Thursday, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) called on spring breakers to congregating on Florida’s beaches in mass quantities to get off of the beach and not put lives at risk regarding the outbreak of the coronavirus.
“[W]ith regard to the beaches, get off the beach,” he said. “I mean, unless you can figure out how to completely be isolated from anybody else, I mean, this is — individuals have to take responsibility, and every level of government has got to be very clear. Don’t be on the beach unless you can be somehow be completely by yourself. I mean, we’ve got to figure out the social distancing.”
“But I think whether it’s the beaches, wherever we are, every part of government has got to start telling people, take some personal responsibility here,” Scott continued. “Don’t infect other people. Don’t take a chance that you’re going to be the one that causes your grandparents or your parents or another friend from school to get sick.”
When asked if the beaches in Florida should be closed, Scott said there was a way to walk on the beach to avoid people but said that was lacking.
“I mean, look, I don’t have all the same information that other people have,” Scott said. “There’s a way you can walk on the beach by yourself. But it’s not what’s happening. So whatever they have to do, they’ve got to stop all those individuals from going to the beach because there’s a chance that somebody is going to be down there with coronavirus and how many people are they going to infect.”
“So you can see — you go back to what happened to South Korea, that one individual they said that went to a variety of churches, the one who infected — caused more infection of more than a thousand people,” he continued. “So, you’ve got to figure out how to figure out to get these people off the beach.”
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