maskless shoppers florida
© Sam Brock/NBCSensible people enjoy their maskless shopping experience at Oak Farms Seed to Table establishment.
A video showing unmasked shoppers in a Florida supermarket has gone viral due to an NBC reporter's complaining. Among the more extreme reactions was one now-deleted tweet by a doctor who seemingly thought they deserved to die.

In a video shared on Wednesday, NBC correspondent Sam Brock showed a crowd of customers in a supermarket in Naples, Florida. Few people were wearing a face mask or practicing social distancing, and everyone was going about their business as usual. Complaining about the spread of Covid-19 on a "massive scale," Brock claimed that the store allowed "medical exemptions" to mask wearing, and that his team couldn't "ask questions."


Florida currently records between 5,000 and 10,000 cases of Covid-19 per day, down from a peak of nearly 20,000 at the beginning of the month. Collier County, where Naples is located, has not been as badly affected as more populous counties, like Miami-Dade and Broward, and has recorded 28,000 cases since the pandemic began and 413 deaths, according to the Florida Department of Health.

Nevertheless, Brock's video left some commenters horrified. "This is pathetic," one tweeted. "America needs to mask up, not the opposite."



However, the most extreme condemnation came from one Twitter-verified doctor. "Let'em die," he tweeted. "I'm so tired of these people. No vaccines for y'all." In a follow-up tweet, the doctor declared "we can't waste our energy on these COVID deniers. They are not gonna protect themselves so let'em die. They'll find out the hard way."
doctor tweet florida no mask die
© Twitter / @cleavon_mdA screenshot showing the doctor's now-deleted tweet, February 4, 2021
His comments sparked a furious backlash. "'Let 'em die' is a statement from someone who shouldn't be permitted to have a medical license," pundit Tim Young replied, as conservative commenters called for his firing.


The store in question, Oakes Farm Seed To Table Market, has been at the center of controversy before. Its owner, a vocal supporter of former president Donald Trump, has called the coronavirus outbreak "a scam," and a federal judge on Wednesday tossed out a lawsuit he brought against Collier County challenging its mask mandate, which is set to remain in place until April. In an NBC video report on Thursday, the owner claimed: "I know that the masks don't work ... why don't we shut the world down because of heart attacks?"