In a ranty post yesterday, I mentioned that those of us who reside in red states are still living in a Trumpian nightmare. I have fresh evidence of that in the form of Florida’s new surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who was introduced by Florida’s Trump-wannabe governor yesterday.
Ladapo replaces Dr. Scott Rivkees, who chaired the pediatrics department at the state’s flagship university before he torched his professional reputation by remaining silent (as the state’s surgeon general!) while DeSantis downplayed the horrifying toll of the pandemic, harassed and obstructed local governments and schoolboards that are trying to mitigate the spread, and gave official imprimatur to the conspiracy theorists and COVID-denying crackpots who are indefinitely extending this public health crisis.
Ladapo also has an incredibly impressive CV. But he is a crank who is apparently all-in on DeSantis’s strategy of pretending the pandemic is a liberal hoax to ban red Solo cups and hamburgers at keggers, steal all the guns and bibles, abolish pickups and deprive us of Trump, DeSantis and freedom.
How do we know Ladapo is a crackpot? We know this because he spoke at the Crackpot Doc Summit held on the steps of the US Supreme Court in the summer of 2020. The event was organized by the wingnut “Tea Party Patriots” group and featured a handful of doctors speaking out against masks and social distancing as the initial COVID surge raged.
Trump, who was both a sitting president and a person with a Twitter account back then, retweeted the Crackpot Doc video because one of the other participants, Dr. Stella Immanuel, was hyping hydroxychloroquine, the snake oil cure-all Trump himself was peddling at the time. (Later, Trump had to sort of walk back his praise for Dr. Immanuel when it was revealed that she is also a minister who believes infertility, impotence and other disorders are caused by people having sex with demons in their dreams.)
Anyhoo, if you’re someone who’s more concerned with addressing the fucking pandemic so you can get your fucking life back rather than being laser-focused on mitigating the threat COVID may pose to the highly ambitious DeSantis’s political career, Dr. Ladapo’s remarks at his introduction as the new surgeon general weren’t promising:
“Florida will completely reject fear as a way of making policies. That’s been something that’s been, unfortunately, a centerpiece of health policies.”
When asked about whether people should fear the vaccine, Ladapo said Tuesday those fears were driven by a “climate of mistrust” in the public about the nation’s coronavirus response. That sentiment is similar to those made by DeSantis since the start of the pandemic.
“That was a direct result of scientists, my colleagues, some of them, taking the science and basically misrepresenting it to fit their agendas,” Ladapo said. “This idea that people don’t get to make their own decisions on issues of health is wrong and it’s not something that we’re going to be about.”
When asked whether Florida should be promoting vaccines, Ladapo replied that too much emphasis had been placed on that approach.
“The state should be promoting good health, and vaccination isn’t the only path for that,” Ladapo said. “It’s been treated almost like a religion, and that’s just senseless.”
He said the state should be supporting many measures for good health: “vaccination, losing weight, exercising more (and) eating more fruits and vegetables.”
Sweet weeping Jeebus, we’re doomed. But here’s the thing: we have to push back about this “climate of mistrust” garbage. As Eric Boehlert put it in an excellent piece in Press Run today, people are still dying in huge numbers, even though effective vaccines are now available — for free! — because they’ve been “brainwashed by bad-faith partisan actors…”
Boehlert complains that MSM outlets are yapping about “vaccine hesitancy” while ignoring who created it, and he’s right. Our party, from the president on down to the newest commissioner on a board that governs the most podunk backwater in the US, should be relentless about calling those bad-faith partisan actors out BY NAME for the damage they’re doing to every single one of us.
I think it’s good politics too. I’m all the way across the country from California, so I don’t claim to have any special insight into how Governor Newsom curb-stomped the Trumpian clowns who came at him in the recall. But I’ve got to think regular old citizen disgust with these feckless anti-mask, COVID-denying cockwaffles had something to do with it. So let’s run with that.
Open thread.
