As more states drop their mask mandates, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is speaking out against political opponents who once criticized him for fighting mask mandates in schools.
DeSantis said “not one country” has been nearly as “insane” as America has been when it comes to mask mandates for little children.
“The medical science didn’t change. The political science changed,” he said. DeSantis went on to argue that Florida “was right” all along on school masking and that it was his vociferous critics who were in the wrong.
In July 2021, DeSantis issued an executive order against mask mandates, saying, “The federal government has no right to tell parents that in order for their kids to attend school in person, they must be forced to wear a mask all day, every day. Many Florida schoolchildren have suffered under forced masking policies, and it is prudent to protect the ability of parents to make decisions regarding the wearing of masks by their children.”
Numerous states are now backing off from their school mask mandates: MORE about that HERE.
But the harsh COVID measures in many blue states have already convinced some parents to flee to red states like Florida.
Texas, Florida, and Arizona, all Republican-led states, have banned mask mandates and that has fueled a surge in new residents moving there.
Karol Markowicz is a columnist for the New York Post and Fox News. A lifelong New Yorker, she recently relocated her family to the Sunshine State.
“Many places in Europe did not mask kids at all throughout the pandemic. These kids went to school the entire time without a mask on. Yet at the time my five-year-old – now he’s six – has never been in school without a mask and I see delays in him,” Markowicz told CBN News. “I see he’s not at the same level where his siblings were at this point. We basically moved to Florida because of him.”
She has written extensively about the issue of masking children during the pandemic and says many oppose New York’s actions.
“I got so much mail from parents not just in New York but other crazy blue places that also didn’t have school or were also masking kids indefinitely, also taking sports away from them, also not letting them do extracurricular activities, the whole gamut of things that we did to children during this COVID period.”
Since moving to Florida, Markowicz said she has seen a big difference in her kids.
“It’s very, very good. My kids go to school maskless every day. They haven’t seen their masks since we landed in Florida,” she said. “You don’t realize what you’ve lost until you see normal elsewhere.”
Markowicz says she won’t go back to NYC. “No. It’s not just about that. It’s about something that we can’t unsee. We saw something from New Yorkers that was disappointing and that we can’t get over.”
***Please sign up for CBN Newsletters and download the CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.***
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at CBN