CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Florida’s first lady Casey DeSantis doesn’t blame parents for being skeptical of health officials who repeatedly flip-flopped on coronavirus guidance throughout the pandemic.
In an August interview with The Daily Wire following a “Mamas for DeSantis” event, DeSantis discussed how the coronavirus pandemic has changed the way that parents look at political candidates and elections.
Many parents have become single issue voters, The New York Times reported: parents skeptical of vaccine mandates, mask mandates, and the grandiose statements of public health officials, who vote for candidates they believe will stand up for their freedom and their children.
“They should be skeptical of the ‘health officials’ during COVID because basically everything they told us was a lie!” DeSantis said. “They said, ‘Wear the masks it will stop transmission, take the vaccine, and you won’t get sick and you won’t transmit.’”
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“They were tying people’s jobs to the COVID vaccine when they knew that the science … wasn’t what they said it was,” she continued.
“They have done an immense disservice to … society because they have been repeatedly wrong on so many things, but they haven’t had the fortitude to come out and admit that they were wrong,” Florida’s first lady said. “And so I think parents are very upset by that.”
She also deeply criticized health officials for mandating that children wear masks even when officials like former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, knew that masks weren’t really effective at stopping the spread of the virus.
“It’s like putting a chain link fence in front of a gnat thinking you are going to stop it,” she said. “But they never acknowledged the ramifications of what those masks were doing to our kids, the emotional toll that it was taking, because never before have we taken away the ability of kids to see and receive a smile.”
And experts are now acknowledging developmental delays in children who were forced to mask for so long, the mother of three noted.
“Kids aren’t able to speak as well. They started some of those critical years in kindergarten, first grade, with a mask on their face and not the ability to be able to see their teacher.”
“It really is disgusting when you look at public officials who stand up there and take their mask off,” she continued, specifically naming American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, “and at the same time they were forcing and advocating for kids to be muzzled and teachers will be muzzled.”
“It was just an atrocity for what a lot of folks did to those kids,” she added, “and I am so proud of the governor to stand strong with no vax mandates and no mask mandates from the beginning.”