WaPo: “The guidance from the Florida Health Department came in a terse release at 6:12 on Friday evening, ahead of a three-day weekend: Joseph A. Ladapo, the state’s top health official, warned young adult men to stop taking coronavirus vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, citing an “abnormally high risk” of heart-related deaths.
But Ladapo’s recommendation — extrapolated from a short state analysis that has not been peer-reviewed, carries no authors and warns thatits findings are “preliminary” and “should be interpreted with caution” — was swiftly condemned by medical and public health leaders, who said the Florida surgeon general’s announcement was politics masquerading as science and could lead Americans to forgo lifesaving interventions.
More than a dozen experts interviewed by The Washington Post — including specialists in vaccines, patient safety and study design — listed concerns with Florida’s analysis, saying itrelies on information gleaned from frequently inaccurate death certificates rather than medical records, skews the results by trying to exclude anyone with covid-19 or a covid-related death, and draws conclusions from a total of 20 cardiac-related deaths in men 18 to 39 that occurred within four weeks of vaccination. Experts noted the deaths might have been caused by other factors, including underlying illnesses or undetected covid.”