About one in five new US COVID infections happens in Florida these days. Tuesday was the third day in a row that the state has broken its own record for hospitalizations. Disease experts say that the peak of the infection numbers is yet to come.
Yet Governor Ron DeSantis, angling to be the Republican nominee for President in 2024, has gained ground with the slogan "Freedom Over Fauci," and he has forbidden both mask mandates and the use of vaccine passports in the state. (So has Governor Abbott of Texas.)
In DeSantis's view, the work he did promoting the vaccine to seniors in 2020 is all he needs to do. After all, his political campaign is getting under way, and he doesn't want to lose any right-wing votes.
While 49.1% of the state's residents have been vaccinated, that puts Florida at the 24th of 50 states.
Biden was speaking to both DeSantis and Abbott yesterday when he said,"If you're not going to help, get out of the way of the people that are trying to do the right thing. Use your power to save lives."
Of course, DeSantis has blamed the media, the typical excuse of right-wing power players. But DeSantis is the one who took the power to declare a mask mandate away from local companies, school districts, municipalities, and county health systems. His administration is the one that, last May, pushed to silence Rebekah Jones -- the data manager who refused to falsify the records to downplay the depth of the state's infections -- by having her fired and charged with a crime, including confiscating the computers where she continued to publish data that she considered to be accurate. Remember that?
It makes one wonder what other news is being smothered to make DeSantis look good.
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Should DeSantis turn over the mask mandate decision to counties and cities?
Should he take advantage of the possibility of having federal employees go door to door to encourage people to get vaccinated?
At what point does misrepresenting and flouting public health recommendations become a crime?
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/566168-florida-becomes-epicenter-of-covid-19-surge?rl=1
https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2021/08/03/desantis-blames-media-for-hysteria-over-covid-surge-1389404
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