DeSantis says Floridians know he won't 'let anybody lock them down'

TALLAHASSEE - Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sunday said Floridians know that he will not "let anybody lock them down" or take their jobs away.

"At the end of the day in Florida, Floridians know we will not let anybody lock them down. We will not let anyone take their jobs," DeSantis said. "We will not let anyone ruin their businesses, and we will not let anyone close their schools, so people are going to be able to live life. They're going to be able to make their own decisions."

The Republican governor made the comments on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" while discussing new concerns over the omicron variant of COVID-19, which has driven new cases to alarming levels over the course of the last two weeks.

"I cannot believe that something that started with 15 days to slow the spread," DeSantis said. "Now, almost two years later, you're seeing lockdowns and closures."

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He then blasted universities for having lockdowns, despite already requiring students to take the vaccines and wear masks, noting how they are still testing positive for COVID-19.

"And so in Florida, people are going to be able to make those decisions. We do put a lot of emphasis, unlike most states and certainly unlike the Biden administration, on early treatment," DeSantis said. 

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"When people do get infected and it's not just unvaccinated, like they like to say, our monoclonal antibody clinics that we set up across the state, the majority of people that go to those are fully vaccinated, high-risk people. And so since we've rolled out our monoclonal antibody clinics, we've had one of the lowest hospitalization rates in the country."

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Later in the interview, anchor Maria Bartiromo asked DeSantis about Florida creating 50,000 new jobs in November, prompting him to point out that job creation in Florida was approximately "25% of the total job output" in the United States, or 210,000 jobs. 

"I think most people that come here would say we have better roads, infrastructure, services, our K-12 schools perform higher," DeSantis said, comparing Florida to New York. "We have the number one rated public university system in the country. And we do all that with no state income tax and in fact have the lowest per capita tax burden in the country. And we have over $15 billion in surplus revenue."

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