Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: Does Ron DeSantis even believe his dangerous B.S. about COVID vaccines?

Ron DeSantis speaks to Iowa voters gathered at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on March 10, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa.

The latest government advisories on the new monovalent COVID-19 vaccines were not much of a surprise. On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccines as safe and effective, and a day later the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the shots for all Americans over the age of six months.

Even less of a surprise was the reaction of the resolutely anti-vax, anti-science Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Republican, who is angling for the GOP nomination for president, staged a roundtable of scientific mountebanks on Wednesday to attack the vaccines.

They included his crackpot state surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, and Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya, who is a member of a COVID-19 advisory committee assembled by DeSantis. Bhattacharya is also a purveyor of a fatuous program of usless anti-COVID policies that has been impervious to the raw data that persistently demonstrated that it did not work.

In the course of the event, Ladapo announced that the state Department of Health would advise against anyone under 65.

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