Written by William Hale
Gov. Gavin Newsom attacked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this week for DeSantis’s limited-intervention response to the pandemic. On Tuesday the Florida Governor gave his “State of the State” speech where he criticized “authoritarian, arbitrary and seemingly never-ending mandates and restrictions.”
Newsom and other Democrat politicians have demonstrated a preference for socially-damaging policies since the beginning of the pandemic. For instance, California was one of the last states to open schools for the 2020-2021 school year, but when asked about this hesitancy, Newsom admitted that in-person school restrictions were a mistake. “I wish we had gone back earlier,” said Newsom.
However, Newsom’s COVID tyranny still persists in the form of mask-mandates even as kids have returned to in-person learning. The California governor gave a very ambiguous answer when questioned on the future of school mask mandates post-omicron, “we’ll know it when we see it,” said Newsome, “In fact, Dr. Ghaly [secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency] and I were just specifically talking about the progress he’s made in the last few days on our endemic plan.”
On the other hand, Florida has long opened schools for in-person learning, banned mask-mandates, and rejected any COVID vaccine mandates in government entities, educational institutions, and among private employers.
DeSantis emphasized Florida’s pro-individual freedom approach to the pandemic in his Tuesday speech, “Florida is a free state. We reject the biomedical security state that curtails liberty, ruins livelihoods and divides society. And we will protect the rights of individuals to live their lives free from the yolk of restrictions and mandates.”
As the Omicron variant begins to subside, other countries like Britain, South Africa, and Denmark have waved the white flag, even the mainstream media has begun to concede that there will be no eliminating the virus and subsequent variants. Considering these recent developments, it seems that DeSantis and those sympathetic to Florida’s COVID policy are winning the debate.
Photo Cred: AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack
