This NYT report on Ron DeSantis’s “approach” to the latest pandemic surge is chilling and not just because he’s a sociopath but because the press is actually treating his reprehensible cavalier attitude as political savvy:
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida snapped this week at a reporter who asked if masks might help keep children safe in a state that now has more Covid-19 hospitalizations, including for pediatric patients, than anywhere else in the nation.
He blamed President Biden’s purported failure to control the spread of the virus across the border after the president suggested that governors like Mr. DeSantis should either “help” fight the coronavirus or “get out of the way.”
And he touted a new state rule, adopted on Friday, that will counter local school mask mandates by allowing parents to request private school vouchers if they feel that the requirements amount to “harassment.”
Mr. DeSantis has been unyielding in his approach to the pandemic, refusing to change course or impose restrictions despite uncontrolled spread and spiking hospitalizations — an approach that forced him to undertake the biggest risk of his rising political career.
The governor reopened his state’s economy last spring and kept it that way, defying coronavirus surges that filled hospitals, and then celebrated as a statewide vaccination campaign took hold and life in Florida began to look normal.
Now Mr. DeSantis is gambling again. A new virus spike has led to a record number of Covid-19 hospitalizations that have undone some of Florida’s economic and public health gains and again raised the stakes for Mr. DeSantis.
If the latest surge overwhelms hospitals, leaving doctors and nurses unable to properly care for the younger, almost entirely unvaccinated people packing emergency rooms and intensive care units, Mr. DeSantis’s perch as a Republican Party front-runner with higher aspirations could be in serious trouble.
If, however, Florida comes through another virus peak with both its hospital system and economy intact, Mr. DeSantis’s game of chicken with the deadly pandemic could become a model for how to coexist with a virus that is unlikely to ever fully vanish.
Mr. DeSantis successfully sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over its requirement that cruise ship passengers be vaccinated, though some of the cruise lines were keeping the mandate anyway. He opposes mandating vaccines for hospital workers, saying that would result in worsening staff shortages.
“We can either have a free society, or we can have a biomedical security state,” Mr. DeSantis said this week in Panama City, Fla. “And I can tell you: Florida, we’re a free state. People are going to be free to choose to make their own decisions.”
These are days with a reporting anomaly. About this data
Florida has the country’s highest hospitalization rate and second-highest rate of recent cases, next to Louisiana. Infection levels have been rising in every state, with especially alarming rates in the South. Many of those governors have also been reluctant to impose new restrictions or require masks.
Now get a load of this BS:
If the latest surge overwhelms hospitals, leaving doctors and nurses unable to properly care for the younger, almost entirely unvaccinated people packing emergency rooms and intensive care units, Mr. DeSantis’s perch as a Republican Party front-runner with higher aspirations could be in serious trouble.
If, however, Florida comes through another virus peak with both its hospital system and economy intact, Mr. DeSantis’s game of chicken with the deadly pandemic could become a model for how to coexist with a virus that is unlikely to ever fully vanish.
Too bad about the thousands of unnecessary deaths, huh? All that matters is that the hospital system and the economy are left intact.
It gets worse:
Florida never instituted a statewide mask mandate. Mayors imposed local ones a year ago; a new state law prohibits them now, but some municipalities have reinstated mask rules in government buildings and mandated vaccines for their employees. The state of emergency that Mr. DeSantis initially declared to deal with the pandemic expired in late June, and he has declined calls to bring it back, though doing so could make it easier for hospitals to hire more doctors and nurses.
In short, Mr. DeSantis said, life will go on even as the pandemic does, too.
“We knew this is something that you’re going to have to live with,” Mr. DeSantis said on Friday, articulating a sentiment that many public officials are beginning to express, publicly and privately, as the pandemic powers through its second summer.
Really? We’re just going to “live with it?” How about “die with it.”
If public officials are saying that we just need to live with thousands of unnecessary deaths when we have life-saving vaccines, we need to get some other public officials. I knew they were nihilists but this is outrageous.
And the New York Times needs to think a lot more clearly about presenting thinking like this as if it’s reasonable pub lic policy.