Matt Gaetz’s solution to Florida’s virus surge: ‘Lock up the boomers’

But younger people have increasingly contributed to COVID-19 surges, in Florida and elsewhere.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) proposed to “lock up the boomers” in response to the recent surge of COVID-19 infections in his home state of Florida.

“I think younger people are not going to stomach another lockdown,” Gaetz said in a radio interview on Tuesday. “I think younger people are going to move about the country, so we’ve got to prepare for it.”

Gaetz also leaned on discredited claims about the virus, suggesting that skyrocketing cases in the state are due to Florida having “the most robust testing system in the nation,” and that travelers “coming in and out from Latin America” were impacting surges “substantially,” though there is no evidence to support that. Continue reading.