Florida Officials Warn of Media Stoking Monkeypox Fears: They’re Trying to ‘Make You Afraid’

Florida officials on Wednesday hit back against the establishment media, accusing it of attempting to stoke fears over monkeypox.

“Any of these politicians you see out there trying to scare you about this — do not listen to their nonsense,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said during Wednesday’s press conference. He continued, vowing that Florida will not stoke fears, particularly with state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo “at the helm.”:

I am so sick of politicians, and we saw this with COVID, trying to sow fear into the population. We had people calling, mothers worried about whether their kids could catch it at school, and we’re not gonna go back to like Fauci in the eighties where he was trying to tell families they were all gonna catch AIDS watching TV together.

“They’re gonna do facts, and we’re not going to go out and try to rile people up and try to act like people can’t live their lives as they’ve been normally doing,” he continued, noting that some of these states declaring state of emergencies will abuse them, using the powers to restrict the American people’s freedom.

“I guarantee you that’s what will happen. We saw it so much with COVID,” the governor said before Ladapo spoke. Ladapo said, emphasizing the importance of individuals taking in correct information and acting rationally:

It’s really been just kind of remarkable to see some of the headlines, and the headlines that very clearly are trying to make you afraid of monkeypox or fill in the blank, you know, because if you’re not afraid of this, there will be something else after that and something else after that.

“I mean, these people are determined to make you afraid and do whatever it is they want you to do,” Ladapo continued, noting that the state has about 500 known cases of monkeypox, the vast majority of which are among men.

“Almost all of those cases have been transmitted by physical contact and basically sexual contact for the most part,” he continued, adding that there have been no fatalities.

While he said that the state has received “something like 24,000 doses of vaccines for monkeypox and distributed around 8,500 of those, he added that “there’s actually very little data on this vaccine.”

“There’s actually less data on this than on the COVID-19 vaccines at the time that they were. So, you know, so we need to kind of we need to learn more and, and we need to make rational decisions and not fear based decisions,” he added.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are 6,326 confirmed cases of monkeypox in the U.S.