DeSantis’ comments draw scrutiny
With COVID-19 death rate surging, governor criticized for past statements
Multiple times during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Ron DeSantis has pointed to a positive, but still tragic, metric: Florida’s death rate, which was long better than the national average. It was part of a message that the state under his leadership was faring better than most.
Now, the delta-fueled surge in COVID cases has significantly increased Florida’s death rate. And the governor’s past comments are drawing new attention.
Florida is the first U.S. state in which daily deaths in the current wave have exceeded deaths in previous waves, according to Dr. S. Vincent Rajkumar, a professor at the Mayo Clinic. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 43,979 people have died from COVID-19.
Citing a report at the end of the week about more Florida hospitals using rented coolers for morgue space, Rajkumar wrote on Twitter that “This is how you know what’s happening in Florida is a crisis.” Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale acknowledged on Aug. 21 that it is one of those hospitals.
What do the numbers say?
The state had the nation’s second highest seven-day COVID death rate on Friday. The widely cited, comprehensive New York Times COVID-19 database reported 1.13 deaths for every 100,000 people in Florida, well above the national rate of 0.37. A week earlier it had the third highest rate.
Until recently Florida was doing better.
In March, Florida ranked 27th among the 50 states in per capita deaths for the entire coronavirus pandemic. On Aug. 20, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that the state was tied for 24th place — slightly better than the national average.
A week later, on Friday, Kaiser reported that the increasing deaths moved Florida up one spot — and the state’s death rate for the entire pandemic is now higher than the national average.
What has the governor said?
Critics have panned
DeSantis’ approach toward COVID, which emphasizes individual actions to avoid contracting the virus and treatment for people who are infected — and adamant opposition to measures such as mask mandates or vaccine passports.
DeSantis and his supporters have consistently championed his approach as the right one for public health, and the state’s economy.
The argument is sure to follow him on the campaign trail as he seeks reelection next year and, as expected, the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
Here’s some of what the governor has said:
At the beginning of a summer surge, DeSantis cited the death rate when asked about case numbers in Florida and other Southern states compared with the Northeast — hours before the state recorded its highest single day of new cases. “Well, do you give credit for Florida for having much lower fatalities per 100,000 than all the states you just praised?” DeSantis said — in July 2020.
He tweeted days later about a Florida fatality rate lower than other large states, prompting one commenter to reply that “this tweet will not age well.” Within weeks, Florida reported COVID deaths were at a pandemic high.
The first line in a news release in May 2021 proclaimed that, “Florida’s COVID-19 death rate is lower than the national average — without draconian lockdowns, unscientific mask mandates, or invasive vaccine passports.”
Dramatic increase
On Thursday, Florida reported 901 previously unreported COVID-related deaths.
That’s the highest number ever reported and a figure that pushed the seven-day average of deaths to the highest level it’s been for the entire pandemic.
It generated headlines in Florida and, given DeSantis’ high national profile and likely presidential candidacy, national headlines as well.
Christina Pushaw, the governor’s press secretary, sought to downplay the 901 number, explaining that “there’s a lot of misinformation floating around, regrettably fueled by imprecise and misleading headlines” suggesting that figure doesn’t provide adequate context.
The state updates its numbers based on the date deaths occur, so the 901 wasn’t the number of people who died on one day. By the same token, the number wouldn’t include some current deaths that won’t get reported until sometime in the future.
Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber, an influential South Florida leader on the COVID-19 pandemic — and strong critic of DeSantis — said he suspects that “our mortality rate is even higher given how slowly Florida reports deaths.”
“There is no question that under DeSantis’ leadership Florida performed miserably during the pandemic and that his policies had a direct impact on the volume of suffering, hospitalizations and deaths of our residents,” Gelber said by email.
Pushaw said by email that “In terms of age-adjusted death rate, overall, Florida has done significantly better than many other states that embraced unscientific mask mandates and lockdowns. Moreover, it’s important to keep the big picture in mind.”
“Florida has experienced a seasonal surge of COVID cases exacerbated by the delta variant, which is more transmissible than other variants and has caused surges wherever in the world it hits,” Pushaw said, adding that “indicators show that Florida is past the peak of this summer surge, and cases are declining.”
On Friday, the state released its weekly COVID update. In the Department of Health report, for the week ending Aug. 26, Florida reported 1,727 deaths, compared with 1,486 the week prior. Seventeen months into the pandemic, Florida has a total of 43,979 deaths from the virus.
