Florida’s newly appointed Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo has condemned vaccine mandates. He also took aim at politicians, as well as some public health officials for their “denial” of “natural immunity.”

Speaking at a rally in Clearwater late last week, Dr. Ladapo questioned the efficacy of vaccine mandates, such as Biden’s proposed vaccine mandate for federal employees. The doctor pointed out that people can still get infected even after they take the shot, noting that it is nonscientific to discount natural immunity — the acquisition of antibodies following an infection.

“Infections can still happen whether people [are] vaccinated or not,” he explained. “This idea that vaccine mandates are needed to create safe workplaces is a complete lie, it’s continued to be repeated, and you should know, that it’s not at all backed by science.”

The surgeon general pointed out that vaccine hesitancy could be due to “the climate of scientific dishonesty about the science.”

A fact-check article from the Tallahassee Democrat acknowledged that there is a “growing body of evidence” for natural immunity against the COVID-19 coronavirus.

Citing USA Today, the publication wrote:

A growing body of evidence suggests that natural immunity exists against COVID-19, but natural immunity plus vaccination provides even stronger protection, a recent USA TODAY report said. But it remains unclear how much protection it provides and how long it will last.

The CDC recommends that people who have had COVID get vaccinated anyway.

This creates what's called hybrid immunity, Warner Greene, a virologist at the Gladstone Institute in San Francisco told USA TODAY. A new study in the journal Science said that protection may last a long time, even longer than the vaccine alone, Greene said.

One expert tended to agree with Ladapo that health officials shouldn't downplay natural immunity.

"To deny natural immunity does not generate trust," Dr. Monica Gandhi of the University of California, San Francisco told USA TODAY.

Dr. Ladapo is not the only public health official to question the usefulness of vaccine mandates. In October, Johns Hopkins University professor Marty Makary said that the denial of natural immunity is “backwards.”

The Daily Wire reported:

Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and editor in chief of MedPage Today, told “Morning Wire” that public health leaders’ hypothesis on natural and vaccinated immunity has proven to be “backwards.”

“The data on natural immunity are now overwhelming,” stressed Makary. “It turns out the hypothesis that our public health leaders had that vaccinated immunity is better and stronger than natural immunity was wrong. They got it backwards. And now we’ve got data from Israel showing that natural immunity is 27 times more effective than vaccinated immunity. And that supports 15 other studies.”