DeSantis Spox Rips Charlie Crist for Calling Top Florida Surgeon a ‘Quack’

Christina Pushaw, the rapid response director for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, slammed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist on Sunday after he criticized Florida’s Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo over new information about COVID-19 vaccine.

“Billboard lawyer who failed the bar twice thinks he knows more about science than a Harvard MD/PhD who was previously a professor at UCLA Medical School,” Pushaw said of Ladapo.

Her comment came in response to Crist’s remarks about Ladapo, saying “our quack Surgeon General Ladapo is back with more misinformation. When I’m governor, I’ll appoint a surgeon general who isn’t a partisan ideologue and who will provide sound medical advice.”

Ladapo on Friday warned that COVID-19 vaccines which contain messenger mRNA, which is used in Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, pose a risk to men under 40 years old.

“Today, we released an analysis on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines the public needs to be aware of. This analysis showed an increased risk of cardiac-related death among men 18-39. FL will not be silent on the truth,” Ladapo tweeted, citing an analysis conducted by Florida’s health department that stated that the vaccine poses a “high risk” of death.

DeSantis’ spokesperson, Bryan Griffin, said Sunday that Twitter temporarily removed Ladapo’s post over misinformation, but later confirmed that the tweet has been restored.

“@Twitter censored data posted by the Florida State Surgeon General @FLSurgeonGen that showed an increase risk of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination. This is an unacceptable and Orwellian move for narrative over fact,” Griffin said before Twitter restored Ladapo’s tweet.

Florida’s health department said the analysis used a self-controlled case series technique to evaluate vaccine safety and found that there is an 84 percent increase in “relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days” after vaccination.

The study, which medical experts said was not peer reviewed, explained that COVID-19 vaccination was associated with a “modestly increased risk for cardiac-related mortality” 28 days after receiving the vaccine.

The study, which was concluded on June 1, didn’t include people who were infected with COVID-19, received a booster or received their last COVID-19 vaccination after December 8, 2021.

“Individuals with preexisting cardiac conditions, such as myocarditis and pericarditis, should take particular caution when considering vaccination and discuss with their health care provider,” Florida’s health department said.

However, some vaccine experts doubted the validity of the study’s findings and assured that the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine outweigh its risks. Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety, told Newsweek on Saturday that the analysis has inadequate details to really assess what has been done in this study and the validity of its findings.

“mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been shown to cause myocarditis with the highest risk among younger males after the 2nd dose. In general, vaccine induced myocarditis seems milder than other types of myocarditis,” Salmon said.

“There have been a few reports of post-vaccination myocarditis deaths globally, but this seems to be exceedingly rare. Even among the highest risk groups for post-vaccination myocarditis, the benefits of the vaccines still outweigh the risks,” he added.

The health department’s analysis was carried out using Floridians who were 18 years and older “who died within 25-weeks of COVID-19 vaccination” since the vaccines were first distributed in December 2020.

Meanwhile, Dr. Kristen Panthagani, an emergency medicine resident at Yale said on Saturday in a Twitter thread that she found it “odd” the analysis had no authors listed and added that it appeared to be a Microsoft Word document that wasn’t peer reviewed.

“How did they assess cardiac-related deaths? They looked at death certificates, and any death that had an ICD 10 code under “Other forms of heart disease” (ICD I30-I52) was included. They looked at death certificates, and any death that had an ICD 10 code under ‘Other forms of heart disease’ (ICD I30-I52) was included,” Panthagani said.

She continued: “And while we can’t say for sure, this whole analysis smells of p-hacking, which occurs when people slice and dice the data a whole bunch of ways until they find a result they like.”

Additionally, Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the Science family of medical journals, also criticized the analysis, tweeting on Saturday: “Great thread on the bogus study being circulated by Ladapo. Unreal that @UF [University of Florida] allows this to go unchecked.”

Newsweek reached out to Florida’s health department and Charlie Crist’s office for comment.