The State of Florida IT is a complete cluster-f@ck. Florida keeps trying — and keeps failing — to get state agencies’ tech issues fixed https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article247950220.html When it became clear this month that multiple state agencies shared a single password for their emergency messaging systems — and that the password was posted online — some observers were not surprised. It was just the latest in a series of high-profile information technology failures to roil the Sunshine State. For more than two decades, Florida has struggled when it comes to information technology. Officials have created, abolished, and recreated a state technology office at least three times. Many of the state’s biggest projects have been marred by scandal and incompetence and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. “It’s really been a series of disappointments,” said Alan Shark, executive director of the Illinois think tank Public Technology Institute who co-wrote a book on best practices for state technology. That hit home for millions of Floridians earlier this year, when the online unemployment claims system, known as CONNECT, melted down under a historic wave of jobless claims triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. Experts aren’t entirely in the dark as to why Florida is so dysfunctional. For years, it was one of the only states in the nation that didn’t have a chief information officer. And its disjointed system of handling information technology needs across dozens of state agencies has caused headaches for bureaucrats and citizens alike. State lawmakers will likely consider spending tens of millions of dollars to shore up the unemployment claims system next session. But experts say it will take a far greater effort to fix Florida’s long-standing woes. Doomed from the start Florida, like most states, has one fundamental problem when it comes to information technology: it’s decentralized. The state has at least 50 different departments and agencies, each with its own information director or chief information officer with multimillion-dollar budgets. Many of them are overseen not by the governor, but by the three other independently elected statewide officers that make up the Cabinet: the chief financial officer, attorney general and agriculture commissioner. With so many fiefdoms, it’s been virtually impossible for Florida to coordinate individual information technology projects, much less execute a comprehensive vision of the state’s technology future. Nearly every state has faced similar challenges, with varying degrees of success. What has set Florida apart, however, is the numerous times it has tried, and failed, to consolidate its technology offices. Gov. Jeb Bush, who held office from 1999 to 2007, was the first to make a real effort. Bush took pride in being nicknamed the “e-governor.” He created a new state technology office to lead government into the 21st century. His new office, led by a new chief information officer, was supposed to save taxpayers millions each year by negotiating contracts across state government, rather than by individual agencies, and ensuring project rollouts were compatible with one another. It was also supposed to transform the way Floridians interacted with their state government. Citizens could go to a single website to renew their driver’s licenses, apply for occupational licenses, register to vote. Like a state-run version of Amazon.com, the site would know who you were and what you wanted (or needed) when you logged in. State lawmakers, despite some skepticism, approved a 1,700-employee office with a $600 million budget. But to lead this historic effort, Bush did not seek out a national, state or even agency leader. Instead, he chose a guy who helped on his campaign. It was doomed almost from the start. Instantly, questions were raised about the cozy ties between lobbyists representing technology companies and the state’s technology office. Bush’s choice to lead the office, Roy Cales, was arrested on an unrelated fraud charge and resigned less than two years later. His replacement, Kim Bahrami, dished out more than $170 million in contracts to two companies that were retracted after state auditors found the awards violated state laws. Bush did not respond to requests for comment. Cales couldn’t be reached for comment. Lawmakers quickly grew tired of the scandals. Within five years, they stripped the office of funding, effectively killing it. Problems continue The state’s information technology system never recovered. In 2007, lawmakers created the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology. Five years later, they stripped it of funding. In 2014, then-Gov. Rick Scott created the Agency for State Technology in another attempt to coordinate information technology projects across the state. But lawmakers grew tired of the office awarding tens of millions in no-bid contracts, and effectively closed it last year. This year, Gov. Ron DeSantis created yet another office: the Florida Digital Service. None of those agencies have been able to stop two decades of fiascoes with its large technology projects. Eight years and $89 million into a failed overhaul of its financial management system, it pulled the plug. Its human resources and state vendor website projects ran tens of millions of dollars over budget and were years late. It spent $5 million on a pet project that was never launched and another $750,000 on a 2016 “cloud computing study” that concluded none of the 931 state programs it examined were ready to be moved into the cloud. And those aren’t even the state’s more public failures. Its effort to update the state’s tolling system, known as SunPass was a boondoggle, with nearly all the problems self-inflicted. The state’s contract with Conduent State & Local Solutions ballooned