Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s spokesman deleted his Twitter account after suggesting photos of people who died from COVID-19 should be juxtaposed with those who survived the disease.
“I’m wondering since 99% [of] Covid patients survive shouldn’t you have 99 photos of survivors for every one fatality? Otherwise you’re just trying to create a narrative that is not reality,” spokesman Fred Piccolo commented on a Reuters photo gallery.
According to a screenshot captured by WLRN reporter Danny Rivero, Piccolo responded at 4 a.m. to a tweet by Corinne Perkins, the North America editor for Reuters Pictures.
And it appears that Fred Piccolo Jr. just deleted his account entirely. Here’s a screenshot. https://t.co/tVdmTSh34p pic.twitter.com/FZJvQpA7iU
— Danny Rivero (@TooMuchMe) December 24, 2020
“This thread is dedicated to those saying we aren’t seeing images of the reality of COVID-19 in hospitals across the U.S.,” Perkins said in her tweet. “This is not an exhaustive list but I wanted to highlight the stories @reuterspictures photographers bring to light.”
This thread is dedicated to those saying we aren’t seeing images of the reality of COVID-19 in hospitals across the U.S.
This is not an exhaustive list but I wanted to highlight the stories @reuterspictures photographers bring to light.
Photo by Callaghan O’Hare in Houston pic.twitter.com/94yD7b2Jq8
— corinne_perkins (@corinne_perkins) December 22, 2020
Piccolo’s tweet caused outrage among users, but the spokesman brushed off the criticism. He told the Sun Sentinel he planned to delete his account before the controversy.
“I’ve made people far angrier with other things in the past; this is just an observation that I think was worthy of consternation,” Piccolo said of his last tweet. “But I said this was going to be my Christmas gift to myself, to get off of the medium, so I said let’s do it.”
Piccolo had around 3,200 followers, and he identified himself as DeSantis’s spokesman.
The coronavirus has infected more than 18 million people in the United States and has been attributed to almost 330,000 deaths.
