Top Florida health officials disregarded critical COVID-19 vaccine data: report

Leading Florida health administrators disregarded essential COVID-19 findings issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), NY Daily News reports.

Per NY Daily News, the critical data was blatantly ignored as health officials, including Florida Surgeon General, Joseph A. Lapado, issued "a recommendation against certain types of vaccines for young men, according to a new report."

Associated Press reports:

The early drafts of the analysis obtained by the [Tampa Bay] Times through a records request showed that catching COVID-19 could increase the chances of a cardiac-related death much more than getting the vaccine, but that information was missing from the final version put out by the Florida Department of Health last October.

READ MORE: Florida health official placed on leave after encouraging staffers to get COVID vaccine

Ladapo, who was appointed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, "announced in October that adult males, ages 18 to 39, should not get mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, such as Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, because of an 'abnormally high risk of cardiac-related death among men in this age group,'" NY Daily News reports.

Doubling down on his recommendation, the surgeon general tweeted Friday, April 7, "It's not only unfortunate that COVID has corrupted scientists' ability to think clearly about epidemiology but also sad that people rush to defend a vaccine that has shown increased cardiovascular risk in multiple studies. Florida's surveillance simply confirmed it."

The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal, published a 2022 report finding the "vaccination prevented 14·4 million deaths due to COVID-19, representing a global reduction of 79% of deaths during the first year of COVID-19 vaccination."

Matt Hitchings, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida, told Tampa Bay Times, "This is a grave violation of research integrity. [The vaccine] has done a lot to advance the health of people of Florida and he’s encouraging people to mistrust it."

READ MORE: Ron DeSantis pushing to ban COVID-19 protection measures as cases and deaths rise

NY Daily News' full report is available at this link. Associated Press' report is here. The Lancet's report is here.