by $71 million. Auditors found the Department of Transportation, which was supposed to supervise Conduent’s work, didn’t assign a qualified person for the role. The state’s information technology agency, led by then-Chief Information Officer Jason Allison, raised critical red flags years before the project launched — then abruptly withdrew its oversight without explanation. The next day, it was announced that Allison was leaving to become a lobbyist. Conduent was one of the companies he registered to lobby for that year. Allison did not return calls and emails from the Times/Herald. Even after its completion, the SunPass project was an immediate disaster. Thousands of Floridians were over-billed, costing the state $50 million in lost toll revenue. The state’s unemployment system was an even worse failure. State officials amended their contract with Deloitte Consulting 17 times — a sign that the state had not properly thought through the project when they put it out to bid. The project was late, $14 million over its original budget and incapable of processing claims when it launched in 2013. Although state auditors flagged repeated problems with CONNECT in three separate audits leading up to 2019, state officials never meaningfully upgraded the system. When the pandemic struck this year, CONNECT was immediately crushed by claims. Only Hawaii was worse at paying out claims on time this year. The state has spent tens of millions of dollars to shore up the system. It took the state weeks to learn that CONNECT’s backup system wasn’t plugged in. Three months of scandal In the last three months alone, some of the state’s biggest scandals have been caused by technology breakdowns. In October, the state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation was crippled by “malicious activity.” Around the same time, the state’s voter registration system went down, prompting a federal lawsuit and an extension of the state’s voter registration deadline. Misconfigured computer servers were to blame. Then, in early November, someone “hacked” a Department of Health emergency messaging system and sent messages urging employees to speak out about wrongdoing. State police served a search warrant on former department whistle-blower Rebekah Jones’ home this month, generating outrage and national headlines. It turned out that the system wasn’t hacked at all. The department was sharing the same system password across multiple agencies and even posted it online at times — likely violations of the department’s IT policies, which prohibit users from sharing passwords. The department removed the online postings after Reddit users and reporters alerted officials to it. National experts say that no state is immune from information technology project failures. But they can be minimized with strong leadership from the governor’s office and coordination between the chief information officer, the Legislature and individual departments. “What is the best is when there is a view of what should technology look like across the state, and that there are mechanisms to coordinate that,” said Teri Takai, executive director of the Center for Digital Government and a former chief information officer for Michigan and California. That’s something Florida has so far failed to have. Just this summer, during the height of the outrage over the unemployment system Deloitte created, the Agency for Health Care Administration chose to go with Deloitte for a $135 million Medicaid data project. Yet they didn’t even ask the Department of Economic Opportunity, which manages the unemployment system, for details on their experience working with the company. The decision to go with Deloitte was yet another black eye for DeSantis, who had been publicly trashing the company’s performance since March. Takai said the pandemic has been a “wake-up call” for every state, and many are scrambling to modernize their technology systems and prioritizing their chief information officers. In August, DeSantis named former state Rep. Jamie Grant to be the state’s next chief information officer. Grant had an integral role in shaping the responsibilities and role of the state’s new technology agency, having sponsored the bill in the Legislature that created the office. His bill also relaxed the requirements needed to get the job. He wouldn’t have met the previous qualifications, which included requiring 10 years of “executive-level experience.” Grant, who did not respond to requests for comment made through the governor’s office, will not be fulfilling the kind of role Bush envisioned for the chief information officer, with broad oversight over projects across state government. But some experts said he might be in a unique position to be successful anyway, considering his potential to convince his former colleagues in the Legislature of his vision and develop his ties with DeSantis. “As he would say, he has the governor’s ear,” Takai said. “That’s extremely important.” Others were skeptical much would change. “We’re still doing things the way it was done 20, 30 years ago,” said David Taylor, the state’s chief information officer from 2008 to 2012. “Every year we get further and further behind.”
Too funny, guy who introduced bill that reduced CIO position qualifications allowing him to then apply for it. Floriduh.
Interesting to note is that she is merely asking for "$30,000 in damages and the release of Jones’ computer and other devices". The suit is not about financial compensation -- it is about forcing the FDLE to turn-over all of their material as part of legal discovery. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...t-who-says-she-was-ousted-over-covid-n1251982
I'm not following the suit, and I really don't care much about it. But she has to win to get any money, which is then going to be "paid by the taxpayers" as Here4money is crooning.
