“Almost every study now has said with these new boosters, you’re more likely to get infected with the bivalent booster.”

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, on Jan. 17, 2023, during a press conference

As he proposed to extend the state’s ban on mandates for covid vaccines and face masks, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis lobbed a flurry of criticism at President Joe Biden and “the medical establishment.” 

“They were not following the science,” DeSantis said at a Jan. 17  in Panama City Beach. “Almost every study now has said with these new boosters, you’re more likely to get infected with the bivalent booster.”

Fewer than 11% of eligible Floridians have received an updated booster vaccine, according to the . 

The bivalent booster, which contains components of the original covid virus and the omicron variant, is designed  broad protection against illness or hospitalization from those covid strains. 

Research into the efficacy of the bivalent booster in preventing infection continues. 

Broadly speaking, covid vaccines do not prevent infection; they prevent the virus from spreading within the body and causing severe illness, according to . Early that people who got the booster were 84% less likely to be hospitalized from covid.

The data collected on the booster’s ability to curb infection is early and limited. Some clinical trials  that bivalent shots are no more equipped to prevent people from contracting covid than the original vaccines. 

Although some people have suggested the bivalent booster offers little protection against infection, DeSantis went further. He said people who received the bivalent booster shot were more susceptible to covid than those who hadn’t.

The governor’s press office responded to PolitiFact’s inquiry about the claim, citing two articles and three studies, two of which are not yet peer-reviewed. The most recent came from the Cleveland Clinic and was discussed in an  in The Wall Street Journal.

Dr. Nabin Shrestha, an infectious-disease physician and one of the study’s authors, told PolitiFact the data did not find a link between the bivalent shot and a higher risk of contracting covid. The early conclusion was the opposite of what DeSantis said: The dose is, in fact, effective in preventing infection.

DeSantis’ Conclusion Could Not Be Drawn From That Study

Cleveland Clinic researchers examined the bivalent booster’s effectiveness in preventing infection among 51,011 health care workers â€” some of whom had not received the booster — from September to December 2022. Pfizer and Moderna offer the bivalent booster, which the FDA authorized in August. 

Over those four months, about 5% of the clinic’s employees contracted covid. The researchers then estimated that the bivalent booster was about 30% effective in reducing the likelihood of contracting the virus. 

The Cleveland Clinic researchers were not trying to determine the bivalent vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing severe illness or hospitalization. 

“The study wasn’t measuring the vaccine causing infection,” said Jill Roberts, a public health professor at the University of South Florida. “The study was measuring the efficacy of the bivalent vaccine in preventing infection.”

What drove coverage in outlets like The Wall Street Journal was an “unexpected” association researchers found between the number of prior vaccine doses and an increased risk of contracting covid. People with three or more doses of the vaccine had a higher chance of getting infected. 

That finding quickly overshadowed the protection the bivalent shot provided. The Wall Street Journal opinion piece cited the Cleveland Clinic’s study as evidence that vaccine boosters are making “the population as a whole” more vulnerable to covid. 

Andrea Pacetti, the Cleveland Clinic’s public and media relations director, told PolitiFact that the study population, whose average age was 42, is not reflective of the general public. 

“The study was done in a younger, relatively healthy, health care employee population. It included no children, very few elderly individuals and likely few immunocompromised individuals,” Pacetti said. “Therefore, we urge caution in generalizing the findings to the public, which can include different populations.” 

More than 50% of the health care workers participating in the clinic’s study had received three or more doses of a covid vaccine; only 12% were not vaccinated. 

Dr. René Najera, an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Public Health at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, said the Cleveland Clinic study’s outcome was unsurprising given the characteristics of the research subjects — mostly vaccinated health care workers.

If the majority of the study population received three or more doses of a covid vaccine, for instance, then it is reasonable to assume that the majority of covid cases would occur in that population.

“Those who were studied were health care workers: more likely to be exposed, more likely to be vaccinated as well,” Najera told PolitiFact. “If the study is found to be sound through peer review, its findings would only be applicable to health care workers in large settings such as the Cleveland Clinic, not the general public.”

Pacetti further emphasized that the study has not yet been peer-reviewed, and “more research is needed to either confirm or refute this finding.” 

The Cleveland Clinic acknowledged that two other studies had found a similar association between the number of prior vaccine doses and an increased risk of contracting covid, though it had similar limitations. 

 had not yet been peer-reviewed, and  examined only health care employees. And even with that finding, the Cleveland Clinic’s study did not suggest the bivalent booster increased the likelihood of infection. 

DeSantis’ “statement is incorrect,” Najera said. “That conclusion cannot be drawn from that study, and the authors state that it is not designed to evaluate that association.” 

Our Ruling

DeSantis said, “Almost every study now has said with these new boosters, you’re more likely to get infected with the bivalent booster.”

An unpublished study from the Cleveland Clinic examined the bivalent covid booster’s effectiveness in preventing infection among a group of about 50,000 health care workers. 

However, one of the study’s authors told PolitiFact that the research did not find an association with the bivalent booster and a higher risk of covid. The study found that the bivalent booster is 30% effective in preventing infection from the virus.

