By Jefferey Jaxen

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently held an ‘Accountability Roundtable for mRNA Shots’ bringing together both experts and the public for a live-streamed discussion. Having been the most outspoken governor during America’s COVID response on issues like masking, lockdowns, and vaccine mandates, DeSantis appears to be carrying that momentum through to larger measures with three new announcements.  

“We know there’s been a lot of faith destroyed in public health” stated DeSantis during the livestream leading into his announcement of a new public health committee for the State of Florida. 

To answer this need to renew trust in public health, DeSantis stated the following:

“…Other governors and I have talked about the need to have a panel of experts who can counteract nonsense when it’s coming out of these institutions. That are not just going to go along with the flow and follow pre-cooked narratives. But will actually do evidence-based analysis.

“In Florida, we’re creating what we’re calling the Public Health Integrity Committee. It’s a committee of expert researchers that will be able to assess recommendations and guidance related to public health and healthcare. But particularly being able to offer critical assessments of things that bureaucracies like the FDA, CDC and NIH are doing.”

Will this new committee prompt other state governors to enact similar panels in an effort to filter out bad policy and science coming from the federal government in relation to public health? 

In addition to this new committee, DeSantis also announced a petition with the Supreme Court of Florida to impanel a statewide Grand Jury to investigate “any and all wrongdoing in Florida with respect to COVID-19 vaccines.”

DeSantis added that the potential Grand Jury will come with ‘legal processes’ to bring accountability to those who created misconduct. 

In October 2022, The Florida Department of Health conducted an analysis through a self-controlled case series, which is a technique originally developed to evaluate vaccine safety.

This analysis found that there is an 84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination. 

These findings, against the global backdrop of mounting global scientific evidence of myocarditis in young males stemming from the mRNA COVID shots, prompted the State Surgeon General at the time to recommends against males aged 18 to 39 from receiving mRNA COVID-19 vaccines stating in a press release that “…the benefit of vaccination is likely outweighed by this abnormally high risk of cardiac-related death.”  

Carrying thought the initial scientific investigation into myocarditis by the State of Florida, Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo added a third announcement during the recent roundtable. 

“We are initiating a program here in Florida where we will be studying the incidence, in surveillance, of myocarditis within a few weeks of COVID-19 vaccination for people who died. This is going to be a surveillance study working with some of our medical examiners in Florida.”

Ladapo added, “We’re also going to be working with the University of Florida so there will be a component that will have more of a research arm to it.”

Over the last few years, states have begun to take bolder action in the public health space using the powers granted to them. In February, state attorneys general reached a $26 billion settlement to resolve an avalanche of civil lawsuits against four major U.S. corporations for their role in helping to fuel the deadly opioid crisis in America.

During the COVID response, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry brought a lawsuit against the federal government for allegedly colluding with social media companies to censor speech. 

Their actions allowed damning internal emails and discovery documents to be entered into the public conversation showing several government agencies regularly engaging Big Tech platforms to curtail speech.  Many federal officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, have been or will be required to sit for depositions in the case as well. 

Yet few, if any, states have taken their powers to the extent that Florida is currently proposing. The state’s three-pronged approach of potential legal action against vaccine-makers mixed with their own in-house scientific committee and research initiative is their effort at bringing transparency and trust back to a science and public health community badly damaged by myopic federal policies and edicts over the last few years. 

Will other states see value in Florida’s approach and attempt to repeat the formula for their citizens? 

Jefferey Jaxen

Jefferey Jaxen is an investigative journalist and researcher, best known for his weekly segment The Jaxen Report on The HighWire. With a sharp eye for detail and a talent for clear, compelling storytelling, he has exposed major issues in medicine, science, and public health policy, earning recognition as a trusted voice in independent journalism.

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