Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
DeSantis a serial fabricator on coronavirus surge
If Gov. Ron DeSantis wants Florida to recover from COVID-19 as quickly as possible, he should stop lying about the rise in COVID-19 cases.
As the state set records last week, DeSantis tried to wish away the numbers. The cause, he said, was increased testing. There was a cluster at Orlando International Airport and others among farmworkers living in crowded conditions.
In fact, multiple reports confirmed that the increase in cases far outstripped the increase in testing. DeSantis now has conceded that he lied.
In addition, the Orlando International Airport CEO pointed out that only two of 500 county airport employees had tested positive last week. If you consider the roughly 22,000 “badged employees” who work at the airport, the positive test rate is 0.6 percent over the last two-plus months.
There went another DeSantis excuse. The governor’s office responded that his information “should have been presented more clearly.”
As for blaming “overwhelmingly Hispanic” farmworkers, to use the governor’s phrasing, public health experts also pushed back on that. Harvest season in Florida ended weeks ago. This new surge resulted mostly from people going out over Memorial Day weekend and failing to social distance and wear masks.
As DeSantis flailed last week, one of his allies tried to help. The Florida Chamber of Commerce touted its poll in which 57 percent of voters approved of the governor’s COVID-19 response against 39 percent who didn’t.
The chamber is as close to a shadow government as there is in Florida. Yet even what amounts to an in-house poll for DeSantis produced underwhelming support.
Another Republican governor, Mike DeWine of Ohio, regularly has had approval ratings in the mid-80s for his steady, transparent handling of that state’s response. In contrast, DeSantis too often sounds like the mayor in “Jaws,” telling people to ignore that dorsal fin in the water.
That’s because DeSantis takes every cue from the White House. So he dutifully parroted Vice President Mike Pence, who advised governors to cite testing for any “marginal” rise in new cases.
This is the same Mike Pence who on April 23 said, “I think by Memorial Day weekend, we will largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us.” The White House now is preparing for a new wave in the fall. Models show the country reaching 200,000 deaths in October, almost double from when Pence claimed victory.
To help President Trump win Florida, DeSantis wants to portray the state as recovering strongly from COVID-19 lockdowns. “We’re not rolling back,” he vowed last week.
The governor, though, got two hard reminders last week that economic recovery depends on public health.
Apple announced that it would re-close 11 stores because of the renewed outbreaks. Two are in Florida. Others are in Arizona, which also has rushed to reopen under the Trump script. Apple’s news caused the Dow to drop 600 points.
Then National Basketball Association players began expressing concern about the Disney World “bubble.” They are supposed to remain in it from late July until October while playing games at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports complex to determine the league champion after COVID-19 stopped the regular season in mid-March.
In addition, one Major League Baseball team closed its Florida camp after players tested positive. So did the Tampa Bay Lightning of the National Hockey League.
Last month, DeSantis touted Florida as a haven for sports from virus-plagued states. With reopened theme parks, the sight of big-name athletes playing in Florida, DeSantis said, would help get back the state’s “mojo.”
Rather than worry about “mojo” and stay hands-off, DeSantis should worry that his actions are undercutting his argument against “rolling back.” DeSantis fired the creator of the state’s COVID-19 dashboard after she accused his administration of cooking the books. Now DeSantis wants hospitals to undercount intensive care patients, which could make hospital ICU capacity look artificially high as the virus spreads.
The pandemic response playbook, which Barack Obama developed and Donald Trump trashed, begins with giving the public regular, reliable information. DeSantis had ignored that guidance long before he lied about the cause of the recent surge. In trying to please Trump, DeSantis is failing Florida.