The fake news is at it again, and this time they’re accusing Republican Governor Ron DeSantis of not allowing health providers in the state of Florida to purchase coronavirus vaccines for children under 5 years old.
Per the Daily Wire, the fake news originated from McClatchy DC, which claimed that “DeSantis is now allowing healthcare providers, including pediatricians and children’s hospitals, to order COVID-19 vaccines from a federal program for children between six months and 5 years old, a reversal from earlier this week, White House officials told McClatchy.”
The reason this is a blatant lie is that there was never anything to “reverse” in the first place. A “reversal” would suggest that DeSantis banned vaccines for the under 5 demographic which he never did.
Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, MD, Ph.D., State Health Officer & Surgeon General of Florida, slammed the Biden administration in a statement on Friday afternoon over the false claims.
“FL never ‘reversed course’,” Ladapo wrote. “We recommended against COVID-19 vax for healthy children in March [because] there was no strong evidence of benefit. This remains the same for healthy kids <5. Providers have always been able to order vaccines. This never changed. Nice try, @WhiteHouse.”
DeSantis himself even stated that he was not banning vaccines for children under 5 in Floriday and that “people can access it if they want to and parents can do so.”
Here’s where the media jumped on the opportunity to mislead the public. As soon as the Covid-19 vaccine was FDA endorsed, and the states realized that it was almost inevitable that the FDA and CDC would sign off on recommending the Covid-19 vaccine to 5 and under, Florida was the only state to not pre-order the vaccine as soon as states were allowed to.
The reason Florida decided against pre-ordering shots was not that they were banning it, but because Florida didn’t want to get involved in the “convoluted distribution process.
“The Florida Department of Health has made it clear to the federal government that states do not need to be involved in the convoluted vaccine distribution process, especially when the federal government has a track record of developing inconsistent and unsustainable COVID-19 policies,” the department said.
In March, Florida became the first and only state to officially recommend against the Covid-19 vaccine for young healthy children. DeSantis and the Florida department of health were simply not comfortable with recommending the vaccine to the under 5 age demographic until the vaccine was authorized for emergency use. Prior to the vaccine being authorized for emergency use, the White House started allowing states to pre-order and Florida was not comfortable with this.
“Preorder means before the emergency use authorization. The emergency use authorization is now out, so providers are allowed to order on their own,” he said. “We didn’t preorder because we did not want to be the storage unit for the CDC.”
Redfern said earlier in the week that “Doctors can order vaccines if they are in need, and there are currently no orders in the Department’s ordering system for the COVID-19 vaccine for this age group.”
Numerous news organizations framed their reports inaccurately and published misleading headlines and were forced to correct them.