The Moar You Know
I’m OK with 90% of this program. I do like a good burger.
frosty
Red states, yes. Purple and blue states, yes. Here in deep red South Pennsyltucky it feels just the same. Sure, we don’t have a Crazy Doc surgeon general, but the lege is getting ready to give Cyber Ninjas all my voting history, my driver’s license number, and last 4 digits of my SS number.
Can I move back to Maryland now?
Betty Cracker
@frosty: I read something about that the other day. Are people as outraged about it as they ought to be? Because that’s insane.
The Moar You Know
He didn’t have to. California has an absolute majority of Dem voters and Larry Elder got them to the polls.
This is a situation unique to CA so far as I can tell; I can’t think of any other state that has a commanding majority of Dem voters like CA does.
Cameron
I read about the guy this a.m. and my jaw dropped. Dude has insanely high quality education, serious job cred, and all he’s gotten from this background is – tell us to eat our veggies? WTF? Christ, I learned that in elementary school back in the ’50s.
frosty
@Betty Cracker: I don’t sense any outrage, but then I don’t follow the local news.
It’s pretty much pointless to complain to my state rep and senator. They’ll get 60%+ of the vote no matter what they do, including having relations with barnyard animals (h/t LBJ)
Obligatory for raven: Fuck LBJ
Mike S
Newsom spent the first month or so of the recall just calling it Republican led recall. People were less than unimpressed and I was very worried. Once he started pointing out that those idiots were covid deniers who promised to overturn everything he’d done the election turned around and he beat the shit out of the GOP. He beat them so bad that even the cult stopped trying to claim fraud.
lowtechcyclist
It may have been a rant, but it was a clear, focused, and righteous rant.
Thank you for taking the time to write it up and post it, rather than scream it into a pillow.
Peale
@Cameron:
And did you learn your lesson, or did you just decide like everyone else that sugar is a vegetable and a chocolate fudge sundae is “dairy?”
Scout211
I am just gobsmacked by the courage and strength that all these Republican officials show in their long and brave fight, no war! against this nation’s straw men.
Sheesh.
//s
scav
Eating vegetables. Seems a cruel first day to suggest cannibalism of his own pool of voters.
The Moar You Know
@Peale: are you trying to imply that they are not?
Another Scott
I’m sorry you are living under that. :-(
There too many humans that are cranks. They’re dangerous when they have a chance to push their crackpot beliefs on the rest of us. People need to stay in their lane, as Kay says.
The way forward is doing everything we can to vote their enablers out of office, and once we’re in office to create policies to reduce their power. Higher taxes on the wealthy. Sensible judges. Sensible laws. Expanding voting rights and doing everything we can to end voter suppression.
We have to remember that the vast majority of the public is with us. We have to keep doing the work to change the reactionary governments around the country.
We’ll rest later. Eyes on the prizes. Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
RaflW
I haven’t been kidding when I’ve been saying “no one promised the Enlightenment would last forever.”
RaflW
As to the final couple paragraphs of the post, I think the GOP is having a massive, intense case of sunk cost fallacy. And to that, I say: keep handing them boulders. In effect, Larry Elder was one of those sinking bits of ballast. Glug glug.
schrodingers_cat
What is his background? Immigrant doctor parents? In my anecdata most wingnutty (and die-hard BJP supporters) of Indian Americans , I know seem to be the progeny of doctor parents.
Jerzy Russian
You are not the boss of me, Mr. Surgeon General! I am not going to eat my vegetables and you can’t make me!
Cameron
@Peale: I take the fifth on that. On second thought, make it a couple of fifths.
Peale
@RaflW: future historians of the fall of the empire will debate whether we were unable to stop our fall because our institutions were sclerotic or whether our institutions were sclerotic because we were stupid. The debate will end when they decide to read the entrails of a goat. Thank heavens for the wisdom of Shadur, goddess of retrospective clarity.
VeniceRiley
Who does he think he is? Michele Obama?
J.