I actually agree with Gov. DeSantis with prioritizing the elderly first in Florida due to the large over-65 population in the state. Florida has the largest percentage of over 65 population in the country and a good number of these elderly are considered at-risk in nursing homes etc. Floridians age 65 and up to be prioritized for vaccine, governor says https://www.wesh.com/article/florida-vaccine-65-and-up/35058129# Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed an executive order that makes it clear people age 65 and older will be the first to be vaccinated in the state. DeSantis said the state will begin administering vaccines to people age 65 and up as soon as Monday. The governor also asked people not run out to hospitals or pharmacies looking for the vaccine just yet. He said the state is working with health departments to coordinate the roll-out. DeSantis said people age 65 and up will get the vaccine first, after front-line health care workers and long-term care facilities. The state has already started administering vaccines to people in long-term care facilities and to health care workers who deal with COVID-19 patients. “We’re going where the risk is greatest,” the governor said of the decision to prioritize people in the age group. DeSantis’s decision on Wednesday bucks a suggestion from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to place a priority on people 75 and older and essential workers like teachers and first responders as the next to get vaccinated. The governor said it makes no sense to have a 74-year-old resident placed in the back of the line behind a health 21-year-old worker. DeSantis said he does not believe the state will receive enough vaccine to get to all of them in the next six weeks, but he's hopeful a few million elderly could be vaccinated by the end of January. "In Florida, we've got to put our parents and grandparents first, that's what we're doing and we're going to work like hell to be able to get all the vaccine out to elderly who want it,” DeSantis said during a news conference Tuesday in The Villages.
As outlined in your local Tampa Bay paper on December 23rd, the Nursing Home trend in Florida is so horrific that the AARP released it's data early rather than waiting until its scheduled release date of January 10th. If the AARP is saying the situation is bad in Florida's nursing homes then it is time for you to admit to it. Why are coronavirus deaths doubling in Florida’s nursing homes? Advocates blame the lack of a state strategy for accurate and immediate testing at facilities. December 23, 2020 An alarming surge in coronavirus infections and deaths in Florida nursing homes since October has elder care advocates warning that the lack of a state strategy for accurate and immediate testing at elder care homes will mean this holiday season will be a heartbreaking one for many. On Tuesday, AARP released a report that shows that the COVID-19 death rate among Florida nursing home residents doubled in the three weeks around the Thanksgiving holiday, and infections continue to climb among the state’s most vulnerable residents. The death toll spike was so alarming that AARP decided to report on the data rather than wait for its scheduled monthly release on Jan. 10. “The fundamental problem is the continued inability to provide accurate, rapid-result testing of everyone entering elder-care facilities — staff, visitors, family caregivers and vendors,’' said David Bruns, spokesman for AARP. “Absent any change in policy, this surge is going to increase. People are going to die,’' warned Brian Lee, director of Families for Better Care, a nonprofit that advocates for families of nursing home residents. “It’s a total disaster because the governor and his team could have saved lives.” Also on Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis held a news conference at The Villages retirement community to announce that Floridians over 70 will be next in line to get vaccinated for COVID-19, before essential workers and younger people with underlying health conditions. On Wednesday, he signed an executive order prioritizing vaccines for people over 65, a demonstration he was advocating for one in five Floridians in the ongoing debate among public health experts about who should be first in line with the vaccine. “If you’re in the elderly population, this is coming soon, and just stay tuned,” DeSantis said Tuesday. “We’re a lot further along than we thought we’d be four months ago.” For elder-care advocates, however, the focus on the vaccine is a positive development but it should not shift focus from the deadly numbers emerging at long-term care facilities. “Gov. DeSantis is ignoring the infection surge by shifting the narrative to vaccine deployment,’' Lee said. As of the state’s Dec. 21 report, COVID-19 has killed 7,938 Florida residents and staff at elder-care facilities with resident infections outpacing staff for the first time since the summer surge. “This is hardly unique to Florida,” said Bruns of AARP. “Nine months into the pandemic emergency, we still cannot reliably identify who might be bringing the virus into these facilities and stop them at the door. This means the virus can continue to exploit longstanding weaknesses in infection control that have bedeviled the long-term care industry for decades.” Optional testing isn’t working As elders leave their homes to visit loved ones, or welcome visitors over the holidays, the state has no requirement that anyone be tested to prevent the spread of the infection. It allows each facility to establish its own rules. “Optional testing was a serious flaw,’' Lee said. When the state reopened visitation policies in October, Surgeon General Scott Rivkees suggested that testing be required but didn’t demand it, he said. The result, he said, is that testing is optional