Sunday’s lead New York Times story by Sharon LaFraniere, Patricia Mazzei, and Albert Sun, “The Steep Cost of Ron DeSantis’s Vaccine Turnabout,” was a retrospective hit piece for the 2024 presidential race. The trio of reporters reached back before current culture war controversies to focus on Florida’s Republican governor-presidential candidate and the alleged deadly medical malpractice he performed by discouraging vaccinations (not true) during Covid’s 2021 “Delta Wave.”
Digging into the numbers reveals Florida did perfectly well against Covid, while ensuring freedom of action and movements for its citizens. Interestingly, “masks,” which were once supposed to be our ticket out, are only mentioned once in this 3,200-word story. It began:
On a Saturday in September 2020, with Covid-19 killing more than 600 Americans daily and hundreds of thousands of deaths still to come, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, heard her cellphone ring. It was Dr. Scott Rivkees, the Florida surgeon general. He was distraught.
“‘You won’t believe what happened,’” she said he told her. Months before Covid vaccines would become available, Gov. Ron DeSantis had decided that the worst was over for Florida, he said. Mr. DeSantis had begun listening to doctors who believed the virus’s threat was overstated, and he no longer supported preventive measures like limiting indoor dining.
Mr. DeSantis was going his own way on Covid.
Now DeSantis presents his Covid strategy "as the foundation for his presidential campaign," so the Times had to find flaws all over it.
But on the single factor that those experts say mattered most in fighting Covid -- widespread vaccinations - Mr. DeSantis’s approach proved deeply flawed. While the governor personally crusaded for Floridians 65 and older to get shots, he laid off once younger age groups became eligible.
Tapping into suspicion of public health authorities, which the Republican right was fanning, he effectively stopped preaching the virtues of Covid vaccines. Instead, he emphasized his opposition to requiring anyone to get shots, from hospital workers to cruise ship guests.
While Florida was an early leader in the share of over-65 residents who were vaccinated, it had fallen to the middle of the pack by the end of July 2021. When it came to younger residents, Florida lagged behind the national average in every age group.
The accompanying charts were staggeringly unconvincing: “Vaccination Rates From January to July 2021” showed the percentage of over-65 Americans “fully vaccinated” topping off at just over 80%, with Florida tracking with the national average after previously leading the pack. But there was always going to be a hard-core group of “never-vaxxers” in America, Florida residents or not. The chart shows Florida seniors…at the national average for vaccination in July 2021. Scandalous!
The Times had to admit “The governor had early success in following his instincts” by not releasing Covid patients into nursing homes like Gov. Andrew Cuomo did in New York (though Cuomo’s name isn’t mentioned.)
Florida was also one of only four states to require schools to hold in-person classes in the fall of 2020, a move that Mr. DeSantis has said defied the nation’s public health experts. In fact, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a federal infectious disease expert on former President Donald J. Trump’s task force, said repeatedly that summer and fall that schools could open safely with the right precautions. Nonetheless, facing strong opposition from teachers’ unions, nearly three-fourths of the nation’s 100 largest school districts offered only remote learning that fall.
Fauci was actually far from enthusiastic about the prospect of reopening schools, making the hypothetical requirements so stringent that most districts would simply keep schools shuttered.
After complaining that DeSantis “was embracing more extreme views,” the story concluded:
While the pandemic waned, leaving more than 80,000 Floridians and 1.13 million Americans dead, the governor continued to push policies that kept him at the vanguard of the anti-vaccine and anti-mandate conversation. A new state law, signed by Mr. DeSantis in May, bans government agencies, businesses and schools from requiring Covid testing, vaccination or mask wearing.
The pandemic left more than 108,000 Californians and more than 80,000 New York state residents dead. Where are the 3,000-word condemnations of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo? Oh right, they’re Democrats.
