In perhaps the most misguided, premature assessment of the handling of the COVID pandemic by Trump mini- me Floriduh Gov. Ron "One Glove" DeSantis, Politico writer Michael Kruse wrote a beat- sweetening article in March 2021 with this headline:
Well, what a difference five months makes:
Saturday, the state of Florida reported more new COVID-19 cases to the Centers for Disease Control than any previous day in the coronavirus pandemic: 21,683.
That’s a 12.1% jump over the previous record, Jan. 7’s 19,334 cases during the worst month of the pandemic. Daily case counts routinely surpassed 10,000 as the pandemic peaked a second time. In the succeeding months, daily case counts returned to 2,000 and 8,000.
The last half of July looks like the start of Florida’s third COVID-19 peak, as the case numbers reported Thursday (17,589), Friday (17,093) and Saturday mix in with Jan. 6-8 to comprise the top six individual case count days. The average over the last seven days is 15,817 cases. [snip]
Florida, which represents about 6.5% of the U.S. population, accounts for about 21.4% of the country’s new cases, based on the data the state is reporting to the CDC.
Guess being a "winner" doesn't mean what it used to (unless your metric is unnecessary death and disease).
Meanwhile, faced with this harrowing reality, the "winner" of the pandemic is still working hard to promote policies designed to keep Floriduh in the forefront ... of the Delta surge:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced Friday that parents will be given the choice of whether their children follow mask rules in school this fall, challenging federal guidance and local school districts in what critics called an “irresponsible” and “appalling” decision amid a surge of infections. [snip]
DeSantis, an outspoken critic of mask recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters and a cheering, largely maskless crowd that he did not believe masks were necessary to prevent children from transmitting the virus in classrooms, even as the state reported more than 21,000 infections among children younger than 19 this week.
DeSantis has pitched himself for reelection next year — and possibly for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 — by resisting calls for stricter measures to prevent the spread of the virus, which has killed more than 39,000 people in his state.
Shortly after the news conference in Southwest Florida, DeSantis signed an executive order that allowed the state’s education official to withhold funds to school boards that impose mask mandates in violation of the new rules. (our emphasis)
So, DeSantis, whose medical and epidemiological bona fides are well hidden, is actively putting his career as a mini- Trump anti- science troglodyte ahead of the lives of his constituents, which puts him squarely in the mainstream of his sociopathic cult. Just think -- an ambitious person like DeSantis wants to bring his "winner" mentality to the White House and the nation as a whole.
BONUS: Put in perspective --
Florida recorded more coronavirus cases this week than California, Texas, New York and Illinois combined https://t.co/egbNuAssld
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) August 1, 2021
Winning!
