Florida's surgeon general makes the conspiracy-theory podcast rounds
Analysis by Philip Bump
Earlier this month, in the early evening of the Friday before Columbus Day weekend, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo published a new recommendation for residents of his state: Young adult men shouldn’t take mRNA vaccines aimed at combating covid-19.
Removed from useful context, that’s a remarkable development. A senior health official in a state expressing such serious concern about the vaccines that he recommends against them? But the context is particularly important here. Ladapo has been expressing skepticism about coronavirus vaccines (and masks and other infection-reduction mechanisms) since early in his tenure as the state’s surgeon general. It seems clear that his laissez-faire approach to the pandemic — not particularly common in the medical community — is a central reason that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) selected Ladapo for his position. And, sure enough, experts on the medical question at hand (which Ladapo, while a doctor, is not) quickly denounced the research on which Ladapo’s announcement was predicated.
All of this would simply stand as another skirmish in the endless and grim feud over how the pandemic was handled were it not for an unexpected development this week: Ladapo appeared on two podcasts centered on spreading explicit misinformation about politics and the pandemic.
One (as spotted by Alex Kaplan of Media Matters) was “X22 Report,” a podcast that was ousted from Spotify in 2020 for advocating the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory. The day before the Capitol riot, its host declared that “we the people, we are the storm, and we’re coming to D.C.” (“The storm” is a common QAnon reference to the ouster of the movement’s perceived enemies.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/21/florida-covid-vaccines-desantis-surgeon-general/
