In chilling scenes at the Donald Trump rally in Florida, the governor of the sunshine state was seen without a mask high-fiving attendees and then wiping his nose.
Governor Ron DeSantis appeared to have no fear what-so-ever of potentially contracting or spreading CoVid-19 as he walked through the crowd of thousands, most of whom were also not wearing masks nor practicing social distancing.
DeSantis has arrived maskless at Superspreader event giving high fives before ending with nose rub-pick pic.twitter.com/g6Qnk3zG6o
— Daniel Uhlfelder (@DWUhlfelderLaw) October 12, 2020
It was the first time that Trump had appeared at a campaign rally since his diagnosis with CoVid-19. He appeared in good health despite having been hospitalised just last week and then treated with several experimental drugs. The President, during the rally claimed that he was now 'immune' and that he wanted to go into the crowd and give a big kiss to all the guys and the beautiful women. The President also did not wear a mask.
The actions of the President, the Governor and the attendees are in clear violation of the Center of Disease Control's guidelines designed to help stop the spread of the virus that has sickened well over 7 million Americans and killed over 200,000.
Governor DeSantis is a vocal opponent of lockdowns and has stated his wish to keep Florida open to allow business to continue. Florida is also a key battleground state in the upcoming Presidential election, and it is likely if Trump were to lose the state that he would lose the presidency to Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger.
However, these actions are unlikely to go down well with Floridians, who are on average from a far older age demographic than the rest of the United States, and thus are at a far greater risk of severe disease if infected with CoVid-19. Some experts believe that events such as the Trump rally pose the risk of being 'super-spreader' events whereby one or a small number of people infect huge groups of others.
At the rally, DeSantis praised Trump and welcomed the lack of lockdown in Florida, stating:
"Florida people can go to school. You can go to a store. You can do those things."
The state of Florida itself has recorded over 700,000 cases and over 15,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic. Before the state began suffering mass infections in June and July, the Governor had said to the media that they were overlooking the fact that Florida had very few cases and should not be subject to policies intended to stop the virus spread, such as school and business closures.
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