- DeSantis did not correct an employee in the city of Gainesville who falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine “changes your RNA.”
- The false statement was made during a press conference to promote DeSantis ’campaign against vaccine warrants and passports.
- Gainesville requires its public employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or to be discharged.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sided with an employee in the city of Gainesville who falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine “changes your RNA” during a press conference to promote the governor’s campaign against vaccine warrants and passports.
DeSantis called on several employees in the city of Gainesville, who are demanding that their public employees be vaccinated or that they may be fired, to protest Monday against the vaccine warrants. The governor highlighted the first unvaccinated attendees who would face a possible termination as a result of the mandates, which he said were unconstitutional. But DeSantis made no mention of the widespread misinformation that fueled much of the opposition to Monday’s saving shots.
“The vaccine changes your RNA, so for me, that’s a problem,” Gainesville man Darris Friend said from the podium. “They take away our freedom and liberty little by little. They use the vaccine to cover them. Last year they took away our religious rights, they don’t defend our freedom of speech and that’s just one way to move on. not “.
The crowd cheered as Friend stepped off the podium and the governor said nothing to contradict his false claim, part of an online popular conspiracy theory that vaccines alter a person’s DNA. They don’t. Scientists and public health officials, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have made it clear that vaccines do not alter human DNA in any way.
A vaccine developed by mRNA, such as those from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, uses messenger ribonucleic acid to attach a fictitious protein to the outer surface of a cell in muscle to teach the body’s immune system how to defeat it; at no point does this enter the cell and affect the DNA.
DeSantis communications director Taryn Fenske told Insider that the governor “never said the vaccine would change your RNA, nor is that his opinion.”
DeSantis held the press conference, which featured a number of local elected officials and government employees, to announce that his administration would fine Florida cities and counties that require vaccination of government employees as a $ 5,000 working term. for each infraction. The state legislature controlled by the Florida People’s Party (Florida) recently passed a law banning governments and private companies from requiring vaccination of their employees or vaccination of customers to receive services.
The governor threatened “millions and millions of dollars potentially with fines” against local governments. The state also supports a lawsuit filed by more than 200 Gainesville public employees against the city’s mandate. Friend, the Gainesville employee, is a plaintiff in this lawsuit.
Biden announced last week that it will require employers with more than 100 employees to impose COVID-19 vaccination or weekly testing for all employees. He also announced that all federal government employees and contractors will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
DeSantis called national and local rules “ridiculous unforeseen power costs” and argued that “thousands upon thousands” of Floridians would be “coerced into a job through government power.”
“You just throw them away like they’re liver-cut, that’s fundamentally wrong,” DeSantis said of people who could lose their jobs because of their refusal to get vaccinated. “We will not let this happen. We will protect these jobs, we will protect the families of these villages, we will protect their livelihoods.”
The governor, who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, repeatedly said Monday that people reject the vaccines because they have already contracted the coronavirus and have natural immunity or because their doctors advised them not to take it. He reiterated his belief that vaccines should be widely available, but that taking them should be a personal choice and did not accredit the safety or effectiveness of vaccines.