As Florida reports a surge in Covid-19 cases, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) called for action on Dec. 13. Was this a new action to combat severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)?Was it an action to make updates from the Florida Department of Health on the number of covid-19 cases and deaths more common than every two weeks?DeSantis convened a state grand jury to investigate alleged “crimes and wrongdoing” surrounding the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 mRNA vaccines. Yes, he understood. With the Covid-19 pandemic still ongoing, DeSantis sought to spend Florida’s taxpayer dollars researching vaccines that clinical studies have shown are well opposed to Covid-19. And on Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court granted DeSantis’ appeal, as Steven Lemongello. Reported by the Orlando Sentinel.
Welcome to Florida 2022. This is Florida, the state that has recorded 83,606 deaths from Covid-1nine since the pandemic began in 2020. This is Florida, which recorded 22,572 reported cases of Covid-1nine from Dec. 9-15, according to data from the Florida Department of Health. This one-week count was up from 19,931 cases last week (Dec. 2 to Dec. 8), which in turn was up from last week’s 18,793 cases (Nov. 25 to Dec. 25). 1). This is Florida, which is experiencing a spike in Covid-19 cases just before the December holiday season, when it’s likely to be high.
While other states have made the decision whether or not to reinstate face mask requirements, DeSantis was busy participating in this “Covid-19 mRNA vaccine accountability roundtable” and doing other things. Isn’t it like still standing in the middle of a fireplace and begging for a pipe investigation?If DeSantis is really interested in investigating his allegations of “crimes and misdeeds” further, what is the current urgency?Why not work with the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the many clinical experts who have investigated other cases of wrongdoing through pharmaceutical companies?
Well, in a Dec. 15 article for Vox, Dylan Scott wrote that DeSantis, “who is widely expected to run for president in 2024, is stepping up his crusade to discredit covid-19 vaccines, the pharmaceutical corporations that produced them, and the public, fitness officials, and government leaders who have suggested Americans get them. The governor of Florida is stepping up his anti-vaccine rhetoric,” which was published Dec. 23 in the BMJ. Yamey described the “roundtable on covid-19 mRNA vaccine responsibility,” which members of her administration helped organize, as “a high-level roundtable. “Profile opportunity for the Governor to accentuate his opposition to vaccines against Covid-19”.
What does opposition to covid-19 vaccines have to do with DeSantis’ potential political aspirations?Yamey explained that “pushing vaccine skepticism plays well with the conservative base that he will have to convince if he needs to beat Donald Trump to be the Republican presidential nominee. According to Yamey, “Pushing a message that government vaccination campaigns, in collusion with business, are overreaching is likely to be good for the electorate that rejects ‘big government. ‘”Yamey added that “This anti-vaccine message is also helping to hijack the Florida governor himself’s own disastrous role to covid-19 deaths.
Yamey also referred to a tweet from Oliver Johnson, PhD, professor of data theory at the University of Bristol, to DeSantis, who said, “If Florida were a country, its covid-19 death rate (3874 covid-19 deaths consistent with millions) would rank it in the ‘tenth worst in the world, Peru and various Eastern European countries that were criticized before the vaccine’:
This is in reaction to a Dec. 13 tweet from Desantis that claimed that “Florida will hold the medical center accountable by:
What express “medical facility” was DeSantis referring to in his tweet?There is no single “medical facility” that considers covid-19 mRNA vaccines worthwhile as interventions. Instead, other scientists, who were by no means similar to Pfizer or Moderna, around the world, studied those vaccines in other ways. They have contributed to the clinical evidence by publishing studies that are available on PubMed for all to see. Rather than an individual study, this is a series of studies in development that have supported the relative efficacy and protection of covid-19 vaccines. The studies also learned about the side effects of vaccines which, although rare, warranted further investigation. Scientists around the world haven’t shied away from those activities either. They continued to examine vaccines and their effects to verify what has been discovered and account for the possibility of additional discoveries emerging.
An example of a clinical study is one published as correspondence in The Lancet Infectious Diseases on October 7, 2021, which showed what might have happened if Florida and Texas had increased their covid-19 vaccination rates to conform to the average of other states. The team, led by Alison P Galvani, PhD, a professor of epidemiology at Yale University, estimated that such a buildup could have prevented more than 26,000 covid-19 cases and 1,200 covid-19-related deaths in those two states. .
Did DeSantis invite experts like Galvani and other genuine scientists whose paintings do not necessarily reflect DeSantis’s perspectives to the “covid-19 mRNA Vaccine Liability Roundtable”? Was this circular table an apolitical clinical meeting? This does not seem to be the case. Rather, it appears that the roundtable speakers were hand-selected, as the speaker list did not appear to constitute the diversity of what had been published in the clinical literature. In fact, DeSantis’ perspectives have been widely implied by speakers, such as Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD, who was appointed through DeSantis and has in the past opposed covid-19 vaccination for Healthy people. children, which runs counter to CDC recommendations, as I’ve covered for Forbes in the past. Speakers also included the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which made some form of herd immunity strategy more complex to deal with Covid-19, as I reported for Forbes in October 2020. Remember the Los Angeles Times committee editorial called herd immunity strategy. as the “let others die” approach.
Again, one of the greatest tragedies of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the relentless politicization of pandemic and Covid-19 policies and interventions. Imagine how many lives could have been saved and how much suffering could have been avoided if the United States had followed what genuine scientists and science have been saying all along. Of course, Covid-19 mRNA vaccines are perfect. Of course, the initial 90% efficiencies reported via Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna were overly optimistic. Of course, it deserves a closer look at how Trump’s management arranged the contracts with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Of course, it would have been better for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to disclose their knowledge of clinical trials to the clinical network and for the clinical network in general to draw conclusions before the pharmaceutical corporations issue their various press releases on the results. of your tests in the past. 3 years. Of course, the pharmaceutical corporations deserve not to be making public health policy. Of course, scientists and medical experts deserve and will indeed continue to examine Covid-19 mRNA vaccines and publish their findings in the peer-reviewed literature.
But at the end of the day, none of this is guided through a political agfinisha. Instead, be guided through genuine science, genuine scientists, and the genuine medical community. And not just other people personally selected by a politician.