The researchers did find that there could be an association between the number of prior vaccine doses and an increased risk of contracting covid. Still, that finding did not suggest the bivalent booster could cause infection or increase the likelihood of infection. 

We rate DeSantis’ claim False.

Our Sources

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The Florida Board of Medicine voted Nov. 4 to  that barred physicians from performing surgical procedures on minors to alter “primary or secondary sexual characteristics” and from prescribing them medication to suppress puberty and hormones. The rule included an exception for patients who were already receiving those treatments. 

Two days later, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, said gender-affirming care is “an example of ideology overtaking the practice of medicine,” touting that he worked with the board to take a stand against it. 

“Over 80% of the dysphoria amongst teenagers resolves itself by the time they become older,” DeSantis said during a Nov. 6 campaign event. “So why are you mutilating their body parts?”

Earlier in the year, the Florida Department of Health used the statistic as it  medical transitioning for minors. The department’s April memo said that “80% of those seeking clinical care will lose their desire to identify with the non-birth sex.” 

Dr. , a Tampa anesthesiologist and member of the governor-appointed board, said he  because a “significant percentage” of transgender children will return to their assigned sex.

PolitiFact consulted with experts and data to determine whether gender incongruence will “resolve itself” for a large cohort of teenagers.

Those experts said Florida mischaracterized a statistic linked to an academic review from 2016. What’s more, one of the researchers whose work is cited as the statistic’s source has said the data he consulted is not “optimal” and can lead to “wrong inferences.”

The public comment period for the rule ended Dec. 5.

The 80% figure comes from published in the International Review of Psychiatry.

Dutch health psychologist  and Italian psychologist Jiska Ristori examined past studies on gender dysphoria, which describes the distress people may experience because of a discrepancy between their gender identity and the sex assigned to them at birth.

Not all transgender people experience or are diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria diagnoses focus on gender identity-related psychological distress, not gender identity itself.

The researchers wanted to know whether people who experienced gender dysphoria as children still had it later in life. They looked at the outcomes for children involved with 10 studies conducted from 1968 to 2012 in the U.S., Canada, and the Netherlands.

Their review of the studies said they showed that gender dysphoric feelings went away for 85% of children “around or after puberty” — while acknowledging several limitations.

“There may be a number of arguments to nuance this high percentage of desistence,” the . “The lower persistence rates in the earlier studies, compared to the more recent studies after 2000, may be the result of the inclusion of less extreme cases in the earlier studies than in later studies.”

In other contexts, “desistence” can refer to an apparent end of gender variance and a return to an identity that aligns with the sex assigned at birth. In the paper, the researchers meant the lifting of dysphoric feelings.

Other experts mentioned concerns with the methodology of studies cited in the paper.

Dr. Kristin Dayton, a pediatric endocrinologist, said the studies had a small share of children assigned female at birth — and are thus not representative samples of the population. Eight of the 10 studies examined only children assigned male at birth.

At least six of the studies were conducted before the American Psychiatric Association developed a formal diagnosis for gender dysphoria in children. Some of the 10 studies did not include children who were referred to the studies by medical professionals.

A , for instance, used advertisements to recruit children. Only 30% of the children examined had “frequently” stated a desire to be a girl. Experts said most of the children in that study wouldn’t have met the current criteria for gender dysphoria.

The for the condition include a “marked incongruence” between one’s experienced gender and assigned sex at birth lasting at least six months and a “strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender.”

Florida’s Department of Health and Board of Medicine misrepresented the review’s conclusion by stating 80% of children will “lose the desire” to identify with a sex not assigned at birth.

The 80% figure in the review  children’s gender identities; it centered on the persistence and desistence of gender dysphoria in adulthood. Steensma  that “using the term desistence in this way does not imply anything about the identity of the desisters.”

Although the review noted the studies found that gender dysphoria in childhood is “strongly associated” with a “lesbian, gay, or bisexual outcome,” it did not say what percentage of people studied stopped identifying as transgender.

“The 80% statistic, used by the Florida Department of Health and the state’s leadership, is categorically false,” Dr. Meredithe McNamara, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine, told PolitiFact. “After a close read of the scholarship cited by the state, the state’s conclusion simply cannot be drawn in good faith.”

Steensma, who did not respond to PolitiFact’s requests for an interview, has responded to  about how his research is used to discourage social and medical affirmation for gender diverse adolescents. 

“We want to stress that we do not consider the methodology used in our studies as optimal … or that the terminology used in our communications is always ideal,” Steensma . “As shown, it may lead to confusion and wrong inferences.” 

McNamara also said that Florida’s reliance on a 2016 paper is a “glaring problem” because the state neglected to consider about six years of new research.

A , for instance, sought to develop an estimate of transgender children who later stop identifying with a gender that is incongruent with their assigned sex. It evaluated 300 transgender children over five years. To participate in the study, children must have already begun social transitioning, which often involves changing names, haircuts, and pronouns. 

Researchers from Princeton University’s TransYouth Project followed up with participants in person and online. At the end of the five years, 94% of participants still identified as transgender.

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