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Governor Ron DeSantis reaffirms protections against COVID-related mandates

Press release from the Office of Governor Ron DeSantis

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis reaffirmed Florida’s stance on COVID-related mandates. Through common-sense legislation and executive action, Governor DeSantis protected Floridians’ liberties and jobs against unelected federal bureaucrats and local government authoritarians wishing to usher in a Biomedical Security State. Under Governor DeSantis’ leadership, Florida remains the national leader in medical freedom and was the first state to ban dangerous gain-of-function research. Read more about Florida’s previous legislation here.

“Even today, parts of our country are forcing children to wear masks in the classroom,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “Those mandates are DOA in Florida, and we will protect parents and children from this perpetual COVID hysteria.”

“There are forces in our world that constantly use fear and distortion to try and convince us to abandon our freedom and civil liberties,” said State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo. “Freedom is the Florida way, and each one of us can carry the mantle and preserve it for all people.”

Earlier this year, Governor DeSantis signed the strongest medical freedom legislation in the nation, creating permanent protections for Floridians from the “Biomedical Security State.” The landmark legislative package safeguarded residents’ freedom by ensuring no patient is forced by a business, school, or government entity to undergo testing, wear a mask, or be vaccinated for COVID-19. The legislation also protects physicians’ freedom of speech and freedom to use their best judgment to care for their patients through alternative treatments. Lastly, Florida is the first state to ban unsafe and unregulated gain-of-function research, like the research conducted in the Wuhan lab.

The Governor has also led the nation in bucking the CDC and following the data. In 2022, he announced the establishment of the Public Health Integrity Committee. The Committee is overseen by the Surgeon General to assess federal public health recommendations and guidance to ensure that Florida’s public health policies are tailored for Florida’s communities and priorities. Additionally, the Governor petitioned for a Statewide Grand Jury to investigate crimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the COVID-19 vaccine.

The Governor was the first in the nation to sign legislation in 2021 to protect Floridians from losing their jobs due to COVID-19 vaccine mandates and protect parents’ rights to make healthcare decisions for students.

  • Thank you Governor DeSantis, and Attorney General Moody and all Legislators for keeping Florida Free.

    • Must not be reading much of late regarding Fauci’s admissions as to the efficacy of wearing masks. No, he didn’t say they “weren’t” effective, he said they “can” be effective given the type of masks and environment/population. It also means he didn’t say they “are” effective.

      Then again, I guess I “could” win the lottery.

      • Mayo Clinic:

        “Can face masks help slow the spread of the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)?

        Yes. When used with measures such as getting vaccinated, hand-washing and physical distancing, wearing a face mask slows how quickly the virus that causes COVID-19 spreads….

        Respirators such as nonsurgical N95s give the most protection. KN95s and medical masks provide the next highest level of protection. Cloth masks provide less protection. The CDC says that surgical N95 masks should be reserved for health care professionals.

        Masking suggestions are a bit different for people at higher risk of serious illness. This includes people with risk factors such as older age. It also includes people with weakened immune systems and those who live with or care for someone with these risk factors.

        For people at high risk, the CDC suggests you wear a mask that provides you with the most protection possible. Wear a mask while in public indoor spaces when your area has a high number of people with COVID-19 in the hospital….”

        https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-mask/art-20485449

        • Wear your muzzle if you want to.
          You can also stay inside, not be in contact with others, climb in your bubble, wear a respirator, …
          Do whatever you want to keep yourself safe. When it’s your time, there’s not one bit of protection going to help.

  • If UF doesn’t fire Ladapo, it doesn’t deserve simple respect, let alone a top ranking as a public university. This quack is just a ventriloquist dummy for our governor – responsible by a recent analysis for 16k unnecessary deaths from Covid due to squashing vaccinations after his initial support – who cares about his political career ahead of Florida, including the actual lives of Floridians.

    “Freedom” under this fascist is his way or the highway and if you don’t obey you’ll be taken over, removed from office, or arrested. Tell us about the “freedom” of forcing kids to be vaccinated before they can enter our school system you inconsistent clown. We don’t have complete freedom when our actions affect others, which of course is how a pandemic is defined.

