Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a roundtable event on Monday with medical professionals who harshly criticized the "failure of [coronavirus] lockdowns and mandates," Florida Politics reported.
At the event, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced the state is set to officially recommend against childhood vaccinations for the coronavirus.
A press release added that "lockdown politicians and the medical establishment have continually ignored data, instead choosing to stoke fear and push for lockdowns and mask mandates in their fruitless attempts to 'stop the spread,' " but that the governor's administration vows to "close the curtain on COVID theater."
DeSantis bemoaned a gap between "Faucian pronouncements" and the "corporate media," which always "rejected the narrative" and data that the governor insists is correct.
He added that "our state is kind of like the center of the world," pointing out in-migration trends. "I think it's because people wanted to go to a free society."
DeSantis, who slammed President Joe Biden for urging childhood coronavirus vaccinations, also said that he "liberated" students from masks, describing children as "vulnerable and voiceless."
Ladapo said that those who prescribed lockdown solutions "had no idea what they were talking about."
The surgeon general added that "people who have led us to the point where we are, they want us to forget how we got here, [but] we cannot let them forget. We have to hold them accountable."
At the event, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a central figure in DeSantis' coronavirus strategy, criticized "lockdowns" and their "devastating" harm "to poor and working-class children from around the world," emphasizing that "lockdowns should be seen as a dirty word."
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, slammed the rejection of "natural immunity" in favor of vaccine mandates, which he said "goes against basic principles of public health."
Dr. Sunetra Gupta bemoaned much of the "unnecessary" reaction to the coronavirus, stating that "we inverted the precautionary principle, Do not cause harm, by doing the one thing we knew that would cause harm," adding that now we "watch the devastation."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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