Statement by Commissioner Nikki Fried on Governor DeSantis’ COVID-19 Roundtable

Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor DeSantis held another roundtable on COVID-19 featuring, among others, discredited and controversial Dr. Scott Atlas, who resigned as a White House coronavirus advisor after coming under fire for undermining public health. The Governor and participants repeated claims from last week’s roundtable which were widely criticized as misinformation.

Of today’s roundtable, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, an independently-elected member of the Florida Cabinet, offered the following statement:

“This Governor's unhinged, dangerous rhetoric on COVID-19 continued today, elevating fringe conspiracy theories and once again repeating the claim that children don't need to take the simple, common-sense precaution of wearing a mask — a claim so reckless, YouTube banned it last time. Over the course of a year in which 2 million Floridians have been sickened, 34,000 have died, and 1 million have lost jobs, this Governor has blamed everyone including the media, Hispanic farmworkers, China, and ‘Big Tech,’ while taking no responsibility for hiding data, silencing critics, and lying to Floridians. This Governor and his priorities are shockingly out of touch with what people are going through, and the complete lack of steady, responsible leadership has made this public health crisis worse than needed.”

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