DeSantis’s posture against the covid shots is at odds with the advice of leading public health officials and experts and shows how he is seeking to make his position a 2024 campaign issue.
Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a Concerned Women for America Summit at the Capitol Hilton, Friday, Sept. 15, 2023, in Washington.
“I will not stand by and let the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] and CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] use healthy Floridians as guinea pigs for new booster shots that have not been proven to be safe or effective,” said the governor in a written statement released after his surgeon general urged people under 65 not to get the booster.
“It’s dangerous,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In response to DeSantis’s criticism of the new booster, CDC Director Mandy Cohen said the vaccine has been proved safe and effective after thorough and independent review. On the campaign trail, DeSantis often calls for “accountability” for those involved in the U.S. coronavirus response at the national level, saying that - unlike Trump - he would have fired Anthony S. Fauci, a longtime medical adviser who played a key role.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s campaign, did not respond directly Friday when asked if Trump has a position on the new booster shots. Instead, he reiterated Trump’s criticisms of DeSantis on covid-19, emphasizing that the governor enacted shutdowns early on and saying Trump never mandated vaccines and “left it up to the states and their governors to choose what was best for their people.”
But Republican voters from the early primary state of New Hampshire brought it up unprompted in a recent focus group according to the moderator, James Johnson of the polling firm J.L. Partners. Some referenced a “plandemic,” he said, echoing the false idea that the coronavirus pandemic was a fake crisis created for nefarious purposes. They believed the coronavirus made the 2020 election unfair to Trump, Johnson said, and suggested new coronavirus measures would lead to an unfair 2024 election.
They say data showing the first versions of the coronavirus mRNA vaccines were safe and effective after tens of millions of doses were administered is enough to offer similar confidence in the updated vaccines because similar manufacturing processes are used for both.Officials take a similar approach when determining the composition of the annual flu shot months ahead of the flu season.
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