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DeSantis announces 2023 plan to eliminate COVID-19 protocols [1]
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Date: 2023-01-18
"When the world lost its mind, Florida was a refuge of sanity, serving strongly as freedom's linchpin," DeSantis said. "These measures will ensure Florida remains this way and will provide landmark protections for free speech for medical practitioners.”
If approved, DeSantis’ plan would prohibit mask requirements and vaccine requirements across the state. It would also prohibit employers from hiring or firing based on employees’ or applicants’ mRNA vaccine status.
According to the Miami Herald, these changes would revive a failed proposal from 2021’s legislative session “that would make it more difficult for a medical licensing board to reprimand or sanction a doctor for views expressed by the medical professional — including on social media.”
DeSantis also claimed that these policies would protect medical freedom of speech, including the right to “disagree with the preferred narrative of the medical community” and those who had religious views that advise against the vaccine.
"We need to lead with this by making all of these protections permanent in Florida statute, which we're going to go in the upcoming legislative session," DeSantis said.
x Here’s an infographic from @GovRonDeSantis’s office. Proposal builds off a 2021 COVID special session law which has a June sunset for its provisions:
https://t.co/a2mqkGRXpT https://t.co/t01mkB0djJ pic.twitter.com/iXX8Taikqh — Forrest Saunders (@FBSaunders) January 17, 2023
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo also spoke in support of DeSantis’ goals claiming that masks are not effective in preventing the spread of the virus—despite there being several studies proving otherwise.
“This is the first time in history where we are using this technology widely in human beings,’’ he said, referring to the mRNA vaccines. “You’re telling people to put it in children, and you’ve never even shown the children to gain from it in terms of an actual help. That’s the land of crazy. Florida is the land of sanity.”
DeSantis’ views were met with concerns from House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, a Democrat, who said she worries people will suffer without COVID-19 protections and misinformation.
”Eighty-four thousand-plus dead Floridians and counting," Driskell said. "Masks work, the CDC has proven that. The mRNA vaccines work."
She added: ”Ron DeSantis — what we witnessed today — he has become the No. 1 peddler of a dangerous message from the anti-vax establishment. It is a fake ideology with real consequences."
The current COVID-19 mandates and policies approved by the Florida Legislature in 2021 are set to expire on July 1. According to the Miami Herald, DeSantis said Tuesday he was confident his permanent restrictions would pass. He is using this opportunity to not only spread his anti-COVID rhetoric but gear himself up for the next election and appeal to anti-vaxxers and COVID-deniers.
“The Free State of Florida did not happen by accident,” DeSantis said at Tuesday’s news conference. “It required us over these last few years to stand against major institutions in our society — the bureaucracy, the medical establishment, legacy media and even the President of the United States — who together were working to impose a bio-medical security state on society.”
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/1/18/2147695/--Protections-for-free-speech-DeSantis-announces-2023-plan-to-eliminate-COVID-19-protocols
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