Rajkumar, the Mayo Clinic professor who is also editor of the scholarly journal Blood Cancer Journal, said in a series of Twitter posts there are several reasons for what’s happening, including the delta variant, which can’t be controlled. He also said the approximately 50% fully vaccinated rate “is simply not enough [and] relaxing mask requirements and preventing mask mandates is not good policy.”
Vaccines are working, he said. But in Florida, Rajkumar said, “the relaxation of distancing and masking was disproportionately high. Leaders expressed disdain for masks and mask mandates.”
Discussing COVID-19
DeSantis has talked often recently about COVID19, focusing on promoting the use of the monoclonal antibody treatment from Regeneron for people who contract the virus.
“Governor DeSantis has responded to the delta surge by opening 21 sites for free monoclonal antibody treatment all over the state, which have served 18,000 people in just the last 2 weeks and thousands more every day,” Pushaw said. “We hope other states will follow Governor DeSantis’ lead in providing early treatment to their residents….”
DeSantis hasn’t been aggressively pushing vaccination, which public health advocates advocate as the best way to prevent people from getting infected.
The states where the death rate is higher than the national average have varying vaccination rates. The New York Times database shows Florida has 52% of its population fully vaccinated, the same as the United States. Mississippi, which is No. 2 in deaths per capita, has just 37% of its residents vaccinated. In Louisiana, which has the highest seven-day COVID death rate, 41% are vaccinated, the New York Times database showed.
Diverting attention
In a TV appearance Wednesday on Fox News, DeSantis said Florida was having great success treating patients while President Joe Biden has failed to end COVID-19.
“You know, he said he was going to end COVID. He hasn’t done that,” DeSantis said. “At the end of the day, he is trying to find a way to distract from the failures of his presidency.”
On Thursday, DeSantis started his public schedule at a news conference with the state attorney general to talk about recouping $5 million from the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which has lavished its former CEO with outsized compensation instead of directing the funds to the people it was supposed to help.
DeSantis also released a letter to the U.S. homeland security secretary demanding that Biden administration “immediately cease any further resettlement of illegal aliens in Florida and that the aliens instead be removed from the United States or resettled in states that support the administration’s continued flouting of our immigration laws.”
DeSantis called it “an issue of serious concern to my state.” It’s unclear to what extent undocumented immigrants are being sent to Florida — but it is a topic that is a hot-button issue for people in the Republican Party base.
Last month, DeSantis traveled to Texas, where he expressed alarm over the situation at the U.S. border with Mexico. Previously, he’d dispatched Florida law enforcement officers to Texas, where he said they’d help that state deal with an influx of people crossing the border illegally.
DeSantis also appeared Thursday at a monoclonal antibody treatment site at a Winn-Dixie supermarket in Immokalee.
Pushaw said the non-COVID issues were “absolutely not” an attempt to distract attention from the big death number — the very thing he accused Biden of doing. “Governor DeSantis [is] capable of focusing on more than one issue per day,” she said.
“Governor DeSantis had two press conferences [Thursday], one with AG Moody and one opening a new site for Regeneron treatment, at which he took numerous questions from reporters about COVID19. If a politician wanted to distract from COVID-19, I doubt they’d decide to hold a press conference about that exact topic.”
She said the Supreme Court’s reinstatement of former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” rule for asylum seekers this past week “brought the issue to the forefront again.”
Assessing performance
“The sad truth is that he had an opportunity to lead in a courageous way that everyone would have embraced. He could have appealed to our patriotism and better angels to encourage people to adopt healthy practices and lean in to the sacrifices the moment demanded. Instead, he makes it a political opportunity,” Gelber said. “He continues to double down even when it’s clear he can’t point to a single metric that supports his success. Our governor’s hubris is now the organizing principle of Florida’s pandemic response.”
A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday found a deep divide over DeSantis’ performance, with 41% saying he is helping efforts to slow the spread of COVID in Florida and 46% say he is hurting antiCOVID efforts.
Among Republicans, 75% say DeSantis is helping. Among Democrats, 94% say he is hurting.
Quinnipiac’s poll also found 73% of Floridians see COVID as a serious current problem. As with most COVID-related questions, there is a partisan difference, with 98% of Democrats, 73% of independents and 47% of Republicans regarding it as serious.
On Thursday, the political action committee 314 Action, which tries to get people with science backgrounds to run for office, declared DeSantis’ “failure to fight the pandemic with science and medicine has led to the deaths of tens of thousands — including children — across Florida.”
Pushaw’s assessment: the polar opposite. “We’re proud of the Governor’s science-driven initiatives, from the vaccine rollout to the Regeneron sites, because they’re saving Floridians’ lives.”