Oh, this is a rich, gooey, chocolatey slice of schadenfreude a la choad. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who keeps saying his handling of the coronavirus was totes rad yo, even though it so totally was not, may have to wipe the smug look off his face as COVID cases in his state continue to dangerously escalate.
To be sure, things are not going swimmingly in the Sunshine State, and yet the steadfast mayor of Amity insists on keeping the beaches open—and, erm, vaccinations down.
The Washington Post:
New coronavirus infection numbers plummeted in Florida after vaccinations became widely available, but they have ticked up in recent weeks. The state is reporting daily cases close to four times the national average — 26 new infections per 100,000 residents, the second-highest number in the country. The state’s latest covid-19 death rate is almost double the national figure, and it ranks fourth for current hospitalizations.
Which brings us to our main feature. This tweet:
For the nontweeters:
Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD
On June 22 Florida Gov DeSantis and our colleague, Laura Ingraham, mocked me on Fox for predicting the return of COVID19 to the Southern US. As of today, Florida has the 2nd highest rate of Covid nationally +257% rise over last 14 days, with Jacksonville area among worst affected
Laura said I just “couldn’t let the pandemic go”, when in fact her news network worked overtime to discredit vaccines and weaponize health communication to suppress vaccination rates in the South. In so doing they facilitated a COVID19 resurgence in the face of the delta variant
You mean Ron DeSantis was wrong about something? That can’t be. He's more smarter than Donald Trump, and that guy was president-ish.
And now … the rootin’, tootin’, Jethro Tull-flutin’ video transcript:
INGRAHAM: “Now one of the most notorious COVID doomers, Governor, is making more dire predictions and it includes Florida. Watch.”
HOTEZ (CLIP): “Travel and especially over the July 4th holiday, that could be a big issue. … We saw that summer surge and that was pretty awful. In a belt that went for all the way from Arizona through New Mexico, Texas, across the Gulf Coast into Florida. … We just have to assume that Mother Nature is telling us this is going to happen again.”
INGRAHAM: “That’s the infamous Dr. Peter Hotez, Governor. They just can’t let the pandemic go. At some point they’re going to have to break the addiction.”
DESANTIS: “… Some of these people get put out there all the time when they have been dead wrong over the last year. For example, a lot of these people criticized Florida for getting our kids back into school in August. They said, oh, this will be two, three weeks, everyone’s going to get sick, all the schools are going to have to shut down again, and that just never happened. I think schools were probably one of the places that had the fewest amount of infections of anywhere else in our society. So you’re wrong on these really, really big issues that impacted millions of people, and yet you’re still out there parroting stuff. So, look, I think that at the end of the day we’re happy that we had the kids in school, we’re happy that people have been able to work in Florida, and we’re happy that our businesses have been open.
By the way, don’t believe anything DeSantis says about school closings and COVID. He generally doesn’t know what he’s talking about on that or any other topic. For example, he got fact-checked into adobe rubble and Satan piss here after he jibber-jabbered something-something about kids being unable to pass COVID to adults.
Oh, and in case you still need convincing that public health measures matter when it comes to COVID mitigation, check out this tweet from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman about the stark difference in outcomes between densely populated San Francisco and predominantly pastoral South Dakota.
And, yeah, I know. Ron DeSantis will never wipe the smug look off his face. You couldn’t wipe that sneer from his mug with a belt sander and a soccer side’s worth of famished Hannibal Lecters.
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