and “facilities are still in the dark.” “Those folks leaving to see family for the holiday are not tested upon their return,’' Lee said. “People don’t know if you have been in contact with someone who isn’t showing symptoms of the virus and can carry it back to the facility.” For months, Lee has been advocating for molecular point-of-care rapid tests of visitors on site, as well as residents returning to facilities. “A better policy would be to shore up testing with the right equipment and test along with the vaccine,’' Lee said. “Families who want to visit their loved ones won’t be inoculated for months. There will be residents and staff who will refuse vaccination. That’s why facilities still need robust molecular testing at the door.” DeSantis and state health officials have said since March that their priority is to “protect the vulnerable” and they have said they have put a priority on directing testing resources and personal protective equipment to long-term care facilities. But since January, according to industry data reported to the federal government, more than 93 percent of Florida elder-care facilities have had at least one coronavirus case and, in December, one in seven Florida nursing homes reported that they had less than a week’s worth of personal protective gear on hand for staff, residents and visitors. ALFs must wait for vaccine Questions are also emerging about how long elders will have to wait for the vaccine. As the governor watched members of The Villages retirement community get vaccinated Tuesday, assisted-living facilities administrators were told they would have to wait until their residents could get in line. An email Wednesday from a sales director at Omnicare, the CVS company administering the vaccine at nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Florida, told an official that the company was “not scheduling ALF communities in Florida” for vaccine distribution but were instead “waiting on the Governors office to activate ALF communities.” (Much more at above url) Additional article... COVID deaths at Florida nursing homes doubled during Thanksgiving holiday, AARP says https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article248042245.html AARP Chart https://www.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/ppi/2020/12/aarp-nh-dashboard-special-report-data.pdf
"DeSantis for the win" -- Florida takes months to figure out even how many died of COVID. How many died of COVID from Thanksgiving gatherings? In Florida, you won’t know until after New Year’s https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/p...0201224-54chmifzc5ehdje7ps7igcbvb4-story.html Florida’s public tally of COVID-19 deaths is now so behind that on some days, nearly half of the deaths reported actually occurred two months earlier, public health data shows. The backlog blurs the full impact of the disease, preventing Floridians from seeing how deeply it’s ravaging the state. On 14 days in December so far, the daily death count reported by the state included deaths that were more than 60 days old, according to data analyzed by Florida public health scientists. If this trend continues, Floridians won’t see the potentially deadly effect of Thanksgiving gatherings until after New Year’s. They won’t know the full scope of COVID deaths resulting from Christmas parties until after Valentine’s Day. Public health experts say some delays in reporting are to be expected, but Florida’s lags are extreme. “We have been going through this for eight months,” said Ali Mokdad, chief strategy officer for the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. “Any state should have figured this out by now and put systems in place to catch up.” RELATED: A mysterious gap in COVID-19 deaths appeared in Florida before the presidential election » Such long delays make it difficult for researchers to determine the impact of policy decisions and detect trends, and for modelers to predict the future rate of death from the virus, said University of Florida research scientist Tom Hladish. But worse, he said, “people are making their holiday and travel plans and making difficult decisions without the benefit of data that should be available.” “Six or eight weeks?” Hladish said. “I can’t see a good reason for that.” The backlog persists even though the state two months ago seized greater control of the death reporting process — citing the delays, casting doubt on the accuracy of its own death count, and saying it would conduct an additional review of every death before reporting it. Dr. Gabriel Odom, a statistician with Florida International University, said the data now shows an average six-week lag in Florida’s reporting of COVID deaths. “In that six-week period, other people are dying who may not have died if we had known how bad things were getting,” he said. “It should not take six weeks to release if John Doe died of COVID. Realistically, they should be able to tell us in two weeks, or at least give us a range, like between 15 and 20 deaths. It’s important to give us an idea of what’s going on with this pandemic.” RELATED: Florida to investigate all COVID-19 deaths after questions about ‘integrity’ of data » Peter Walker, of the COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer organization that collects and publishes coronavirus data, agrees with Mokdad that Florida has one of the longest average gaps between the actual date of death and reported date of death. But Florida is not the only state that is struggling to handle huge numbers of COVID deaths that must be accurately classified, said Amira Roess, professor of global health and epidemiology at George Mason University. “Is Florida worse or better than other states? I think the reality is this is a crisis, and a lot of health departments are struggling,” she said. “They’re all struggling