This is an unacceptable and Orwellian move for narrative over fact.”
The post taken down from Ladapo’s account announced the release of new guidance. “This analysis showed an increased risk of cardiac-related death among men 18-39,” he tweeted. “Florida will not be silent on the truth.”
Based on Twitter post timings, the post appeared to be down for two hours.
Jacob Ogles has covered politics in Florida since 2000 for regional outlets including SRQ Magazine in Sarasota, The News-Press in Fort Myers and The Daily Commercial in Leesburg. His work has appeared nationally in The Advocate, Wired and other publications. Events like SRQ’s Where The Votes Are workshops made Ogles one of Southwest Florida’s most respected political analysts, and outlets like WWSB ABC 7 and WSRQ Sarasota have featured his insights. He can be reached at [email protected]
The lunatic right wing is gonna get people killed. They constantly have to be babysat and spanked. By God when will these people be ejected from government?
This coming from the wing that thinks men can get pregnant.
Quack quack says America’s antivax nutcases. Ladapo is not alone! DeSantis hires only the best clowns!
University of Florida readers need to get their program together and prevent another incident like this. This study used data from the early months of COVID and wasn’t peer reviewed. A travesty.
Ignorant dictatorial twats pushing an experimental vaccine that does not work; it does not prevent contagion or transmission. Claims to prevent hospitalization with self-claimed (as per CDC) effectiveness with two doses was 24% against COVID-19-associated hospitalizations. Fraud for which the media (including here) block all opposing views. Everyone pushing this deserves all the known and suspected negative effects of the vaccine.
Unbelievable. I finally found a copy of where the info came from. This guy should be shot. Such blatant misinformation. Remarkably misleading. First of all being, you know what caused more severe problems in the same group??? COVID!!!!
Where are the Florida Doctors?
Wow at the comments! Cannot believe people still want to believe in/trust these vaccines. Multiple countries have come to this same conclusion already. These shots do nothing but harm people. Nobody can say they know for sure these work. Just because someone gets this vaccine and “has a mild case of covid” does not necessarily mean it helped. I have a friend who’s father was perfectly healthy prior to getting the shots, and now he is having all kinds of problems, but never has gotten covid.
Florida has the 13 worst Covid death rate on a per capita basis in the USA. Florida Covid death rate i Quantitative easing s 1.5 times greater than California. A state that DeSantis often mock for having a poor policy towards Covid prevention.
Florida’s death rate per 100,000 is worse than California’s for good reason. Number 1; Florida has the largest percent of senior citizens, a little over 20% vs California’s at approximately 14%. Number 2; 75% of Covid deaths were those 65 and older.
To give a true analysis of death rate due to Covid, an age related comparison would be a more accurate way to determine lethality by state.
The DeSantis administration’s, specially Christina Pushaw, constantly praised the Governor for having the best state Covid policy. Even if you consider the disparity in seniors, his Covid policies are far being the best … just ask the families that lost a love one to Covid.
My question, did DeSantis do enough to protect all citizens in Florida, especially our Seniors?
In New Hampshire, where I believe covid reporting was accurate, deaths were 90%+ over age 60. A TOTAL of 36 deaths under age 40 and 1 under age 20 that was a child with cancer.
Amusing Florida has 50% more elderly hence the 50% more deaths.
Interesting that a number of Nordic countries are limiting at least the Moderna vaccine to older people because of the risk of myocarditis.
As you stated they are limiting at least the Moderna vaccine, fortunately there are three other alternatives: 1 Pfizer-BioNTech 2 Novavax 3 Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen (J&J/Janssen) (However, CDC recommends that the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine only be considered in certain situations, due to safety concerns.
This is the medical equivalent of the pillow guy’s “proof” the election was stolen. Ladpapo is a disgrace as is DeSantis for his attempts to destroy the university system.
The amount of people that believe COVID-19 exists in the natural world is comical. NEWSFLASH: It was hoax all along, see Event 201, Clade X and a number of other forms of programming. Viruses are poisons, see the Latin translation.There is no invisible Boogieman out to get you.
Some men(and women) you just can’t reach…so you get what we got here…which is they way thay wants it
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