My first reaction when I read about Ladapo was OMFG. WTF is up with these supposedly highly educated people? Are they craven or evil? (Or both.) Is Ladapo DeSantis’s Ronny Jackson? Is he hoping to be the next wingnut Congressman or Senator from Florida? I am so, so disappointed. Though am I surprised? Sadly, no.
Now if we could just find someone here in Florida who stood a chance of beating DeathSantis next year. Sigh.
nevsky42
Didn’t all the red states collectively lose their sh*t when Michelle Obama suggested healthier eating, or are we just being gaslit again?
Matt McIrvin
@Cameron: Of course, when Michelle Obama said the same things, that was tyranny. The government was coming to force you to eat your veggies!
Cameron
Dude’s right that there are many health measures the state should support. But I don’t think Florida actually supports any of them.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: I would guess “neurosurgeon”. Let’s see…
UCLAHealth:
Yeah, his lane isn’t public health impacts and control of pandemics and infectious disease. He should stay in his lane.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
Many of us seem to have had the same thought simultaneously.
Mike S
@The Moar You Know: Turnout wasn’t looking good and plenty of soft dems were ready for something new. The death cult was very good at making the French Laundry idiocy Newsom’s face. Having Larry Elder as a foil helped but it was by no means a sure thing until he was pounded for being the asshole he is. Nobody except wingnutistan had any idea who he is before that.
Matt McIrvin
@Mike S: So I guess the lesson is: MAKE that relative value proposition.
lowtechcyclist
Yeah, I look both ways before crossing the street out of fear, not plain old sensible caution. I urge all RWNJs to abandon fear, cross the street without looking, hell, play in traffic. Own us libs by living the fear-free life!
One of these things is a bit more urgent than the others. Losing weight and eating more fruits and veggies is all good, but in the larger scheme of things, it can wait ’til next year if it has to. But a million Americans have died of this plague during the past 18 months, and practically all of them were unvaccinated. Vaccination would have saved them from a horrible death, had it been available and had they been willing. Fruits and veggies wouldn’t have.
sdhays
@J.: You don’t like Nikki Fried’s chances?
Mike S
@Matt McIrvin: Yes. And for once I saw Democrats nationalizing Republicans instead of acting like their opponent is the only batshit, insane asshole that is against everything the their constituents hold dear.
I hope that lesson was finally learned.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: That strikes me as an antivaxxer dogwhistle–there’s a whole category of alternative-health nut you’re probably well familiar with who believe that the right diet and exercise program will make it so you don’t need conventional medicine at all, including vaccines.
One of the things they seize onto the hardest is the uncontroversial fact that physically fit people tend to have somewhat better outcomes from COVID infection. They go straight from there to insisting that vaccines are just a technological patch for lazy people who won’t take care of their bodies.
Mike in NC
The Trump pandemic broke this country for the foreseeable future. We learned that earlier this month in traveling to DC for a funeral: the airlines, auto rental agencies, hotels, and restaurants laid off tens of thousands of employees and are struggling to recover.
Today were drove for more than an hour through a blinding, torrential thunderstorm to get to the airport again. We had an hour before the flight took off, yet they (United) refused to check our suitcase and put us on another flight that woun’t depart until 2 PM. If lucky, we will arrive in Boston about 7:30, or roughly 4 hours later than expected. We’ll be even luckier to ever see our luggage!
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: He’s a cardiac guy, and diet obviously has an impact there. But against coronaviruses and sepsis?? Yeah, not so much.
Cheers,
Scott.
p.a.
Ladapo said: “This idea that people don’t get to make their own decisions on issues of health is wrong and it’s not something that we’re going to be about.”
I’m making my own decision that I will no longer be a slave to Big Sewer, and will start evacuating into plastic convenience store bags and storing it on my own property; I’m not going to live in fear of Campylobacteriosis, Cryptosporidiosis, Escherichia coli Diarrhea, Encephalitis, Gastroenteritis, Giardiasis, Hepatitis A, Leptospirosis, Methaemoglobinaemia, Poliomyelitis, Salmonellosis, Shigellosis, Paratyphoid Fever, Typhoid Fever, Yersiniosis, and Cholera! And FUCK MY NEIGHBORS IF THEY TRY TO DENY ME MY RIGHTS! COWARDS!
Sincerely, MAGA-man
Llelldorin
@The Moar You Know: Thank Governor Wilson for that. He went all-in on xenophobia back in the ’90s in a state that had a lot of Spanish-speaking residents with green cards who hadn’t — until that moment — seen any reason to go for citizenship and get involved in partisan politics.
Ksmiami
@frosty: you guys should file a class action suit against Cyber ninjas – they have no right to this data
Betty
Sadly the disinformation about the vaccine isn’t !imited to Americans. People in the Caribbean have access to Fox and Facebook resulting in a loud anti-vax movement. Meanwhile Delta continues to spread.
Llelldorin
@Another Scott: Oh, lovely, another expert in the wrong thing.
Betty Cracker
@Mike S: Yep! I’m no political strategist, but I suspect there’s little downside for Democrats who pound their Republican opponents for their undying fealty to a twice-impeached, two-time popular vote loser who bungled the pandemic so badly that hundreds of thousands of Americans unnecessarily died. It’s true that MAGA hats might be offended, but they were never going to vote for someone outside the cult anyway, so let ‘er rip!
Betty
@Ksmiami: The Democrats have sued and the Attorney General has announced he is suing. A class action would also help. Meanwhile in the hearings, the Chairman said he couldn’t guarantee that the data would not end up in the hands of Sidney Powell. Crazy time!
VOR
@frosty: In Minnesota the R politicians are lining up for the Governor’s race. They all seem to be competing on who is more pro-COVID, that the only topic to discuss is the “tyrannical” public health measures imposed by the current D governor. These are mainstream GOP politicians like the Majority Leader of the State Senate, not some fringe radio hosts.
Shakti
@schrodingers_cat: Doesn’t look like it.
Doctor progeny seem to think they have medical expertise and political chops via osmosis, LOL.
@J.: Yeah, I don’t know why Charlie Crist is abandoning his post to run for governor again. I don’t get it.
@Matt McIrvin: I get it but did it escape everyone’s notice that NFL are pushing the vaccine on their players and mandatory testing? Y’know, people who have maybe a 3 year career on average making a living with their bodies and whose job it is to be fit.
Several thousand screaming fans, many of them anti vax and anti mask, in a stadium full of masked employees and vaccinated players and nobody gets the irony.
scav
If Florida is going to completely reject fear as a basis for public policy, they better immediately throw their borders open to any and all refugees from anywhere — plus issuing their usual edicts forbidding municipalities and airports enabling the TSA from interfering with anyone getting on planes with whatever objects they choose to carry. Not to mention trashing business-slowing and fear-based standards for condo construction and maintenance. Toss some celery in as rebar!
Felanius Kootea
@schrodingers_cat: He’s an embarrassment to Nigerians in the US. Immigrant parents, Harvard trained, NIH-funded UCLA researcher, no background in epidemiology and the determined arrogance of an evangelical who has chosen his tribe.
DCrefugee
No, it’s because the sex is really good…
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, I’ve seen that dog-whistle before, and I’ve known those sorts of people along the way. Not now, fortunately for them.
But if they believe right diet and exercise will enable them to do without conventional medicine altogether, all I can say is, if they get Covid, they should stay home with their homeopathic remedies, and not clog up the hospitals. They don’t need conventional medicine, remember?
VOR
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair. Substitute “career as a republican politician or apparatchik” for “salary”.
rikyrah
The rage of the vaccinated is growing. We’ve had enough of these phucking clowns that want to kill us.
Felanius Kootea
Just texted a cousin who was at HMS at the same time as him. She knows him but not well and is in complete shock. Apparently he wasn’t an obvious right wing asshole in medical school. Black HMS Twitter is in a form of mourning (see Uche Blackstock’s tweets about him).
