With a limited supply of monkeypox vaccine, Florida is rationing distribution of inoculations as the number of new cases in the state have nearly doubled since last week, with 985 cases reported in the last week versus 525 the previous week, Politico reports, just one week after Republican Governor Ron DeSantis claimed that monkeypox was no big deal and it was just another way the federal government was trying to keep people scared, a sentiment he made about the coronavirus vaccine as well. Florida is home to about 10% of all monkeypox cases in the US.
A coronavirus vaccine denier, Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo apparently has no qualms about the monkeypox vaccine. Unlike with the vaccines for coronavirus, which Ladapo decried while promoting disproven treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, he is now ordering 72,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine from the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Previously, Ladapo had lambasted DHHS efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and decried efforts to get people vaccinated as an action of a police state.
Ladapo’s reputation was questionable when he was appointed to be Florida’s Surgeon General. The Nigerian native said that he treated many Covid patients while working at the flagship hospital of the UCLA health system in Los Angeles, but the hospital has no record of him being on the record of treating any coronavirus patients.