Scott Jensen, the anti-vaccine advocate, and the misinformation theorem about vaccines in the 2022 midterm elections

Jensen has appeared with anti-vaccine advocates in the past, making him the most outspoken candidate. But anti-vaccine rhetoric permeates the language of many Republican politicians. They are appealing to people who are angry about the vaccine and don’t like being told to wear masks.

The 2022 midterm elections will be like no other: Hundreds of candidates on the ballot this year challenge or deny the results of the previous election. But alongside these false narratives, candidates on the political right are also pushing conspiracies about vaccines.

He believes the anti-vaccine influence is going to stay in politics. “I don’t think we’re ever going to go away from antivaxxers,” he says.

“Being anti-vaccine definitely helped Scott Jensen in the primaries,” Ernst says. She says anti-vaccine activists are politically motivated in the state. Jensen’s commitment to anti-vaccine ideas helped get an edge in the crowded Republican field.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/02/1133097215/vaccines-election-campaign-midterms

Anti-Vaccines: The Case for a New Florida gov’t (or not) Sensitivities to Public Health Laws

She says that he canceled at the last minute to attend the wedding but later posted pictures of the football game on social media. There was a lot of hubbub about that.

In local elections around the country, Stand For Health Freedom is pushing the cause of medical freedom in sheriffs, school boards, and county clerk races. The anti-vaccine candidates lost their bid for hospital board seats in Washington State. The victory at Sarasota Memorial appears to be the first of its kind.

While similar public clashes have happened elsewhere, the “health freedom” movement is especially strong in Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis was one of first state leaders to roll back mask and social distancing guidelines in 2020. Lately, he’s used rhetoric that’s increasingly hostile to vaccines.

She says that DeSantis talks like vaccines are bad. She believes that the rhetoric is carefully calibrated to energize the anti-vaccine elements of the Republican base, without appearing to question vaccines themselves.

Lowering vaccine access for underserved communities is one thing that DeSantis has taken measures to do. Florida does not offer COVID vaccines to children under 5, and as a result, low-income residents seeking COVID vaccines at county health departments may see some of their kids turned away. Your kids can both get a COVID shot and not get a COVID shot.

For now, much of the rhetoric is focused on COVID vaccines, but that could soon change. Many states have seen a surge in proposed legislation to weaken requirements for childhood vaccines that protect against dangerous diseases such as polio, mumps and measles. In 2018 there were approximately 81 bills introduced nationwide that the pro-vaccine SAFE group designates as anti-vaccine; in 2022, they count more than 1,500. There is more anti-vaccine activity.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday asked his state’s Supreme Court to green-light an investigation of “any and all wrongdoing in Florida with respect to Covid-19 vaccines,” his latest move to cast doubt on the vaccines’ effectiveness and amplify fears about side effects.

In the petition filed with the Florida Supreme Court, the Republican governor requests the empaneling of a grand jury to investigate a broad group of entities associated with the development, distribution and promotion of the vaccines, including pharmaceutical manufacturers and their executive officers, as well as medical associations.

A public health integrity committee will counter the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is not serving a useful function, and it is really serving to advance narratives rather than do evidence-based medicine. The panel would assess guidance and actions from federal agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, US Food and Drug Administration and the CDC.

The announcements Tuesday came at a roundtable focused on vaccines that DeSantis led. The Florida governor’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, during the roundtable pointed to examples of the vaccine causing myocarditis, inflammation of the heart, and said pharmaceutical companies need to provide more data to independent researchers so they can further study the side effects from vaccines.

We’ll answer this question. I am certain that the question keeps the CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna up at night, hoping no one will notice. He said during the roundtable that they were going to look in Florida.

Three new board members of the Sarasota Memorial Hospital Board question the effectiveness of vaccinations and spread misinformation about COVID-19

Following large clinical trials, the FDA authorized the shots for use in people 6 months and older, and CDC continues to recommend them. Experts and government agencies say the benefits far outweigh the risks as the vaccines dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalization or death from Covid-19.

More than 3 million deaths and over 18 million hospitalizations were prevented by the Covid-19 vaccine, saving more than 1 trillion dollars in medical costs, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Commonwealth Fund.

In the debate against Crist, he said that the budget surplus in Florida was the largest in the history of the state.

While most of the 6,000 hospitals in the United States are privately-run, about 200 are controlled by publicly-elected board members, according to Larry Gage, CEO of an industry group called America’s Essential Hospitals. Most elections have nothing to do with national politics or culture war issues.

But with seats opening on the Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s board earlier this year, a group of political activists opposed to COVID protocols saw an opportunity. Three new hospital board members question the effectiveness of vaccines and spread medical misinformation. While they’re a minority on the nine-person board, their victory has thrown the hospital board’s typically quiet meetings into chaos.

More than 200 people showed up for the first meeting of the new members in November, the largest turnout that chairman Tramm Hudson had ever seen.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention: A Brief Review of the Hospital’s Management During the Pandemic and a Spoken Voice in Sarasota

Micheila Matthew and more than a dozen self-described “health freedom activists” demanded an investigation into the hospital’s management during the worst of the pandemic. Some had lost loved ones during the peak of the pandemic and blamed the hospital. Others blasted the hospital’s leadership for ignoring non-mainstream COVID treatments such as ivermectin, which studies have established do not effectively treat COVID.

“These people need to be heard. And we have a spotlight on us in Sarasota. “We are able to be the change that the other health care systems need,” said one of the new board members at the November meeting.

Fiorucci, a registered nurse who has worked on the front lines during the pandemic, told NPR in an interview that she’s never gotten the COVID vaccine.

While there have been extremely rare cases of serious side effects, the scientific research has overwhelmingly shown that COVID vaccines are safe and effective. People are more likely to die if they go unvaccinated.

“Despite our most heroic efforts – weekly meetings where we scoured the newest evidence and looked for things that would actually work; the incredible teamwork, dedication, and hard work that I saw from my colleagues throughout the hospital – we just couldn’t save so many of our patients,” she said with a deep sigh.

A retired doctor and outspoken conservative named Stephen Guffanti helped lead the campaign. He has appeared in viral videos and public appearances where he tells a story about being wrongly imprisoned at a hospital.

He was referring to a widely discredited theory that hospitals inflate COVID deaths for profit and that it’s more profitable to die in the hospital than go home.

In an email, the hospital said that the review will look into specific patient care concerns expressed at the recent hospital board meeting, including those shared by Dr. Guffanti. She said the leadership is also “taking a broader look at care throughout the pandemic, to review the lessons learned and plan for the future.”

“We are an elected body,” said Hudson, the board chair. “If the citizens elected people that might have different views.” I think that we should listen to the citizens,” he said.

While he doesn’t buy into the conspiracy theories about the hospital, Hudson says the review will put people at ease. But many others interviewed for this story were deeply disturbed.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/21/1144798353/in-florida-health-freedom-activists-exert-influence-over-a-major-hospital

Why 2021 wasn’t vaccinated in the last half of 2021 and early 2022: When Americans neededlessly died, hotez said

Hotez estimates that 200,000 Americans needlessly died in the last half of 2021 and early 2022 because they weren’t vaccinated . He said that that’s an enormous killer.