Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took a victory lap on Thursday in an op-ed claiming that policymakers who “bucked the elites and challenged the narrative” during the coronavirus pandemic have been “proven right.”
“The Covid-19 pandemic represented a test of elites in the U.S., from public-health experts to the corporate media,” the Republican tweeted along with his Wall Street Journal op-ed. “The results have been disappointing. Policy makers who bucked the elites & challenged the narrative have been proven right to do so.”
The Covid-19 pandemic represented a test of elites in the U.S., from public-health experts to the corporate media. The results have been disappointing. Policy makers who bucked the elites & challenged the narrative have been proven right to do so. https://t.co/HOmwuHZjKW
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 18, 2021
In the piece, DeSantis explained how highly publicized models predicting the impact of the coronavirus at the start of the pandemic were wrong and said that lockdowns were proven to be ineffective.
“The lockdowns failed to stop the virus but did a great deal of societal damage along the way — damage that a more targeted approach, seeking to reduce total harms, would have been able to avoid (and did, in places like Sweden and Florida),” DeSantis wrote.
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DeSantis sharply criticized the health experts who opposed sending children back to school despite evidence showing that children are at little risk of spreading the virus.
“While it was abundantly clear by May that schools represented low-risk environments for the spread of Covid and that the consequences of prolonged school closures were potentially catastrophic, the corporate media did its best to obscure the data and stoke fear and panic among parents and teachers,” DeSantis wrote. “After all, the media had to take the position opposite Donald Trump.”
In closing, DeSantis, who has been widely criticized by Democrats for his handling of the virus, said his state “cut against the grain of elite opinion and blocked the media narrative.”
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“The result is open schools, comparatively low unemployment and per capita Covid mortality below the national average,” he wrote. “We cannot simply undo the harm caused by flawed policies advocated by our elites, but we can resolve that we never let this happen to our country again.”
