Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has been praised by many for how well he navigated his state through the coronavirus pandemic, but said he regrets not having rejected unscientific “Faucism” earlier.

The Harvard Law School graduate and Navy veteran made the remarks Monday on Fox Nation’s “Tucker Carlson Today.”

When the pandemic initially surfaced, DeSantis followed the advice of flip-flopping “expert” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, by closing down his state and imposing mask mandates.

But after reviewing the data, he quickly figured out that the elderly were the highest-risk group, while COVID-19 was not life-threatening — or even dangerous — for the vast majority of people under the age of 50.

That’s when the governor realized how unscientific and oppressive the one-size-fits-all restrictions being pushed by Democrats were and started customizing them to his state.

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“When they did the ’15 days to slow the spread’ and some of that stuff, you know, we followed that,” DeSantis said, “whereas I think if I had had more data, I would have had the ability to say, ‘Wait a minute, you know, why would we need to, you know, close a gym for two weeks?’

“I mean, these are younger people going to work out. If you’re healthy, you’re going to end up dealing with the virus better.

“And so, I think that it took me a few weeks — March and into April — to get enough data to say, ‘OK, you know, we’re not doing Faucism. You know, we’re going to make sure our state’s open. We’re going to get the kids back into school, and we’ll just focus our protection on elderly people, who are the ones at risk.'”

“Some of the restrictions we did, I think, were ineffective,” he said.

DeSantis was slammed by the left and its media minions even though Florida weathered the pandemic significantly better than Democrat-run viral epicenters such as California and New York, which imposed authoritarian lockdowns, economy-killing business shutdowns and strict mask mandates.

Meanwhile, his Democratic counterpart in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was wildly praised despite killing thousands of senior citizens by ordering nursing homes to admit coronavirus patients and then trying to cover up the scandal.

DeSantis opined that many Americans moved to his state during the pandemic because they were disgusted by the draconian lockdowns in their own states, which he believes “added fuel to the fire” for the race riots that rocked the country.

Unlike many blue states marred by riots, the governor said Florida is a law-and-order state that was also open for business and did not impose unconstitutional, unscientific restrictions on its residents.

“Some of these states like Minnesota, California — I think the fact that they were locked down and had the opportunity [in Florida] to go out and do stuff … added fuel to the fire,” he explained.

Now, many other governors are following DeSantis’ lead by lifting mask mandates and reopening schools and businesses. This is a step in the right direction for the U.S. to recover economically and socially from the mass shutdowns.

COVID-19 is not the first pandemic to hit the United States, and it won’t be the last.

We cannot have wholesale shutdowns of normal life every time a new virus comes around — no matter how much some media outlets intentionally stoke panic and hysteria as a ratings gimmick.

And let this sink in: Fauci admitted last week that the Biden administration is forcing Americans to follow draconian coronavirus restrictions while blithely allowing armies of unmasked, unvaccinated illegal aliens to disregard the rules.

Why are we still listening to these clowns?