Dr. Ladapo thumbs his nose at Floridians and his profession.

[hay rick]

"First, do no harm."

Florida Surgeon General nominee, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, refused to say that vaccines are effective against Covid in a Senate Health Policy Committee meeting last week.

DeSantis continues to advocate his "freedom" talking point and goes out of his way to minimize the importance of vaccination for individual health and as a public health tool. In a dazzling display of arrogance, he is threatening to sue everyone in the world for failing to continue to provide free ($2100/dose, actually, but free to Florida) monoclonal antibody treatments that the makers themselves admit are useless in the treatment of the Omicron variant. The governor also continues to evade answering the question of his booster status. Even TFG says OMFG. God forbid that the governor should use his own behavior to set a good example.

What scares me even more than the unnecessary disease and deaths that DeSantis and Ladapo are willing to tolerate is the obvious calculation that they do not expect to pay any personal or political price for sociopathic behavior. Recent Florida history does not discourage that belief.