‘NOT DOING THIS AGAIN’: DeSantis’ team balks at Fauci saying masks work against COVID

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Gov. Ron DeSantis’ political team gave strong opposition to a new clip of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, saying “masks actually do work.”

Speaking on ABC News, Fauci was asked about a “new study” suggesting “masks were actually not effective” in containing the coronavirus pandemic.

“Looking back at all of this, did masks prove to be less effective than you anticipated?” Fauci was asked.

“[That] is absolutely not the case because there are a number of studies that show that masks actually do work,” Fauci said. “And there’s a lot of confusion when you take a broad a series of studies and you look at them in a meta analysis, only a couple of those studies were specifically looking at COVID.

“I think we better be careful that that study that people keep talking about can be very, very misleading. There’s a lot of good data that masks work,” he added.

“Not doing this again,” said Christina Pushaw, the rapid response director for DeSantis’ 2024 presidential campaign.

Nikki Whiting, a member of DeSantis’ team, replied to Fauci’s comments by resurfacing a clip of the governor proclaiming somebody should “chuck” the “little elf [Fauci]” across the Potomac.

On COVID-19, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a new interview he would have handled it differently.

“We would have done everything differently because we would understand – outdoors as an example,” said Newsom, a rivaling Democratic governor to DeSantis.

“I think the nature of the spread early on, and understanding epidemiology of that spread – understanding the spread in the context of how it spread very differently indoors [versus] outdoors,” Newsom said.

DeSantis and his administration have been balking at renewed calls for lockdowns, masking and other COVID-19 policies.

“Now we’re in a situation where you start to see around the country kids being kept out of school, like Kentucky had a school closure over COVID.” DeSantis said at a press conference dedicated to the topic last week. “No. We are not letting you get away with it again.”

DeSantis pointed to Florida’s protections against COVID-19 mandate policies such as forced masking, as areas across the U.S. increasingly call for similar measures again.

“We’ve been sure that this is a free state […] We stood for people’s children and businesses, and the ability to earn a living,” the governor said.

“And so they are trying to do this again. And what we in the state of Florida will say is no, we are not letting you get away with it again.”