Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo.Photo: Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo is defending himself after a lawmaker undergoing treatment for breast cancer said he refused to wear a face mask during a recent meeting with her.
Ladapo’s explanation came after state Sen. Tina Polsky, a Democrat, said Ladapo, 45, refused to wear a mask during an in-person meeting with her last week in Tallahassee.
She said when he entered her office — which has a sign on the door requesting anyone who enters to wear a mask — he wouldn’t mask up.
Polsky said that Ladapo told her, “I don’t do interviews with the mask,” to which she replied, “I can hear you perfectly fine.”
“And he said, ‘Well, why don’t we go outside?’ " Polsky continued. I said, ‘I am uncomfortable doing that.’ "
“I kept backing up into my aide’s office,” she said. “I was so uncomfortable being so close to these three people who weren’t masked, and it just went on too long and I should have asked him to leave earlier. Finally, I said, ‘I know everything I need to know. Can you please leave now?’ "
Shortly after she went public with the story, Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson, a Republican, sent a memorandum to state senators and staffers, in which he calledLadapo’s refusal to wear the mask “disappointing” and “unprofessional.”
In a statement on Twitter on Tuesday, Ladapo said he doesn’t believe wearing a mask during a meeting is “productive” as he cannot “communicate clearly and effectively.”
“I attempted in good faith to find some way for us to communicate that would respect each of our preferences” Ladapo wrote. “Having a conversation with someone while wearing a mask is not something I find productive, especially when other options exist. It is important to me to communicate clearly and effectively with people. I can’t do that when half of my face is covered.”
In a statement sent to PEOPLE following Ladapo’s tweet, a spokesperson for Sen. Polsky called the surgeon general’s excuse “shameful,” further contending that Ladapo seemed to be enjoying arguing about masks after the meeting was ended.
“Dr. Ladapo’s shameful excuse that he can’t communicate with a mask on is not only absurd it is insulting,” the spokesperson’s statement read. “It is especially insulting in that immediately following our abruptly cancelled meeting, he was bragging to staff that he was ‘having fun’ arguing the point with me.
The statement from Polsky’s office continued: “Further, physicians, nurses and support staff wear masks during surgery and other procedures where communicating clearly is literally a matter of life and death. His outlandish notion that one cannot communicate with a mask on all but renders his qualifications as our state’s surgeon general an absurdity.”
On vaccines, Ladapo has said, “People need to stick to their intuition and sensibilities,” claiming that “some” vaccines have a “rate of protection [of] less than 40 [percent].”
Ladapo has also questioned the science behind vaccine mandates, claiming “these vaccines are not preventing transmission. Sure, they reduce the likelihood of preventing it, but even that is questionable depending on how far out you go, but they are not preventing it.”
According tonumbers from the Mayo Clinic, Florida ranks 21st among all the states in its vaccination rate rate, at 59 percent fully vaccinated.
A spokesperson for Gov. Ron DeSantis — who appointed Ladapo to the position and whose wife, Casey DeSantis, recently announced her owndiagnosis with breast cancer— offered PEOPLE the following statement when asked for comment on the mask incident.
source: people.com
