Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been doing his darnedest to pretend that he and his liege lord, Donald Trump, haven’t completely botched the handling of the American public’s health during the growing COVID-19 pandemic. Since the ill-advised reopening of Florida, COVID-19 cases have very predictably surged, and sadly seem to have spread out of control. At the same time, Gov. DeSantis has alternately attempted to blame migrant workers for the spread, while also working to make sure the true nature of the spread is being underreported.
The last couple of weeks have been a steady stream of record-breaking COVID case days across the country, and Florida has been leading these morbid stories the entire time. Now, the Washington Post reports that on Thursday, the Sunshine State’s emergency operations center has been shut down due to a “new set of cases.” The emergency center in question is located in Tallahassee. And while Florida officials have predictably not given any numbers in their statements about this closure, the Post says that sources tell them at least 13 people at the center tested positive for the virus.
Sadly, since April, Florida has lost its ability to sufficiently track and transmit useful data for public health considerations to the public. This is in no small part due to firing data scientists whose job it was to create and model this information. In fact, the people DeSantis and others got rid of have continued their work elsewhere, making data on COVID-19 throughout the state as available as is possible, considering that DeSantis and crew have been fudging the numbers pretty intensely since the beginnings of this crisis.
While all of this is happening, Gov. DeSantis has successfully gotten Trump to bring the Republican National Convention to his state, along with other—wealthy and better tested—professional sports leagues. And yet, like Sweden, the only positives that can come out of their business first, science last approach, is exposing how craven and deadly bad leadership can be. It’s also why Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party have stolen the Supreme Court and stocked the courts with partisan hack judges.
This tweet reply to the state’s Division of Emergency Management statement sort of sums it up nicely: