Petition from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) for a grand jury investigation into the COVID-19 vaccines, calling the ongoing vaccination campaign “propaganda” from the Biden administration, is heavily criticized by health experts.
According to doctors and public health experts, his request contradicts decades of established procedures to ensure the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and only fuels further vaccination fears.
DeSantis’ request for a grand jury investigation was approved by the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday, paving the way for what his office called an investigation into “misconduct committed against Floridians related to the COVID-19 vaccine.”
The request first came to light during a panel discussion held by the governor of Florida last week. In this discussion, he denounced what he saw as linking morality to pandemic control methods such as staying home at the start of the outbreak and vaccination as soon as vaccinations became available later, and criticized federal COVID-19 guidelines as a “major political farce.”
In his petition, DeSantis raised suspicions that the COVID-19 vaccines can prevent transmission of the virus, as well as public statements from officials such as President Biden and outgoing White House Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci on the issue. As has already been stated by doctors and researchers, no vaccine is 100 percent effective, but studies have consistently shown that the coronavirus vaccines provide recipients with strong enough protection to prevent serious illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths.
“It is impossible to imagine that so many influential people have come to this view of their own accord. Rather, it is likely that individuals and companies that had an incentive to do so created these perceptions for financial reasons,” DeSantis suggested in his petition.
However, public health experts and doctors felt that DeSantis’ approach to reviewing the vaccines was flawed and counterproductive for promoting public health.
Brian Castrucci, president and CEO of the De Beaumont Foundation, said DeSantis “appears to be focused on stoking fear of vaccines that have been proven safe and effective,” rather than protecting the lives of Floridians.
“These vaccines have been tested and scrutinized more than any other vaccine, and they continue to save lives. Vaccine safety is not a partisan issue, and trying to make it one is putting lives at risk,” added Castrucci.
Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at Johns Hopkins University and former Chief Deputy Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said in a statement to CNNBreakingNews that while there are legitimate ways to evaluate vaccine recommendations, DeSantis’ investigation request is not an example of this.
“This makes a health and scientific issue a political wedge issue, with the likely result that many people are misled by putting themselves and their families at risk of serious illness and death,” Sharfstein said.
Other public health experts also disagreed with the path the governor has chosen to review COVID-19 vaccine guidance.
“His understanding of the facts, or at least his formulation of the facts, is simply wrong,” Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told CNNBreakingNews. Benjamin spoke out shortly before the court’s decision and said he hoped the petition would be rejected as he saw such an investigation as “a waste of taxpayer money, time and effort.”
“No one either inappropriately or deliberately overrated or underrated the vaccine in any way,” Benjamin said. “It is a brand-new technology. As with any brand-new technology, you make some assumptions about what you think will happen. Turns out it was actually a lot better than most people thought.”
William Schaffner, professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University’s Department of Health Policy and its Division of Infectious Diseases, said he was “baffled” by DeSantis’s claim that influential public health officials could not have come to the same conclusion about the vaccines.
As Schaffner stated, there are two independent bodies made up of volunteer, external experts who advise federal agencies on vaccine policy. These committees include the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Board on Vaccination Practices (ACIP), of which Schaffner is an ex officio member, which is usually a non-voting position within the group.
“This committee has worked for more than 60 years and deals with all vaccines. And it sets the standards of practice as to who should receive the vaccines,” Schaffner said of the ACIP, noting that the committee meetings are completely public. “So this is a strict, externally reviewed, very critical process and it is transparent… it is a model of open regulatory and recommended processes.”
DeSantis not only raised suspicions that the vaccine could prevent transmission, but also claimed that the risk of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, could possibly outweigh the benefits of immunization.
Myocarditis is a rare side effect of mRNA vaccination that has been observed to be more common in young male patients. Both the ACIP and CDC have previously found that the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis, an inflammation of the muscles surrounding the heart, is outweighed by the benefits of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
Both Benjamin and Schaffner rejected DeSantis’ suggestion, saying that the risk of myocarditis was actually higher with COVID-19 infections than with coronavirus vaccinations. Schaffner described post-vaccination myocarditis as a “transient phenomenon,” from which the vast majority of patients fully recovered, which was also observed in surveys by the CDC.
“I’ve worked for governors and mayors, and it’s clear that elected officials must provide appropriate moral leadership in our communities and the leadership of governance,” Benjamin said. “But I think they get in trouble if they try to practice medicine.”
“They’re smart and, you know, they can certainly deliver an appropriate message. But the message isn’t as credible when they get into the weeds and start arguing over really technical details without having the background and education,” he said.
When DeSantis’s office was asked to respond to some of the criticisms submitted to CNNBreakingNews, DeSantis’s office referred back to the governor’s panel discussion.