with how to process so much data coming in, how to deal with errors that are in the some of the data at times and how to fix that. That’s, I think, a lot of what’s going on here.” Shamarial Roberson, Florida’s deputy health secretary, blamed delays from medical examiners, doctors and funeral homes. “We’re getting the data. We’re reporting it as we’re receiving it,” she said in a telephone interview that also involved state Surgeon General Dr. Scott Rivkees. “But sometimes there’s been a backlog with medical examiners, backlog with certifying physicians.” Medical examiners say that’s impossible. At their request, after they were overwhelmed with COVID cases, these deaths stopped being routed through their offices in mid-August. Since then, Florida has empowered the attending physicians to report COVID deaths directly to the state. “We haven’t been involved in that after Aug. 14, so I’m not sure what she’s talking about,” said Dr. Stephen Nelson, chairman of the Florida Medical Examiners Commission, which oversees the state’s 21 medical examiners. “I can tell you that the medical examiners don’t have a backlog on COVID because subsequent to Aug. 14 we’re not signing death certificates on COVID. Current cases? No. I can’t imagine there’s a backlog from the MEs.” After a report commissioned by House Speaker José Oliva cited sloppy paperwork and questioned whether the state’s COVID death numbers were inflated, Rivkees on Oct. 21 announced that all suspected COVID deaths would undergo “rigorous review.” Previously, reviews had been done by epidemiologists at the local level. Now statewide epidemiologists also review each death, Roberson said. Though its been two months since the new process began, Rivkees and Roberson wouldnot say what difference it had made. Asked whether any COVID deaths had been reclassified, Rivkees said nothing and Roberson would say only that the review was an “ongoing process of quality assurance.” RELATED: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-ne-house-speaker-oliva-casts-doubt-covid-death-count-20201013-jwqa6cvvkjam7kj5y7yreydo34-story.html » What are they reviewing? To verify deaths as COVID deaths, Rivkees said the department’s epidemiologists review medical records, the death certificate and the COVID test report. In its additional review, a state epidemiologist goes through the file and looks at “multiple forms of data” to make sure the death was correctly attributed to COVID, Roberson said. While Roberson disputed that there was a backlog on the state’s part, Florida’s own data reveals a continuing problem, according to analyses by Jason Salemi, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida in Tampa on his website: * Since November there have been 10 days on which at least one in five reported COVID deaths had occurred more than two months earlier. * On Nov. 20, the daily tally included someone who died of COVID on July 29 — nearly four months earlier. * The number of backlogged deaths can be substantial. On Oct. 7, the date with the largest percentage, 52% of the 164 deaths reported that day were at least 60 days old. There is some lag, of course, between a rise in new cases and a rise in deaths, due to the nature of the disease itself. When a state experiences a rise in cases, the resulting increase in deaths typically occurs about 22 days later, according to national models. For multiple days in December, the state has reported the highest number of new COVID infections since July — in excess of 10,000. With Florida’s lag, the deaths that result from those new cases could be months away from becoming apparent. RELATED: Here are the latest coronavirus statistics for Florida » Cutting off public access The question of Florida’s death count became a political issue over the summer when President Trump, DeSantis and other Florida Republicans began second-guessing the toll and suggesting it was exaggerated. But experts have said Florida’s death toll was likely an undercount. Unlike many other states, Florida does not follow federal recommendations to report probable coronavirus deaths, As the state has taken greater oversight of the death count, it has also also cut off avenues for the public to assess its work. State officials have consistently refused to release COVID death certificates to academics or journalists to review. Until the late summer, the data on thoserecords had been released in summary form by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which collects death certificates from county medical examiner’s offices during states of emergency. After Florida shifted responsibility for reporting COVID deaths from medical examiners to the attending physicians, the public could no longer see who died from COVID, their race, the certified cause of death and contributing causes of death. U.S. congresswoman Frederica Wilson, a Miami Democrat who represents part of South Broward, said learning about deaths in a timely manner is critical for people in her district, which covers some of the poorest neighborhoods in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Wilson said the delay in reporting COVID deaths could lead people to underestimate the deadliness of the disease as they make holiday plans. “Look at my district and amount of deaths,” Wilson said. “If people knew just how devastating this virus is impacting Floridians they would take it more seriously. Right now they have no reason to take it as seriously. This is dangerous.” More than 20,000 Floridians have died of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has played down the danger of the virus to all but the elderly and often touts Florida’s low death rate. For the last seven days, Florida’s per capita death rate reported to the CDC was 0.5 per 100,000 people, compared with the national death rate of .8 per 100,000 people.