Betty Cracker
@Shakti: My guess is Charlie Crist thinks a House seat is too small a job for a guy who was a big shot governor, and he probably thinks he has a track like Biden did as a non-scary white man who can be trusted to clean up after an insane Republican.
I guess that could work? Who knows. Florida is weird. I thought Crist would beat Scott, who is terrible on every level, and Scott not only served two terms as governor, now we’re stuck with his Skeletor-looking ass as a senator, possibly forever.
But yeah, my first thought when Crist announced for governor was that he should stay in his damned House seat. We can’t afford the risk. I’m sure he’d be fine as governor — millions of times better than the sociopath we have now.
If I had to personally choose between Crist and Fried not to run but to actually BE the governor, I’d go with Fried even though I definitely have misgivings about her too. But as far as which one would have the best shot against DeSantis, maybe Crist is more electable. I just don’t know. What do you think?
J R in WV
@Peale:
I think any registered dietician you ask would classify a choc-fudge sundae as “dairy” — no quotes needed. I guess you can get non-dairy ice cream, if you are allergic to milk, but you have to search for it at a health food store. And sugar is derived from plants. But probably not a vegetable, really.
Geminid
@Shakti: Crist may have figured that with upcoming redistricting, it was up or out for him. Tallahassee Republicans will probably be gunning for his and Stephany Murphy’s seats. They both flipped districts on a map Republicans drew in 2011.
I don’t think Christ would do much better or worse than Fried in the general election, but Florida Democrats might find Fried a more exciting candidate. Grizzled veteran Crist seems to lack pizazz.
J.
@sdhays: Nope. I like Crist’s only slightly better. And I don’t think either of them can beat DeSantis, sadly.
Bill Arnold
I read a couple of his (Joseph A Ladapo’s) papers yesterday (with other authors), and they were … OK. A bit spinny, e.g. [2] acknowledging the very large Bangladesh RCT mask study[1] by saying that mask introduction reduced the community infection rates by 9 percent, without mentioning that this was from raising the masking rate “from 13.3% in control villages (N=806,547 observations) to 42.3% in treatment villages”, and thus avoiding mention of discussion of the effects of high levels, e.g. close to 100 percent, of mask discipline. And talking about largely hypothetical (probably real, but no RCTs!) psychological impacts of NPIs, but mostly ignoring the known and unknown long term sequelae of COVID-19. (i.e. grossly insufficient “epistemic humility”. Or … dishonest. )
Presumably he assumed that his nuttery will not adversely affect his professional reputation He was/is wrong.
[1] The Impact of Community Masking on COVID-19: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Bangladesh (August 31, 2021, Jason Abaluck, Laura H Kwong†, Ashley Styczynski, et al)
[2] preprint: Revisiting COVID-19 policies: 10 evidence-based recommendations for where to go from here. (2021)
Mr. Longform
There was an article in the Wapo the other day about a Trumpian lawyer (and therefore/coincidentally/inevitably, a moron) pushing the anti-vax program very hard. He is being supported by a nutrition guru named Pam Popper who advocates a very healthy way of eating but who is, it turns out, a total libertarian, anti-science, anti-vax, COVID-is-a-hoax, asshat. It just goes to show, I think that, like the guy in Florida, you can be smart in one narrow sphere and yet a total loon in the big picture. Human beings are quite often a disappointing and rather regrettable species.
Bill Arnold
@frosty:
Seriously, Cyber Ninjas should not be allowed access to anything.
Cyber Ninjas are now in stealth mode. What don’t they want us to know? (Laurie Roberts, September 20, 2021)
Lacuna Synecdoche
Betty Cracker @ Top:
Another winner for the Projection Hall of Fame.
H-Bob
@Peale: “The debate will end when they decide to read the entrails of a goat” … the entrails of an Ivermectin user would be easier to obtain!