TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Touting his efforts to keep Florida’s economy open during the COVID-19 pandemic by banning mask and vaccine mandates, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday he wants lawmakers to make those measures permanent, calling them a “prescription for freedom.”
He said such mandates would have denied people from earning a living, prevented parents from sending their children to school, discriminated against people based on their vaccine status and silenced doctors.
“We believe there’s no turning back from our direction,” DeSantis said during an hour-long rally in Panama City Beach packed with supporters. “We need to lead with this by making all of these protections permanent in the Florida statutes, which we are going to do in the upcoming legislative session.”
His push comes as Florida had the 13th highest death rate in the nation as of January, with 392 deaths per 100,000 people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Overall, more than 84,000 Floridians have died of COVID, the CDC said.
Florida also had one of the lowest bivalent booster rates in the country, with less than 10% of the population having received the latest dose targeting the omicron variant, the CDC reported.
“What we witnessed today is that he’s become the number one peddler of a dangerous message from the anti-vax establishment,” House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell of Tampa said in response to the governor’s comments. “It is a fake ideology with real consequences.”
After initially locking down the state for almost a month and supporting the vaccine for the elderly, DeSantis did a 180-degree turn on pandemic policies. He challenged businesses, resorts, airlines and the cruise industry over mask and vaccine requirements by issuing executive orders banning mandates.
He also went on the attack against school districts and local governments that imposed mask mandates.
And he signed two bills into law that came out of a special session in November 2021 to punish businesses that require vaccines and masks. They expire in July.
“Almost two years ago we were the first state to ban vaccine passports,” DeSantis said. “We banned mandates in the workplace.”
His orders led to legal challenges that have cost the state millions of dollars to defend.
DeSantis went against the recommendations of the CDC and other mainstream medical organizations. Instead, he opted to follow the advice of medical scientists and physicians who bucked the general consensus and cast doubt on the preventive measures outlined by the CDC.
“It didn’t come easy and we had to stand against major institutions, the medical industry, legacy media and even the president of the United States … who were together working to impose a biomedical security state on America,” DeSantis said.
After six months of promoting the vaccine developed rapidly under former President Donald Trump, DeSantis followed the same group of doctors and scientists who cast doubt on the vaccine’s effectiveness and even said it could be harmful.
In December, DeSantis took things a step further, asking the Florida Supreme Court to impanel a statewide grand jury to investigate people and companies who may have committed wrongdoing in relation to COVID-19 vaccines. The Supreme Court complied.
“Anybody who knows anything about science is just slack-jawed,” Kenneth Goodman, a bioethicist and director of the Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy at the University of Miami, previously told the Orlando Sentinel. He cited a study that said the vaccines have saved more than 3 million lives and prevented over 18 million additional hospitalizations in the U.S.
In September 2021, DeSantis made a controversial choice in hiring Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who has promoted controversial and unproven treatments against COVID-19, cast doubt on the vaccine’s safety and mask mandates — all of which have been discredited by the broader medical community.
One of his first acts as Florida surgeon general in September 2021 was to prohibit school districts from quarantining children with symptoms of COVID-19, leaving that decision to their parents.
On Tuesday, Ladapo reiterated his claim that masks have not been proven effective against spreading and that the vaccine could do more harm than good in healthy young adults. Federal officials criticized a recent analysis Ladapo conducted on COVID-19 vaccines and myocarditis in young men as poorly designed and unscientific, as did members of the University of Florida medical school faculty, where Ladapo also works.
DeSantis said he would also seek legislation protecting the rights of physicians and other medical providers who don’t follow the medical community’s consensus when advising patients not to get vaccinated. Such a measure was introduced last session but didn’t pass.
“Gov. DeSantis supports the strongest free speech protection for physicians in America,” said Dr. Jon Ward, a Bay County dermatologist who caused a stir when he posted on Facebook that parents should lie to school nurses to avoid quarantines. He apologized for making the statement after several parents contacted the school district.
“When we get this done this legislative session, I will be honored to be in a group of the freest doctors who take care of the freest patients in the freest state of America,” Ward said.
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(Orlando Sentinel staff writer Steven Lemongello contributed to this report.)
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