International- Florida's Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo, went on two far-right podcasts.
- The podcasts are known for spreading baseless conspiracy theories, including QAnon.
Florida's Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo this week went on multiple far-right podcasts known for spreading conspiracy theories, including anti-vaccine misinformation and false claims of election fraud.
Ladapo appeared on the X22 Report and The Stew Peters Show, two podcasts with a history of sharing baseless conspiracies and referencing QAnon myths. His appearances were first spotted by researcher Alex Kaplan and journalist Nick Martin, respectively, as reported by The Washington Post. Stew Peters is one of the most visible figures in the far-right influencer circuit — he has almost 300,000 Telegram followers and has peddled a long list of conspiracy theories from Pizzagate to QAnon.
Ladapo was appointed to the role by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a little over a year ago. He has an extensive record of loud and public opposition to lockdowns and mask mandates, as well as going against the overwhelming advice of medical experts by falsely claiming that young men should not take the COVID-19 vaccine.
Why Florida's 'study' of COVID vaccines was so flawed, according to experts
Ladapo recently drew widespread criticism after the Florida Department of Health published its own report on mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
The analysis — widely panned as "flawed" by experts in statistics, public health, epidemiology, and emergency medicine — determined the COVID-19 vaccine is risky for men under the age of 40.
Twitter briefly took down a post about the analysis and labeled it misinformation.
The analysis was flawed in many ways. It was not peer-reviewed, was not published, and does not have any listed authors — essentials for a study to be regarded as legitimate.
But there were bigger problems. First, the analysis employs a technique called a "self-controlled case series" (SCCS). Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist in Sydney, Australia, told Insider SCCS is a "limited" method that "isn't in and of itself worthless, but it can't tell you everything." That's because it only includes people who experience a side effect, so it doesn't perfectly capture overall risk.
Florida's analysis only included people who had died, some of whom had received a vaccine. But it did not state which vaccines they got, how many doses were received, when the deaths occurred, and whether any of them had COVID-19. Paddy Farrington, a professor at the UK's Open University who has used SCCS and was cited three times in Florida's unpublished analysis, told FactCheck.org that Florida's analysis did not take into account the timing of when the shots were administered, and therefore is biased.
Now, two years after the vaccines were first rolled out, with millions of data points to draw from, experts widely agree that myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, is extremely rare. It has affected 0.004% of men aged 12-29 after their second dose of a COVID vaccine, according to research collated and shared by the CDC.
Also, Meyerowitz-Katz added, the Florida analysis is "extremely misleading" because the most striking finding was that vaccines appeared to lower the risk of dying. "It is rather surprising that the anonymous authors of the document chose to highlight the small increase in cardiac death rather than the much larger decrease in other forms of death," he told Insider.
Podcast host called for incinerating vaccines and prosecuting anyone who supported them
The discussions on both The Stew Peters show and X22 Report centered around Ladapo's Department of Health study and other kinds of anti-vaccine falsehoods. On the X22 Report, Ladapo appeared to claim that people would have been "better off" without any of the COVID-19 mask mandates and social distancing policies implemented by the CDC early in the pandemic. Ladapo also claimed without evidence that policies around school closure and children would likely harm people for generations.
Peters' podcast episode — titled "Stew Peters DROPS NUKES Exposing C19 Bioweapon Jab" — featured a similar discussion around anti-vaccine misinformation.
Peters stated during the show that he prays Ladapo is the first Surgeon General to recommend putting a moratorium on all COVID-19 vaccines and then incinerating them, as well as to "prosecute everyone responsible for pushing them." Ladapo didn't push back against any of the outrageous claims.
"For young men, it's a no-brainer," Ladapo told Peters about whether they should take the COVID-19 vaccine. "At this point in the pandemic, I'm actually shocked that there are people who are defending the use of these mRNA COVID vaccines in young men."
Promoting the episode on Telegram, Peters wrote that he hoped Ladapo would soon recommend people of all ages and genders not take the "bioweapon parasitic clot shot."
Both podcast episodes were part of a press tour for Ladapo's recently published memoir, Transcend Fear, according to WaPo, yet almost all of the time in both shows was devoted to spreading vaccine denialism.