Remember when Politico said DeSantis “won the pandemic”?
Florida fiasco
Eric Boehlert
3 hr ago
Florida has become a Covid-19 debacle, again.
Now accounting for one-in-every five new cases nationwide, the Sunshine State under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has emerged as a beacon of irresponsibility. Not that he seems to care.
Off visiting Texas recently to take part in more GOP photo-ops at the border, DeSantis often brushes off the pandemic bad news. “It’s a seasonal virus and this is the seasonal pattern it follows in the Sun Belt states,” he said this week. (He blamed “quote-unquote ‘experts’” for criticizing the unvaccinated.) The governor is busy though, selling anti-vaccine merchandise, like “Don’t Fauci My Florida” t-shirts.
Question: Does the Beltway press care about the state’s drastic Covid U-turn? This spring, journalists lionized DeSantis’ supposed virus leadership— it was Politico that announced, “How Ron DeSantis Won the Pandemic.” This, after 30,000 Floridians had already died from the virus.
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The Orlando Sentinel editorial page recently read the governor the riot act over his dereliction of duty:
At the moment, it’s as if DeSantis has washed his hands of the matter and moved on to elections, borders, critical race theory, mocking Fauci or whatever else will get him a headline.
And every few days, nearly as many people are dying from COVID as died in the recent collapse of a condominium in South Florida.
Please, governor, we’re begging you, handle the COVID problem. Be a leader.
How bad is Florida?
• New Covid cases are up nearly 200% over the past two weeks.
• Florida is third in the nation in per capita increases, accounting for nearly 20% of the entire nation’s new infections.
•The rate of positive tests is now well above 10%.
• Florida now boasts the fourth-highest rate of hospitalizations and the nation’s highest average for daily deaths.
•The state’s vaccination rate, 57 percent, remains a mediocre embarrassment.
• The Sunshine State has the second lowest rate of vaccinated nursing home workers in the country.
All of this makes the media’s torrent of DeSantis valentines earlier this year look inexcusable. Beltway scribes lined up to tell the same story over and over: Democratic critics were wrong about DeSantis, Covid and Florida, and now he’s riding high within the GOP. They eagerly held him up as a rare Republican Covid star, pushing GOP talking points about how DeSantis had steered the Sunshine State into "boom” times.
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https://pressrun.media/p/remember-when-politico-said-desantis
4 replies
Eric Boehlert: Remember when Politico said DeSantis "won the pandemic"? (Original post)
TheBlackAdder (26,050 posts) 
