FDOH recommends against the COVID-19 booster for individuals under 65
Press release from the Florida Department of Health
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – As the federal government makes new boosters for COVID-19 available, the Florida Department of Health (Department) reminds healthcare providers of their obligation to remain up-to-date with the current literature related to the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
A new mRNA COVID-19 booster was approved on September 11, 2023, by the federal government. While the initial mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were authorized by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) utilizing human clinical trial data, the most recent booster approval was granted in the absence of any meaningful booster-specific clinical trial data performed in humans. In both cases, the federal government has failed to provide sufficient data to support the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines. Health care providers are expected to include the information in this guidance in discussions with patients regarding the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
Based on the high rate of global immunity and currently available data, the State Surgeon General recommends against the COVID-19 booster for individuals under 65. Individuals 65 and older should discuss this information with their healthcare provider, including potential concerns outlined in this guidance.
Providers and patients should be aware of outstanding safety and efficacy concerns:
- Throughout the pandemic, studies across geographic regions have found that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are associated with negative effectiveness after 4 to 6 months. As efficacy waned, studies showed that COVID-19 vaccinated individuals developed an increased risk for infection. This is not found in other vaccines, including the flu vaccine.
- The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines present a risk of subclinical and clinical myocarditis and other cardiovascular conditions among otherwise healthy individuals.
- There is unknown risk of potential adverse impacts with each additional dose of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine; currently individuals may have received five to seven doses (and counting) of this vaccine over a 3-year period.
- Elevated levels of spike protein from the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine persist among some individuals for an indefinite period of time, which may carry health risks.
Improving habits and overall health help manage and reduce the risk of serious health problems such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. The State Surgeon General and the Department continue to encourage Floridians to prioritize their overall health by:
- Staying physically active,
- Minimizing processed foods,
- Maximizing vegetables and healthy fats, and
- Spending time outside to support necessary vitamin D levels.
References
Altarawneh, H. N., Chemaitelly, H., & Ayoub, H. H. (2022). Effects of previous infection and vaccination on symptomatic omicron infections. The New England Journal of Medicine. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2203965
Buergin, N., Lopez-Ayala, P., & Hirsiger, J. R. (2023). Sex–specific differences in myocardial injury incidence after COVID-19 mRNA-1273 booster vaccination. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejhf.2978
Brogna, C., Cristoni, S., Marino, G., Montano, L., Viduto, V., Fabrowski, M., Lettieri, G., & Piscopo, M. (2023). Detection of recombinant Spike protein in the blood of individuals vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2: Possible molecular mechanisms. Proteomics Clinical applications, e2300048. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/prca.202300048
Castelli, J. M., Rearte, A., Olszevicki, S., Voto, C., Del Valle Juarez, M., Pesce, M. et al. (2022). Effectiveness of mRNA-1273, BNT162b2, and BBIBP-CorV vaccines against infection and mortality in children in Argentina, during predominance of delta and omicron covid-19 variants: test negative, case-control study. BMJ. https://www.bmj.com/content/379/bmj-2022-073070
Chemaitelly, H., Ayoub, H. H., AlMukdad, S., Coyle, P., Tang, P., Yassine, H. M., Al-Khatib, H. A., Smatti, M. K., Hasan, M. R., Al-Kanaani, Z., Al-Kuwari, E., Jeremijenko, A., Kaleeckal, A. H., Latif, A. N., Shaik, R. M., Abdul-Rahim, H. F., Nasrallah, G. K., Al-Kuwari, M. G., Butt, A. A. Abu-Raddad, L. J. (2022). Duration of mRNA vaccine protection against SARS-COV-2 omicron ba.1 and BA.2 subvariants in Qatar. Nature News. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30895-3
Demicheli, V., Jefferson T., Di Pietrantoni, C., Ferroni, E., Thorning, S., Thomas, RE., Rivetti, A. Vaccines for preventing influenza in the elderly. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2018, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD004876. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.
