“Miami is now the epicenter of the virus,” Dr. Lillian Abbo, an infectious disease expert at the Jackson Health System, said Monday afternoon. “What we were seeing in Wuhan five months ago, now we are seeing it here.”
Faced with such a massive challenge, the question many are now asking is whether Florida’s new governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, is up to the task.
“If the coronavirus were a hurricane, it seemed to hit Category 5 status over the weekend. More than ever, Florida needs determined and determined guidance to overcome this storm.”
Instead, Ron DeSantis continues to get confused and making his way. For every good move, there have been too many mistakes …
… The only thing we have all learned about COVID-19 is the need for humility. It is too unpredictable for someone to declare that victory or doomsday is at hand. But DeSantis has too often acted as if he wanted nothing more than to hang a “mission accomplished” banner.
That editorial comes just hours after a viral video of an interceptor interrupting a DeSantis press conference Monday to demand that he resign. (It did not)
Amidst this growing scrutiny, DeSantis is responding very similarly to his political benefactor: Donald Trump.
The Florida Republican insisted Monday that one of the main reasons for the increase in positive cases was due to increased testing in the state, noting that 144,000 tests of Covid-19 were performed on Saturday alone. “The United States was probably not doing 144,000 tests in March,” said DeSantis. That echoes Trump’s argument Monday afternoon that “we prove more than anyone, by far. And when you prove it, you create cases.” (That of course is not true.)
DeSantis is also following Trump’s lead by arguing that many of the people who are contracting Covid-19 in Florida are now younger and therefore less likely to die from the disease or even become ill enough to require hospitalization. . That claim is denied in part by the increase in the number of deaths (see above) and by reports of intensive care units in the state overwhelmed by the increase in patients who need critical care.
In addition to Trump’s pressure on DeSantis to hold the line (the president entered Florida’s Republican primaries in 2018 to back DeSantis) there is also this tricky factor: DeSantis (and his administration) spent much of May in a lap of victory, insisting that their policies had been correct and that those who doubted had been wrong.
“None of these people knew anything about Florida, so I didn’t care what they said,” DeSantis told National Review’s Rich Lowry of those who had criticized both its slow state closure in April and its rapid reopening. In May. “I investigated the 1918 pandemic, ’57, ’68, and some mitigation efforts were made in May 1918, but never just a national closure type agreement. There was really no experience observed of what the negative impacts would be on that. So I was also very concerned about things on that side and I think that’s why I had a more nuanced and balanced approach than some of the other governors. “
Riiiiight.
Need more? In response to a May 5 Orlando Sentinel article reporting that a projection suggested that the number of Florida coronavirus deaths could reach nearly 4,000 in August, DeSantis spokeswoman Helen Aguirre Ferre tweeted this:
“This alarmist headline mimics the erroneous headlines of the recent past that were based on models that were wrong. If you want to get it right, talk to @GovRonDeSantis.”
More than 4,400 Floridians have died. And it’s July 14.
When you push the narrative that we were right and everyone else was wrong, you better hope the data backs you up. And, for DeSantis, well, it doesn’t.
And now that? Politicians hate to admit they were wrong, particularly on something as important as the coronavirus. But that’s what other governors, Gavin Newsom in California, Greg Abbott in Texas, have done in states facing sudden increases in coronavirus in recent days. Abbott implemented a mask mandate while Newsom closed virtually all interior spaces in Golden State on Monday.
DeSantis has not done anything like this yet.
He has been saying publicly for most of the past week that cases in the state are “stabilizing” despite ample evidence that this is not true. As for demanding that people wear masks in public, DeSantis has been skeptical. “Doing police and applying criminal penalties on that is probably going to be counterproductive,” he said late last month, adding: “We will continue to turn off the message, we will continue to turn off the orientation, and we will trust people to take good decisions. “
The situation in Florida appears to be on the verge of being totally out of control, if it is no longer there. DeSantis seems reluctant to acknowledge that reality, and how wrong he was about his state’s battle against the virus.
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