    By the way, the unvaccinated have always and continue to lead in covid new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths and yet this criminal and his dummy are advising against them. This is medieval level ignorance.

    https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status

    • PS https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/22/us/politics/ron-desantis-covid.html

      “….when the Delta variant hit that month. Floridians died at a higher rate, adjusted for age, than residents of almost any other state during the Delta wave, according to the Times analysis. With less than 7 percent of the nation’s population, Florida accounted for 14 percent of deaths between the start of July and the end of October.

      Of the 23,000 Floridians who died, 9,000 were younger than 65. Despite the governor’s insistence at the time that “our entire vulnerable population has basically been vaccinated,” a vast majority of the 23,000 were either unvaccinated or had not yet completed the two-dose regimen.

      A high vaccination rate was especially important in Florida, which trails only Maine in the share of residents 65 and older. By the end of July, Florida had vaccinated about 60 percent of adults, just shy of the national average. Had it reached a vaccination rate of 74 percent — the average for five New England states at the time — it could have prevented more than 16,000 deaths and more than 61,000 hospitalizations that summer, according to a study published in the medical journal The Lancet….

      But in Florida, unlike the nation as a whole — and states like New York and California that Mr. DeSantis likes to single out — most people who died from Covid died after vaccines became available to all adults, not before. As the governor’s political positions began to shift, so did his state’s death rate, for the worse….

      “These were preventable deaths,” Dr. Rivkees (UF), who resigned as Florida’s surgeon general in September 2021, said in a recent interview. “It breaks my heart thinking that things could have turned out differently if people embraced vaccines instead of this anti-vax stuff.”

    • You’re just a blowhorn for local liberal leadership.
      Still waiting for you to provide those crime stats from blue cities within red states.

  • Jazz, you sound like you are a vaccine-enthusiast. You should know that that is a defense mechanism for many people who now regret the jab. It is how they reconcile their decision; by convincing themselves of a false narrative. Their psychology is wired that way.

  • Great job Guv! Once again, you shift power away from the government and into the hands of individuals. That’s democracy.

    It’s amazing how many regressive health professionals jumped to curtail freedom in the name of a flu-like virus. It’s amazing how those same people willfully failed to report that a large number of people with covid are asymptomatic and never get tested, meaning they never show up in the statistics (hence the death rate is much lower than reported). It’s amazing how they counted people who died from other stuff as covid deaths, artifically inflating the death rate.

    Of course, regressve governments like the People’s Republic of Alachua County were all too willing to jump at the chance to grab more power at the expense of the people. Remember that they closed evrything down when we barely had 200 cases in the county and plenty of hospital beds open. That’s authoritarianism.

    • Sick, your freedom ends when you’re spreaing deadly viruses. Your kids can’t come to school now unless they get their vaccines. You got a problem with that? The guys who jumped in the landing craft on DDay weren’t thinking about their freedom, they were thinking about other Americans at home they were willing to sacrifice for. You think about what’s on Netflix tonight and how you won’t do a fing thing for anyone but yourself.

    • Deadly virus? The true death rate for this virus is akin to flu if all the non-reported cases are factored in. Flu shots aren’t required of anyone and you never complained about that. Admit it.

      Who exactly are you thinking of when you want to force a shot on everyone else? Hmm, I wonder if maybe you’re thinking about your own interests.

      I work in service of my fellow citizens every Monday through Friday and sometimes on weekends. For over 25 years. How about you?

      And since you randomly decided to insert kids into the conversation, I’ll be happy to address your wrong (as usual) point. Death rate from covid among kids- 0.0%. And, in spite of your regressive programmers saying kids are “super-spreaders,” turns out they’re not. There is literally no scientific reason for a normal-health kid to be forced to take this particular vaccine.

  • The “unelected federal bureaucrats and local government authoritarians” used the grand Covid scare to arrogate freedoms every American is assured under the Constitution. This was the true coup or insurrection against America by the few who want to tell the many what do do..

    Dr. Ladopo is cleareyed in saying there are “forces in our world (including Alachua County) that constantly use fear and distortion to try and convince us to abandon our freedom and civil liberties.”

    The best that can be said of the so-called Covid crisis is it offers living warnings about the frailty of freedoms people take for granted until they are gone.

    • What idiocy. Both Biden and the CDC said the pandemic was over as soon as they could. You think they got some charge out of that? Sorry buddy, but’s that’s nuts.

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