Watch Ron DeSantis expert roundtable: 'The Curtain Close on COVID Theater'

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis hosts a panel March 7. 2022, titled "The Curtain Close on COVID Theater." (Video screenshot)

Florida's surgeon general announced Monday morning the state has become the first to recommend against vaccinating healthy children for COVID-19.

The announcement by Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo came at the end of an 85-minute roundtable of epidemiologists and other medical scientists hosted by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

It was titled "The Curtain Close on COVID Theater."

The governor posed questions regarding the effectiveness of the vaccines in reducing infection and transmission as well as the crucial issue of safety.

Among the participants were Drs. Robert Malone, Harvey Risch of Yale, Jay Battacharya of Stanford, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford and Martin Kulldorf, formerly of Harvard.

See the event:

Notably, panel member Dr. Joseph Fraiman offered an apology to the three creators of the Great Barrington Declaration, Battacharya, Kulldorf and Gupta.

Should the rest of America follow Florida's lead on this?

Fraiman, an emergency medicine physician in New Orleans, explained that after initially supporting the universal lockdowns and other mitigation efforts, he came to realize that the data showed they had an immeasurable benefit, at best, and were causing harm.

He confessed that "initially I did think you all were crazy, or dumb, or maybe you just didn't understand what I was seeing."

"I'm sorry, because I believe now you guys were correct," he said. "And you were correct from the beginning."

Fraiman said he wished "that more people, including myself, had realized that sooner."

The Great Barrington Declaration has argued for focusing protecting on those who are vulnerable to COVID-19 -- people with multiple, chronic underlying health conditions -- while allowing those with little risk to go about their business.

Battacharya, Kulldorf and Gupta were called "fringe epidemiologists" by then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins in an October 2020 email to Dr. Anthony Fauci in which Collins called for "a quick and devastating public takedown" of the declaration.

See Fraiman's apology:

Dr. Joseph Fraiman: “Personally, I would like to apologize to the three other scientists sitting with me here on Zoom, the proponents of the Great Barrington Declaration…I’m sorry, because I believe now you guys were correct. And you were correct from the beginning.” pic.twitter.com/a7AbdU5zRw

— Michael P Senger (@MichaelPSenger) March 7, 2022

EDITOR'S NOTE: Last year, America's doctors, nurses and paramedics were celebrated as frontline heroes battling a fearsome new pandemic. Today, under Joe Biden, tens of thousands of these same heroes are denounced as rebels, conspiracy theorists, extremists and potential terrorists. Along with massive numbers of police, firemen, Border Patrol agents, Navy SEALs, pilots, air-traffic controllers, and countless other truly essential Americans, they're all considered so dangerous as to merit termination, their professional and personal lives turned upside down due to their decision not to be injected with the experimental COVID vaccines. Biden's tyrannical mandate threatens to cripple American society – from law enforcement to airlines to commercial supply chains to hospitals. It's already happening. But the good news is that huge numbers of "yesterday's heroes" are now fighting back – bravely and boldly. The whole epic showdown is laid out as never before in the sensational October issue of WND's monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled "THE GREAT AMERICAN REBELLION: 'We will not comply!' COVID-19 power grab ignites bold new era of national defiance."

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