It's too early to say if Florida laboratories that have misreported coronavirus tests had made an innocent mistake or if their act was "nefarious," Rep. Brian Mast said Wednesday, but he'd lean more toward the nefarious side because of how the pandemic has become politicized.
"What we do know is this has gone on in a number of different locations," the Florida Republican said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "I lean on the nefarious side that some of these entities wanted to see these higher numbers go up to make things a little bit more dramatic."
He added that he hates to say that, but "we can see that this has been politicized in many different cases. Now, when we’re looking at this causes us to ask the question across the country where else has this happened, not just in Florida, not just in the Orlando area, but in other states, and who is getting the wrong information that they can’t trust?"
The Florida Department of Health reported Tuesday that some labs have not reported anything but positive coronavirus test rates, while others reported high positivity rates, setting off some alarms.
If the labs reported the cases wrong, they were "messing with the truth," and that is a major issue, said Mast.
"Americans are making decisions," he said. "County commissioners are making decisions. Governors are making decisions. Schools, elections commissions, everybody is looking at these numbers, the positivity rates, where are they spiking, not spiking, what is working, what’s not working, and real-time decisions are being made."
And, if there are labs that are only reporting positive numbers, they're not allowing for information to be released that will allow Americans to manage their own health and risks, and to make the decisions they need to make for their families, said Mast, calling the lab's actions "ignorant."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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