Eythorsson, E. (2022). Rate of SARS-COV-2 reinfection during an omicron wave in Iceland. JAMA Network Open. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2794886
Lin, D.-Y., Gu, Y., & Xu, Y. (2022). Effects of vaccination and previous infection on Omicron infections in children. The New England Journal of Medicine. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2209371
Mansanguan, S., Charunwatthana, P., Piyaphanee, W., Dechkhajorn, W., Poolcharoen, A., & Mansanguan, C. (2022). Cardiovascular manifestation of the BNT162B2 mRNA covid-19 vaccine in adolescents. MDPI. https://www.mdpi.com/2414-6366/7/8/196
Nabin K Shrestha, Patrick C Burke, Amy S Nowacki, James F Simon, Amanda Hagen, Steven M Gordon, Effectiveness of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Bivalent Vaccine, Open Forum Infectious Diseases, Volume 10, Issue 6, June 2023,
ofad209, https://doi.org/10.1093/ofid/ofad209
Nordstrom, P., Ballin, M., & Nordstrom, A. (2022). Risk of infection, hospitalisation, and death up to 9 months after a second dose of COVID-19 vaccine: A retrospective, total population cohort study in Sweden. The Lancet. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)00089-7/fulltext
Roltgen, K., Boyd, S. D., Nadeau, K. C., Pinsky, B. A., Oscar , S., & Nielsen, S. C. A. (2022). Immune imprinting, breadth of variant recognition, and germinal center response in human SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination. Cell. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)00076-9
Trougakos, I. P., Terpos, E., Alexopoulos, H., Politou, M., Paraskevis, D., Scorilas, A., Kastritis, E., Andreakos, E., & Dimopoulos, M. A. (2022). Adverse effects of COVID-19 mrna vaccines: The Spike hypothesis. Trends in molecular medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9021367/
Yonker, L. M., Swank, Z., Bartsch, Y., Burns, M. D., Kane, A., Boribong, B., Davis, J. P., Loiselle, M., Novak, T., Senussi, Y., Cheng, C.-A., Burgess, E., Edlow, A. G., Chou , J., & Dionne, A. (2023). Circulating spike protein detected in post–COVID-19 mRNA vaccine myocarditis. Circulation. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.122.061025
I wouldn’t listen to a word that clown says. Florida has 85,000 deaths as of March 2023, and hospitalizations are rising.
Good for you. Now leave the rest of us alone. Most people now see thru the deception and fraud….and if you are unable to figure it out then so be it.
The fraud is the money he is stealing from us tax payers. I’ve heard he’s been to campus three times since he’s been hired as full time faculty. Over $400k a year in tax dollars to pay his never ending vacation leave.
Well for Lets go Brandon’s Sake go get the shot . And for God’s sake don’t
Staying physically active,
Minimizing processed foods,
Maximizing vegetables and healthy fats, and
Spending time outside to support necessary vitamin D levels.
Hospital ventilators killed the Covid patients, not Covid itself. Ventilators were used in hospitals to protect the staff, but caused bacterial pneumonia which killed the often elderly patients. Death certificates either say “natural causes” or “Covid”, both lies.
Most of those deaths you CLAIM have and had nothing to do with Covid. They were a political tool of the Democrat administration. Hospitals and morgues were paid extra for reporting deaths as Covid ASSOCIATED.
The data shows that GOP voters died from COVID in far greater numbers than Democratic voters after the COVID-19 vaccine arrived. So if you don’t want to trust the science and, instead, trust DeathSantis and that quack he brought out from California, go right ahead.
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/25/1189939229/covid-deaths-democrats-republicans-gap-study
If it is not safe for under 65, how is it safe for over 65?
Thank you, Dr. Ladapo!
We are blessed to have an honest Surgeon General in Florida, who follows actual science instead of the officially sanctioned and pharma paid for so-called science that continues to be foisted on the country at the federal level.
My kids are young adults, in the age group with the very worst adverse reactions to the “vaccines” that don’t actually vaccinate with any efficacy. It’s a crime that the jabs were ever mandated.
Forcing citizens to choose between accepting shots they don’t want or losing their jobs is evil.
So much suffering has been caused by the propaganda and heavy hand of government forcing those dangerous shots on citizens who used to trust them. Follow the money…
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status
Trust the science. Whichever science you pay for.
Jab free and loving it
Me too, and worked the whole time with interactions with the public and no covid or fake vaxx for me.
UF should fire this quack or it has no integrity. They already had to publish a correction to his “research” on the vaccines where he proven to have falsified information and the previous surgeon general has enounced him. The Gov should be impeached for not firing him.
Ladapo is not an epidemiologist or infectious disease expert and was trained in cardiology.
If you listen to this guy you might end up on this chart.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status
“04/24/2023 01:59 PM EDT
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo personally altered a state-driven study about Covid-19 vaccines last year to suggest that some doses pose a significantly higher health risk for young men than had been established by the broader medical community, according to a newly obtained document.
Ladapo’s changes, released as part of a public records request, presented the risks of cardiac death to be more severe than previous versions of the study. He later used the final document in October to bolster disputed claims that Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were dangerous to young men.
