(LifeSiteNews) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis denounced “vaccine” passports as a means of discrimination and creating a “two-tiered society” during a press conference at the Broward Health Medical Center.
“How big of a failure have vaccine passports been?” said DeSantis, pointing out that vaccine passports haven’t succeeded in achieving their professed goals where they’ve been implemented, in part due to the inability of vaccines to prevent transmission, admitted by the CDC and individuals such as Bill Gates.
“All it served to do was discriminate against people based on an individual choice, [and] create a two-tiered society,” he went on.
Despite this failure, he noted, some entities are moving to require “booster” COVID shots, including, thus far, the governments of New York City, California, and Washington, D.C. for certain employees, as are a slew of universities and businesses across the United States.
“So those policies have not worked. And I think ultimately people vote with their feet … If you look from July 2020 to July of 2021, we led the country.”
As a result, DeSantis said, people have been “wanting to come to” Florida.
The data backs this up: As Islander News reported in May 2021, “The website move.org reported that Florida was the No. 1 destination for relocating Americans in 2020,” as determined by “internal metrics, U.S. Census Bureau data, and a Pollfish survey of 700 U.S. adults.”
DeSantis believes Florida’s influx of new residents is “a result of protecting people’s freedoms and making sure we have a state worth living in.”
DeSantis has been a steadfast opponent of “vaccine” passports since they were first launched in the United States in the state of New York in March 2021.
DeSantis has since banned vaccine passports under Florida law, with $5,000 fines for businesses that violate it. He also prohibited government entities from requiring “vaccination” of employees, and subsequently fined one Florida county more than $3.5 million after it required municipal employees to present proof of their COVID-19 injection.
DeSantis’ framing of vaccine passports as leading to discrimination and a “two-tiered society” aligns with the outlook of many vaccine passport opponents, including that of Dr. Erika Smith. During the hearing for an Ohio bill that would permit residents to decline to be vaccinated against COVID-19, Smith warned that vaccine mandates would create an “apartheid state.”
“Any student of history clearly sees the distinct parallels between segregation due to race and segregation due to vaccine status,” said Smith, who shared at the time that her parents fought for justice during the Civil Rights movement so that Smith, as someone of African descent, would be free, with equal privileges under the law.