Parents are not blindly listening to the Biden administration’s push for young children to get vaccinated for the Chinese coronavirus, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said on Monday.

Florida long stood against vaccine mandates, DeSantis explained, noting how his administration stood up for first responders and healthcare workers, who were at the center of the battle.

“They wanted to take some of these police officers and firefighters who had been working the whole time during COVID and then all of a sudden fire them because they didn’t get a shot,” he said, explaining that so-called experts ignored the reality of natural immunity.

“We were right to make sure that we were doing that and you know, with the school children, we saw that very early on, I mean over a year and a half ago and made sure that that parents were protected,” he said before noting that President Biden has been criticizing Florida for recommending against the coronavirus jab for children as young as 6 months.

“He’s criticizing Florida because we’re recommending against jabbing these six month old babies. You know, there’s no evidence that says that that has been effective,” he said, noting that parents are not buying it either, as seen in the data.

“And the thing is, is even though they’ve been prattling about this to parents nationwide, the uptake is like two percent nationwide and you know, some of that–  if you take out, you know, some of the states that have higher … the average states like one, one and a half percent. So parents are seeing this,” he said. “They understand that this was flimsy data.”

“They understood that it should not have gotten emergency use authorization. They understand the kids are very low risk —  most of these kids have had COVID by now — and so they’re making those informed decisions,” he said.

He emphasized, again, that the decision is ultimately the parent’s to make, but the state is officially not recommending it.

“And of course we have provided substantive protections for parents so that they can’t do what they try to do in California [and] deny a kid in education based on a COVID shot,” he said, drawing a stark contrast between his state and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D).

“That’s wrong, and so we’re happy to stand up for that,” he added.