Florida Governor Ron DeSantis fought back on Monday against media hysteria surrounding the latest variant of COVID-19, saying that the state of Florida will not allow the Biden administration to shutdown people’s lives.
DeSantis’ remarks immediately followed remarks that he gave where he slammed the media’s narrative about the massacre on people who participated in a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
“And speaking of narratives, we are not in Florida going to allow any media driven hysteria to do anything to infringe people’s individual freedoms when it comes to any type of COVID variants,” DeSantis said. “And when I saw Fauci on TV yesterday saying that he couldn’t rule out lock downs. And then even today, President Biden didn’t rule it out. He said, ‘no, not now. For now.’ And let me just say in Florida, we will not let them lock you down. We will not let them take your jobs. We will not let them harm your businesses. We will not let them close your schools.”
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result,” DeSantis continued. “The lockdowns didn’t stop COVID. Forced masking, they said last year would end the pandemic, if 80% wore masks, many more than that were wearing masks and it hasn’t worked. They said you could get COVID off surfaces, which isn’t true. They’ve not been honest about the origins of the virus, and they haven’t been forthright about natural immunity. And with these travel restrictions, I was probably the first governor in January of 2020 to call for travel restrictions from China. I supported President Trump when he did that, but we have to take a step back and acknowledge that those travel restrictions just didn’t work, the virus had already spread.”
WATCH:
Desantis: “In Florida, we will not let them lock you down. We will not let them take your job. We will not let them harm your businesses. We will not let them close your schools. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” pic.twitter.com/npfLBI51Qu
— Michael P Senger (@michaelpsenger) November 29, 2021
TRANSCRIPT:
RON DESANTIS, GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA: And speaking of narratives, we are not in Florida going to allow any media driven hysteria to do anything to infringe people’s individual freedoms when it comes to any type of COVID variants. And when I saw Fauci on TV yesterday saying that he couldn’t rule out lock downs. And then even today, President Biden didn’t rule it out. He said, ‘no, not now. For now.’ And let me just say in Florida, we will not let them lock you down. We will not let them take your jobs. We will not let them harm your businesses. We will not let them close your schools. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. The lockdowns didn’t stop COVID. Forced masking, they said last year would end the pandemic, if 80% wore masks, many more than that were wearing masks and it hasn’t worked. They said you could get COVID off surfaces, which isn’t true. They’ve not been honest about the origins of the virus, and they haven’t been forthright about natural immunity. And with these travel restrictions, I was probably the first governor in January of 2020 to call for travel restrictions from China. I supported President Trump when he did that, but we have to take a step back and acknowledge that those travel restrictions just didn’t work, the virus had already spread. So whatever this variant is, the fact that you identified. … in southern Africa, that does not mean that it’s not in any corner of the globe. It’s an airborne respiratory virus. So I think those restrictions are not going to work. They haven’t worked in the past. …
I’ve been arguing to allow more flights in from South America and all these other places. We had most of that shut off for for a long, long time. I think it’s ineffective. I don’t think it works. You can’t cripple your society, for fear of a very–, we don’t even have any data, really meaningful data on, the South African doctor that identified it, you know, she said this has been very mild. And so why would you be doing knee jerk reactions? And I think we also just have to be honest and I think been saying this for a long time, you know, and Fauci even admitted this, this is the first time I’ve ever heard him admit this, he admitted this yesterday that COVID will not go away, that it will end up being an endemic respiratory virus, they had been committed to a quote, ‘zero COVID policy’ that thought you could eradicate it, it has animal reservoirs, so you’re not gonna eradicate–, it’s gonna end up being an endemic respiratory virus. So that’s just the reality. And so it’s already spread, it has a seasonal pattern. Remember, when I said over the summer, we have seasonal waves in the south, a lot of the core press, ‘Oh, my gosh’, now that it’s taking off in the north, they don’t have governors that they want to blame for it. And so now they’re saying it’s seasonal, but that’s obvious that that’s the case. If you look, when states in the same region go up and down at the same time, that’s obviously the pattern that’s happening. So doing any type of lockdown or restrictions is absolutely not the right thing to do.