The politics of COVID are still being preached, five years after the outbreak.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to make sure mandatory vaccinations and lockdowns never happen again in the Sunshine State.
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“I had a lot of people come up to me, they had a job, they needed to put food on the table, they did not want to do the COVID jab,” the Governor said at a news conference in early March.
“How crazy is it that they were saying you needed to get the shot even if you had already had COVID, there is something called natural immunity that they refused to recognize,” he said.
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The COVID vaccine swelled into a political controversy, as thousands of people flocked to vaccination sites all over South Florida.
Many people in both the public and private sectors were told they had to get the shot or don’t come to work.
“The politics of COVID had to do more with the unknown,” said NBC6 political analyst and former Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas.
“You saw the Democrats for the most part following the advice and the recommendations of the public health authorities,” he said.
“On the other hand, Republicans were very skeptical of what the government was saying, or what individuals like Dr. Fauci were saying.”
It wasn’t just politicians divided over vaccinations and lockdowns.
People were too.
Politics shifted as a result of COVID and during that time so did Florida’s electorate.
In 2020 Florida Democrats outnumbered Republicans by some 97,000 voters.
Today, registered Republicans far outnumber Democrats by almost 1.2 million voters, a massive GOP advantage statewide.
Voters with no party affiliation are down about 90,000 over the same five-year period.
In 2021, the governor called a special legislative session and signed new state laws pushing back on government mandated vaccinations and lockdowns.
“We enacted protections for people in the state of Florida so that no one had to choose between a job they needed and a shot they did not want,” DeSantis said.
“I don’t know what the future holds, but I know people should be able to control their own destiny with respect to these mRNA shots.”
“The big risk with another public health crisis is not just the health issue,” said former Mayor Penelas.
His concern; “That it once again becomes a political issue and everybody takes sides, not based on what the experts are saying, but based on what the parties are saying.”
