As Floridians die, DeSantis takes another victory lap
Family members of Florida’s nearly 33,000 COVID19 victims shouldn’t be sad. They should be proud.
Their loved ones didn’t die in vain. They died so that Gov. Ron DeSantis could boast about how he showed the “elites” and the “corporate media” the proper pandemic response.
Two weeks ago, DeSantis took yet another victory lap. He took one last spring, after beginning to reopen the state. A second COVID-19 wave followed, bigger than the first. More people died.
DeSantis claimed victory again last September, when he overrode local restrictions and fully reopened the state. A third wave followed, bigger than the second. More people died.
Yet the governor persists. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, DeSantis said, “The COVID-19 pandemic represented a test of elites in the U.S., from public-health experts to the corporate media. The results have been disappointing. Policymakers
who bucked the elites and challenged the narrative have been proven right to do so.”
Listen hard, perhaps, and you can hear the applause from relatives and friends of those victims. How noble their sacrifice for DeSantis to run for reelection — and, after that, president — on comparatively low unemployment.
It’s hard to tell which is worse: the governor’s hypocrisy or his cluelessness.
The Ron DeSantis who ripped “the elites” has degrees from Yale and Harvard. The Ron DeSantis who dismissed the “corporate media” wrote his self-tribute for a publication owned by News Corp. Fox News, which News Corporation owns, regularly grants DeSantis fawning interviews.
As the governor celebrates, Floridians continue to die from COVID-19. On Monday, though, DeSantis brought a band to entertain while he signed legislation that makes it harder to sue businesses and government for damage from the pandemic. Let the good times roll.
For some, they are. Realtors in Broward and Palm Beach counties are raking in commissions from the geyser-hot market. Many of those buyers are fleeing the Northeast because pandemic lockdowns have stripped amenities from urban professional and social life.
Republicans hope to exploit that shift, which the party set in motion with the 2017 tax bill. It capped at $10,000 the deductible amount of local and state taxes. One side effect was to drive Californians and New Yorkers to Texas and Florida, neither of which have a state income tax.
Like generals, though, politicians most need luck. DeSantis has had lots of it, beginning with Donald Trump’s endorsement that got him the Republican nomination in 2018. But DeSantis also has been lucky with the pandemic.
COVID-19 hit New York early and hard because the virus came from Europe while the country focused on Asia and China. Nearly 1,000 New Yorkers a day were dying last April. At that time, doctors didn’t know how best to treat COVID-19 patients.
Between June and November, however, deaths in New York dropped dramatically. In part because of better treatment, more patients were surviving.
What if South America had been a COVID-19 epicenter 14 months ago? What if travelers from there had brought the virus to Florida in the same numbers?
More luck came because so many Floridians ignored DeSantis and imposed their own restrictions. They ignored the right-wing talkers of “corporate media” who dismissed the virus and public health measures.
Even with that luck, Florida ranks just 23rd in the rate of COVID-19 deaths. Last summer, the state set a national, one-day record for new cases.
To help push his narrative, DeSantis recently brought back anti-masker Scott Atlas, who discredited himself while serving on Trump’s virus task force.
“Did we see areas like Los Angeles, with heavy masking, having reduced cases to a trickle?” DeSantis asked rhetorically of his chosen non-experts.
The governor implied that new cases in Florida are under control. In fact, the current “trickle” is roughly four times higher than it was last June, after DeSantis had ignored public health advice that could have cut the number of deaths without killing the economy.
If the pattern follows, a fourth wave is starting. Florida leads the country in cases of COVID-19 variants. As before, DeSantis will ignore the “elites” and their forecast of potential “doom.”
With enough vaccinations, hospitalizations and deaths likely won’t approach previous highs. But if a few more people die, what does that matter? To DeSantis, that’s just the cost of doing political business.