The surgeon general, a well-known Covid-19 vaccine skeptic, faced a backlash from the medical community after he made the assertions, which go against guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and American Academy of Pediatrics. But Ladapo’s statements aligned well with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ stance against mandatory Covid-19 vaccination.
Researchers with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and University of Florida, who viewed Ladapo’s edits on the study and have followed the issue closely, criticized the surgeon general for making the changes. One said it appears Ladapo altered the study out of political — not scientific — concerns.
“I think it’s a lie,” Matt Hitchings, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida, said of Ladapo’s assertion that the Covid-19 vaccine causes cardiac death in young men. “To say this — based on what we’ve seen, and how this analysis was made — it’s a lie.”
The newly released draft of the eight-page study, provided by the Florida Department of Health, indicates that it initially stated that there was no significant risk associated with the Covid-19 vaccines for young men. But “Dr. L’s Edits,” as the document is titled, reveal that Ladapo replaced that language to say that men between 18 and 39 years old are at high risk of heart illness from two Covid vaccines that use mRNA technology.
“Results from the stratified analysis for cardiac related death following vaccination suggests mRNA vaccination may be driving the increased risk in males, especially among males aged 18-39,” Ladapo wrote in the draft. “The risk associated with mRNA vaccination should be weighed against the risk associated with COVID-19 infection.”
In a statement to POLITICO, Ladapo said revisions and refinements are a normal part of assessing surveillance data and that he has the appropriate expertise and training to make those decisions.
“To say that I ‘removed an analysis’ for a particular outcome is an implicit denial of the fact that the public has been the recipient of biased data and interpretations since the beginning of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine campaign,” he said. “I have never been afraid of disagreement with peers or media.”
“….Ladapo doesn’t seem fazed by the hypocrisy of his attacks given that he withheld key data when he recommended young men not get vaccinated last year. A Tampa Bay Times analysis of public records revealed the Department of Health removed from an analysis data that showed contracting COVID-19 could increase the chances of cardiac-related deaths much more than vaccines.
That was irresponsible at best and dishonest at worst, but Florida provides the environment where Ladapo shines….
Florida COVID cases more than doubled in the last week of August compared to the month before, the Herald reported. Florida has the largest number hospitalizations after California. These numbers pale in comparison to previous waves of the virus, but Floridians should already know that the best way to protect themselves is by getting vaccinated.
As a reminder, Ladapo also promoted two debunked treatments for COVID-19: hydroxychloroquine, which the FDA, based on several clinical trials, says increases the risk of “serious heart rhythm problems;” and Ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug that a clinical trial with 1,206 COVID patients found wasn’t effective, according to a study published this year in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Any doctor that pushes such quackery should be relegated to academic obscurity and ridicule. But in Florida, Ladapo was fast-tracked into a faculty position at the University of Florida College of Medicine. A committee of the UF Faculty Senate last year found college administrators cut corners in his hiring, the Gainesville Sun reported.
Ladapo became the standard-bearer for DeSantis’ approach to the pandemic, giving it the rubber stamp of a Harvard-trained doctor. The “Florida Blueprint,” as DeSantis sells it, proved the mainstream scientific community wrong. What that narrative leaves out is that Floridians paid for it with their lives.
During the 2021 delta wave, Florida residents died at a higher rate, adjusted for age, than people in almost every other state, a New York Times analysis of federal data found. The Sunshine State accounted for 14% of the nation’s deaths between July and October 2021, even though it represents only 7% of the American population.
…His suggestion that younger Floridians are somehow naturally protected from the worst effects of COVID-19 isn’t supported by data. Of the state’s 90,000 COVID-19 deaths, 22% were people under 65, the Herald reported. Of the 23,000 deaths that happened during the delta wave, 39% were among those younger adults, the Times reported. The vast majority of them were unvaccinated or had not finished their two-dose regimen.
For some Floridians, no amount of studies in prestigious journals will persuade them that vaccines work or are safe. Unfortunately, Ladapo’s target audience is vast and looking for someone with a surgeon general’s title to validate their beliefs.
Other Floridians who haven’t gone down the rabbit hole of misinformation should look elsewhere for reliable medical advice. Would they rather trust someone with a record of data manipulation and of pushing unproven treatments for a lethal virus? Or will they protect themselves with a vaccine that has saved lives and prevented serious illness?
That choice should be easy. Just tune out Florida’s surgeon general.”
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/florida-surgeon-general-misleads-public-184414697.html