Comrade DeSantis throws the legislative book at businesses trying to stay COVID-free
Can we call him a commie now, please? Not happy with solely tormenting Floridabased cruise ships and schools with bans on COVID-19 safety measures by executive order and fines, Gov. Ron DeSantis is wielding a bigger stick.
The governor said Thursday he’s calling a special session of the Legislature to pass a ban on vaccine mandates by private employers, among a slew of other COVID-19 restrictions based, not on sound medical advice, but his infamous personal COVID quackery.
DeSantis is following the authoritarian playbook by using the state’s legislative body to intervene on how businesses cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, as if everyone operated a onesize-fits-all establishment.
How very socialist of him, isn’t it? ¡Todos somos iguales! We’re all the same, so the immune-compromised business owner has to suck it up under DeSantis rules that favor the COVID-infected employee or customer walking into his establishment, not the responsible person who vaccinated.
The owner won’t be able to mandate a thing in his business, and in fact, will be liable to the customer or employee, if DeSantis gets his way and the subservient, Republican-dominated Legislature follows suit.
As expected, House and Senate leaders said in a joint statement that they’re reviewing the governor’s proposals and in coming days would add their own.
Under one of DeSantis’ proposals, business owners can’t demand vaccination of either employees or customers, but you still have to show up wearing clothes and shoes, I suppose. I don’t see that on the targeted list. But naked, without the protection of mandates in the fight against COVID, is the way to go in DeSantis’ Florida.
For those who don’t acquiesce to the ban, there will be dire monetary consequences.
Owners and employers become liable for any medical harm that results from a mandatory vaccination. So say goodbye, businesses who disobey DeSantis, to the coronavirus liability protections given Florida businesses under a 2021 law.
Imagine for a moment the reaction in Florida if DeSantis were a Democrat calling for a special session to restrict the rights of private businesses.
“But our freedom, our freedom!”
REGULATION NOT VERY ‘CONSERVATIVE’ OF HIM
Yet, here he is trying to pass legislation to harm the hard-fought business recovery going on right now.
Not very “conservative” of him, is it, to encumber businesses and employers struggling to come back from the devastation of shutdowns, continuing infections, hospitalizations and the deaths from COVID of 58,143 people (as of this writing, and growing, despite the governor’s efforts to hide them).
Of course, the additional harm and burden he’ll be causing people — doing business in a world where the course of the coronavirus pandemic is still uncertain — is another political ploy.
The ambitious DeSantis wants another pissing contest with President
Joe Biden, who follows the science and knows data has shown that vaccines work. Anything to torpedo the White House’s “Path out of the Pandemic” action plan, which addresses the almost 80 million Americans eligible to be vaccinated who have not yet gotten their first shot.
That’s why he also wants to make it illegal for local governments to mandate the vaccine for government employees — to preempt a Biden mandate. But all he’s doing is prolonging the pandemic and people’s suffering. Shame on him.
How is passing laws that will hamstring efforts by businesses and local governments to keep the workplace safe and to keep customers and employees safe good policy?
DeSantis forgets the body bags being wheeled out of the cruise ships.
He forgets the shuttered up businesses that couldn’t make a comeback.
He forgets that the world hasn’t defeated COVID yet, but has opened up, and the peril of contagion remain. His timing couldn’t be worse as the country opens to foreign travelers on Nov. 8.
ANTI-VAX, NO FREEDOM AT ALL
DeSantis and his supporting choir are plain wrong in the approach to managing the mutating COVID-19 virus and its variants. Mitigating practices like mask-wearing, social distancing and vaccinating work, data shows.
There’s nothing like the feeling of freedom that getting the shot in the arm brings (three times jabbed here and euphoric each time).
There’s nothing like walking into a place worthy of patronage like the venerable Books & Books in Coral Gables, where an artful sign on the door says to please wear a mask inside, and where booksellers and the cafe staff serve you delicious food in the courtyard properly masked.
The atmosphere says relax, we’ve got you. And that’s exactly what you and your companion do. Finally. You’re out and about communing with humans outside the family tree. You’re free.
Mandating vaccines, mandating masks is no affront to democratic principle.
On the contrary, banning the choice of mandating them is, and telling people how to run their business, too, is undemocratic, comrade.
Fabiola Santiago: 305-376-3469, @fabiolasantiago