Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis says Democrats, particularly Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York, ignored the COVID-19 guidance on protecting the elderly, while his state, with the second highest proportion of retirement-age residents, took the correct approach.
DeSantis said "flawed assumptions" led Cuomo to fear hospitals being overrun, so his administration mandated longterm living facilities to take in COVID-19 positive seniors.
"I looked at a lot of those models, Mark, and I don't think they were worth the paper they were printed on," DeSantis told Fox News' "Life, Liberty & Levin" host Mark Levin. "They were based on flawed assumptions. They were not validated in real time by what we were observing on the ground in Florida."
Instead, DeSantis said he focused on protecting his elderly and vulnerable populations first and foremost – unlike Gov. Cuomo, who mandated seniors into perilous environments.
"So, I said, 'you know what? If I have to build field hospitals all across the state, I will do that before I send these patients back into nursing homes and endanger all these elderly people,'" DeSantis told Levin.
"Even though we have one of the most vulnerable populations, we're 28th in per capita mortality. So, 27 states and the District of Columbia are higher on a per capita basis. And I think it's because we've tried to do focused protection of elderly people.
"This is not something you can completely stop, but I do think we have successfully mitigated what would have otherwise been much more significant damage."
DeSantis also established COVID-only nursing facilities.
"We had a place where you can safely transfer them so they can recover," DeSantis said. "If they were in a hospital and didn't need to be there anymore but were still contagious, they could be discharged to a COVID facility so they wouldn't endanger other folks."
Gov. Cuomo has come under fire for his nursing home mandate and subsequent withholding of data related the number of seniors from longterm living facilities who died with COVID-19.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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