Outbreak of stupidity in Florida with "Ban the Jab" resolutions on COVID vaccines

Editor's note: This story was originally published in August 2023.

The most contagious disease in Florida these days may be stupidity.

Take, for example, COVID vaccines, where Florida has seen the birth of a political movement aimed at declaring the life-saving vaccinations as “biological weapons” issued by the U.S. government to kill its own people.

Oy.

This stew of wild fiction, schlocky science, and a need to believe in awful conspiracy theories, is finding a home in Florida’s county GOP executive committees. They’ve been peppering Gov. Ron DeSantis to outlaw COVID vaccines in Florida and to dispatch Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to seize all the vaccines already distributed in the state.

It would be more of a laugh if I was sure this was something a floundering desperado like DeSantis wouldn’t try.

More: Sorry, Gov. DeSantis, Count me out of your Florida death cult. I got the COVID vax again.

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Dr. Joseph Sansone, a hypnotherapist in Lee County, takes credit for being the catalyst for this “Ban the Jab” movement.

He was instrumental in getting the GOP executive committee in Lee County to pass a “Ban the Jab” resolution in February, a resolution that has since been mimicked by party leaders in seven other Florida counties.

“The Biden administration is working with the World Health Organization to basically overthrow the United States government,” Sansone wrote in an online posting.

“Another pandemic is likely planned,” he wrote, citing the need to arrest the former national medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, ban COVID vaccines and organize a political movement against immunization.

“The revolt within local Republican parties is the first phase,” he wrote. “This will build momentum and pressure will increase on politicians on the local and state level.”

“On behalf of the preservation of the human race,” all distribution must be stopped, and all existing supplies confiscated, the resolution claims.

The “Ban the Jab” resolutions grossly misrepresent the scope of adverse reactions from the vaccines, claim incorrectly that COVID mRNA shots alter human DNA, and label these life-saving vaccinations as violations of the Nuremberg Code that constitute “crimes against humanity.”

It’s jaw-droppingly irresponsible, yet passing quickly among local GOP executive committees and the Florida Republican Assembly, a group dedicated to replacing so-called Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) with “Judeo-Christian Conservative Constitutionalists with the Courage to do what’s right for this great nation.”

Translation: More nut jobs.

Under DeSantis, Florida has become fertile ground for vaccine hesitancy. DeSantis was an early advocate for COVID vaccines, but then made a political pivot.

He started referring to vaccines as “jabs” — as if the brief temporary pain of a vaccination was what was important — and he replaced a non-political state surgeon general with Dr. Joseph Ladapo, an ill-qualified advocate of fringe medical opinions who never missed a chance to badmouth vaccines.

The concerted effort by DeSantis to stage his political future on his COVID recklessness — his campaign even sold “Don’t Fauci My Florida” beer koozies — led many of his party’s own voters to skip getting readily available vaccinations.

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The result was an excess of 61,327 hospital admissions and 16,235 deaths in Florida during an eight-month period when vaccines were available, according to a study in The Lancet.

Another study published this summer by the journal JAMA Internal Medicine looked at the COVID death rates in Florida and Ohio during the first 22 months of the pandemic.

It found that the excess death rate of Republican voters was 15 percent higher than Democrats, and the death rate differences between party members widened after the vaccines were available.

The “Ban the Jab” resolutions passed most recently in GOP executive committees in Hillsborough and Brevard counties.

“If a few more counties fall like dominoes, then this Ban the Jab movement may take on a momentum of its own,” Sansone predicted in March. “If that occurs, the governor of Florida will have to act.”

I don’t know about you but I’m starting to pine for those days a year or two ago when delusional Republicans were content to just kill themselves and leave the rest of us out of their imaginary world.

Frank Cerabino is a columnist at The Palm Beach Post, a part of the USA TODAY Florida Network.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida GOP joins state Gov. DeSantis in petition to ban COVID vaccine