On Tuesday, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis slammed blue state governors who are now ending mask mandates for school kids, noting that Florida has been heavily criticized for not doing this to children.
DeSantis said “the medical science didn’t change, the political science changed,” citing growing disapproval of mask mandates for children and others.
DeSantis made his remarks during a press conference in Polk County.
The medical science on forced masking children didn’t change — the political science did. In Florida, we never imposed state mask mandates, and we liberated children and parents from the local authorities that did. We hope every jurisdiction will follow suit. pic.twitter.com/Dz4SgObVJx
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) February 8, 2022
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DeSantis: ‘The science has not changed one iota’
DeSantis said, “I’d also just like to say, you now hear a lot of chatter in other states around the country about, ‘Oh we’re going to lift mask mandates on these little children as if they somehow they just had an epiphany or even some suggest the science has changed.”
The governor emphasized why Florida never instituted similar mandates.
“And let me just tell you. The science has not changed one iota,” DeSantis added. “We knew from the beginning, and that’s why Florida never imposed a forced masking policy on school children, and that’s why we fought to liberate the kids from the forced masking that was done on the local level because there was never a justification for it.”
“If you look at what CDC and Biden’s administration did, they are outliers in the rest of the world,” the governor continued. “You look at all the other industrialized countries. Not one country was as absolutely insane about force-masking kids as the United States government was.”
DeSantis said that unlike some other states, Florida “stood with the parents, and we stood with the well-being of the kids.”
“And I can tell you, the kids are so much happier being able to go to school without having to wear masks for eight hours a day,” DeSantis said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Tuesday ripped blue state governors who have had a sudden “epiphany” and are liftihttps://t.co/RpvCageL54
— Conservative News Daily (@ConservNewsDly) February 9, 2022
DeSantis: ‘The political science changed’
The Republican governor then explained why these changes have more to do with politics than science.
“So when you start to see them kind of reevaluate or say all this, just understand this. The science didn’t change,” DeSantis said. “The medical science didn’t change. The political science changed.”
“They feel the heat,” the governor went on. “They know that voters have been tired of perpetual lockdown policies. They know that they have basically offered no offramp and they know that they’re fixing to be whooped at the polls, so that’s causing the epiphany.”
DeSantis said that now “everyone is doing what Florida was doing from the beginning.”
Indeed, the New York Times wrote yesterday that political calculations are driving the decisions:
Driving these decisions are the growing numbers of voters signaling that they are prepared to live with the virus as it is now, and political calculations about looming midterm elections that already have Democrats on the defensive.
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Watch DeSantis’ comments, starting around 3:45: