Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who reopened his state last autumn and kept it open throughout the winter, has given a new interview to the Epoch Times where he talks of his regret in locking down last spring and the challenges he faced reopening in the face of widespread and fierce opposition.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a statewide stay-at-home order on April 1st last year, locking down the Sunshine State for 30 days amid global panic about the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus outbreak. Sitting in his office exactly one year later, he told the Epoch Times that the lockdowns were a “huge mistake,” including in his own state.
“We wanted to mitigate the damage. Now, in hindsight, the 15 days to slow the spread and the 30 – it didn’t work,” DeSantis said. “We shouldn’t have gone down that road.”
Florida’s lockdown order was notably less strict than some of the stay-at-home measures imposed in other states. Recreational activities like walking, biking, playing golf, and beachgoing were allowed, while what constituted an “essential business” was broadly defined.
“Our economy kept going,” DeSantis said. “It was much different than what you saw in some of those lockdown states.”
However, the Governor now regrets issuing the order at all and is convinced that states that have carried on with lockdowns are perpetuating a destructive blunder.
After the initial 30-day lockdown in Florida lapsed, DeSantis commenced a phased reopening. He faced fierce criticism at each stage from establishment media, as well as segments of his own constituency beholden to the lockdown narrative.
The Governor fully reopened Florida on Sept. 25th, 2020. When cases began to rise as part of the winter surge, he didn’t reimpose any restrictions. While lockdown proponents forecasted doom and gloom, DeSantis stood his ground.
The Governor’s persistence wasn’t a leap of faith. Less than two weeks after Florida’s full reopening in late September, scientists from Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford universities went public with the Great Barrington Declaration, which disavowed lockdowns as a destructive and futile mitigation measure. The declaration, which has since been signed by 13,985 medical and public health scientists, calls on public officials to adopt the focused protection approach – the exact strategy employed by DeSantis.
Despite dire predictions about the pandemic in Florida, DeSantis has been vindicated. On April 1st, Florida ranked 27th among all states in deaths per capita from the CCP virus, commonly known as COVID-19.
The ranking’s significance is amplified because the Sunshine State’s population is the sixth oldest in the United States by median age.
Politicians should have been prepared and blew it, DeSantis says, though they’re not the only ones to blame.
“You have a situation where if you’re in this field, the pandemic, that’s something that you kind of prepare for and you’re ready for,” said DeSantis. “And a lot of these people muffed it.
“When push came to shove, they advocated policies that have not worked against the virus but have been very, very destructive. They are never going to admit they were wrong about anything, unfortunately.”
Elected leaders aren’t the only ones to blame, according to the Governor. The media and big tech companies played a major role in perpetuating fears about the virus while selectively censoring one side of the mitigation debate. DeSantis said the media and tech giants stood to benefit from the lockdown as people stayed home and consumed their products.
“It was all just to generate the most clicks that they could. And so that was always trying to do the stuff that would inspire the most fear,” DeSantis said.
Well worth reading in full.
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So, Florida, fully reopened since September, has a similar number of deaths attributed to cv to lockdown zealots California, and well done to Florida!
As i recall, Florida had something like 20% of the population aged over 65, compared to 15% in California, so they really have suffered no apparent harm. They have also had significantly less deaths/million attributed to cv in recent weeks than California.
Does anyone know when we can expect to get confirmation of whether Texas’s welcome decision to allow a crowd of 38,000 for a baseball game had a negative impact or not? If it can be shown not to have a significant negative impact, it really will be untenable not to allow the return of paying spectators at UK stadiums until late May (and even then only with restrictions), won’t it? Well it jolly well should be anyhow. If we can’t copy Texas then, when can we? Can we ever, by their logic?,
DeSantis looks to be in good health but that does not mean he might be not be struck down with a “sudden” and “tragic” illness !
The bullet wounds will definitely test positive for Covid.
He’s a real threat to the radical Left, so yes, it would be naive to think he isn’t a target.
Still hung up on the old brainless political cant? It’s not difficult to work out that it isn’t the ‘radical left’ that is much of a problem in the US.
No wonder the rational side in the Covid argument has had so much extra difficulty fending off accusations of the invasion of the terminally barmy – as well as of the body-snatchers.
At last – a politician who has said we wuz wrong.
Should be front page news and on MSM.
But it won’t be will it?
The Prime Minister of Norway apologised for lockdown last summer.
Thank goodness for some sane governors around the world! Gives me some hope.
It should be widely known as the CCP Virus, not COVID 19. That’s the let China off the hook name made by the WHO and took up by Pelosi in the US for political reasons.
I don’t know about CCP virus, but I would definitely say CCP lockdown.
After listening to the War Room yesterday and what’s coming out about Fauci, I might be inclined to call it the Fauci Virus aided and abetted by his employer CCP
Desantis has nailed it in the last 2 paragraphs of that piece. Shutdowns will hurt the poor and those at the lowest end of the economic chain first but it will potentially smash middle classes, heavily loaned up in the medium term.
Bribery and deception have kept the masses quiet. Along with the shutdowns being very targeted in stopping people getting together. Pubs shut, gyms shut, recreational sport shut and the massive psy-op of NO spectators at outdoor sport.
We could use a Governor DeSantis in Britain, where we have been led down a path to nowhere by incompetent government. They should be ashamed of themselves, but they are not, anything but ashamed.
They are more than incompetent they are criminals, hopefully one day they’ll be locked up and whilst in prison locked down!
I hope he will survive this.
I am not sure though, whether I want to see him as POTUS, in light of the bigger powers of state governors there.
Instead, I would love to see him becoming governor of California for life and then emigrate there.
Alternatively G4L in Florida would also do.
What terrific bloke and a breath of fresh air. If only we had someone like him. Makes you weep really the dross calling the shots over here.
Boris had a similar approach lined up initially and, looking over his shoulder at what European leaders were doing, bottled it. Tragic on so many levels. If only we had a leader with the iron balls of De Santis!
Epoch Times eh. WaPo or NYT or CNN etc etc would not run this. Says everything about the world we live in. Censorship applies to Florida Governor as much as, if not more than, anyone else, given his politics and success. Did anyone else see Tucker’s piece on a left wing democrat in Caligornia putting mild criticism of AOC’s latest TV interview on Twitter? He got a personal visit from the police accusing him of hate crimes. Its poisonous over there.
It’s poisonous everywhere.
At least in the U.S. there’s no hate crimes legislation …. yet. It’s the first piece of legislation that the Tories should have repealed, but didn’t. It was expanded under Teresa May. That told me everything about her, well before Brexit…
….and don’t forget the additional 42,500 medical practitioners who have signed the Great Barrington