The Miami Herald reported this Tuesday that when Florida governor Ron DeSantis found out that someone had recommended to his Surgeon General that the state should issue a blanket stay-at-home order mandating the closure of non-essential businesses and social distance to slow the spread of the coronavirus, he was shocked.
“Who recommended that?” he asked the reporter who told him the news. After being told the recommendation was given by Ali Mokdad, a professor at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health and Metrics Evaluation, DeSantis said it didn't hold much weight with him since the professor wasn't on the White House coronavirus task force.
“I’m in contact with [the White House task force] and I’ve said, ‘Are you recommending this?’ ” DeSantis said. “The task force has not recommended that to me. If they do, obviously that would be something that carries a lot of weight with me. If any of those task force folks tell me that we should do X, Y or Z, of course we’re going to consider it. But nobody has said that to me thus far.”
That excuse didn't go over so well with DeSantis' critics on Twitter: