Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is one of the only governors in the country with a good coronavirus record. Deaths in the state have remained relatively low, which is an even greater feat when you take into account Florida’s large elderly population, and almost everyone is now eligible for the vaccine. Given these successes, you’d think other leaders and health experts would want to listen to what DeSantis has to say about the choices he made to help the state navigate the pandemic. Instead, they’re trying to shut him up.
YouTube removed a video of DeSantis’s recent press conference this week in which he discussed the coronavirus lockdown and which restrictions he did and did not find necessary. Several other physicians and scientists, including Dr. Scott Atlas, joined him for the policy discussion and rightly pointed out that strict lockdown measures come with their own severe health consequences.
But a few days after the video was posted online by a Tampa Bay, Florida, news station, it disappeared. Where the video once appeared, there is now a brief statement: “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.”
The American Institute for Economic Research first discovered the video had been removed, and the Wall Street Journal editorial board asked YouTube to explain why. In a statement, the company said it removed the video “because it included content that contradicts the consensus of local and global health authorities regarding the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”
As evidence, YouTube pointed to a moment during the press conference when DeSantis asks panelist Martin Kulldorff, a Harvard biostatistician, whether children need to wear masks. Kulldorff says no and explains that children rarely spread the coronavirus, so the preventive efforts that would apply to adults simply are not necessary for children.
Kulldorff’s response was based in scientific data with which most public health experts agree. Even the World Health Organization has said requiring masks for children age 5 years and under is unnecessary and that masks for children age 6-11 is up for debate. And the experts who still believe children should wear masks cannot deny the fact that children are not superspreaders of the virus and that they almost never experience severe coronavirus symptoms if they do contract it.
But because Kulldorff reached a conclusion that contradicts YouTube’s preferred “authorities,” the company decided he was spreading “medical misinformation.” This isn’t just absurd. It’s downright Orwellian. Experts used to be able to disagree with each other about the best treatments and practices. It’s how they learned and, in turn, made medicine better. But now YouTube, which is owned by Google, is trying to end debate about the coronavirus completely.
This isn’t just bad science. It’s bad public policy. Big Tech should want the public to listen to DeSantis and the people who advise him, since Florida is one of the only states that emerged relatively unscathed from the pandemic. Florida’s strategies should be studied and debated so we can learn what worked and what didn’t and better prepare ourselves for the next public health crisis. By removing a video of DeSantis’s public, taxpayer-funded press conference, Big Tech is preventing us from doing that.
My guess is that few of the Silicon Valley elites running YouTube are experts in medicine, and even fewer have experience governing a state. Yet, they’re the ones making decisions about which coronavirus treatments are appropriate and which pandemic restrictions work. That should alarm everyone, whether you like DeSantis or not.