It may "happen everywhere" --- but nowhere else with the degree of incompetence of Ron DeSantis. "DeSantis for the win" -- it's one thing to be called the nation' worst governor by a leading paper. Being called a catastrophe even by Florida standards defines the sinking to a new low. Even by Florida standards, Gov. Ron DeSantis is a covid-19 catastrophe https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/21/ron-desantis-florida-covid-19/ Earlier this month, just as Florida neared its 20,000th covid-19 death, a bit of good cheer popped into the inboxes of 160 state lawmakers: an invitation (plus one!) to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s holiday bash at his Tallahassee mansion. No masks or social distancing required; any devotion to science or reality could be checked at the door. The event narrowly avoided superspreader status: The state senate’s president regretted his absence only hours before the soiree when a coronavirus test came back positive. Welcome to Florida — America’s sun-drenched State of Suspended Disbelief. From the pandemic’s infancy, DeSantis has conveniently, even diabolically, airbrushed covid-19 out of public life here. The result:1.2 million total covid-19 cases, nearly 61,000 total hospitalizations and a new seven-day case-positivity rate of 9.7 percent— all rapidly rising toward crisis levels. Even Texas, which isn’t exactly a model of coronavirus caution, has a statewide mask mandate and lower cumulative infection rate than Florida. The Republican governor’s response to the pandemic, in other words, has been a disaster — yet he shows no signs of changing course. Today, amid the state’s third surge, Floridians and tourists stand shoulder-to-shoulder in bars and restaurants and sashay into nightclubs and strip clubs. At the same time, DeSantis continues to shrug off statewide mask and distancing orders along with any real effort at contact tracing. The governor has consistently played down the risks of covid-19, ignored credentialed scientists, sided with herd-immunity advocates, withheld information about hospitalizations and cases in nursing homes and schools, and cherry-picked numbers. In a state with a strong open-records law, DeSantis smothers transparency. As part of a “Blue Skies” initiative, reported by the South Florida Sun Sentinel, our governor even made clear that the state health department’s media people should not mention covid-19 until after the election; instead, department communications encouraged Floridians to get their flu shots and sign up for hearing-loss screenings. Now DeSantis is refusing to release the weekly White House Coronavirus Task Force Reports on Florida, and news organizations are suing. Replete with dire warnings, the reports apparently contradict his cavalier way of doing business here. As if all this weren’t enough, DeSantis has also barred local governments from implementing shutdowns or fining mask scofflaws, making it even harder to persuade Floridians to take anti-covid-19 precautions. Some cities are in open rebellion, setting the stage for a state-local showdown. Who said Republicans aren’t hot for centralizing power? The governor can at least take credit for one successful contact trace: His public-health strategy is openly tied to President Trump. DeSantis even paid tribute, in a way, by placing 1 million orders of hydroxychloroquine. It was the least he could do, considering that aping Trump got him elected in 2018. DeSantis, for his part, pats himself on the back for his half-blind strategy. “We have, I think, really saved the livelihoods of millions and millions of students, parents, workers, business owners by approaching this in an evidence-based way that focused on facts, not fear, and in a way that was more moderate,” the governor recently told political donors and corporate bigwigs. Admittedly, the state’s open-for-business policy has preserved jobs. Yes, wrecking Florida’s vulnerable tourism-and-hospitality economy would only ruin more lives, although many visitors are steering clear because of our hands-off covid-19 response and high numbers. I also agree schools should be open with the right precautions. But the governor has needlessly damaged the lives of so many Floridians with his unnecessary all-or-nothing approach: Mask mandates and social distancing are not pointless, and manipulating information to hide the seriousness of the pandemic is reprehensible. DeSantis knew all too well that Florida would largely embrace his reckless approach. Floridians aren’t exactly known for their prudence and judgment. There’s a reason we gave the world Florida Man— who “responsibly” fires guns, “does not routinely defraud Medicare,” “resists the impulse” to haul an alligator into a convenience store or showcase his own “Most Wanted” poster on his Facebook page. It’s not a coincidence that, pushed by DeSantis, wearing a mask here devolves into aquién es más machostandoff. It’s a mask, for God’s sake, not a sedation-free vasectomy. To be sure, not all Floridians are buying what DeSantis is selling. They are, however, buying the perfect protest prop: “My Governor Is An Idiot” face masks. According to a woman who sells them on Etsy, many Floridians are scooping up her inventory. Meanwhile, on Twitter, the governor has been dubbed “Duh-Santis,” an impressive distinction for a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School. I guess it’s better than his other handle, “DeathSantis.” It’s hard to imagine what, at this point, DeSantis could do to redeem himself. But considering that vaccines won’t be fully available until late spring, and simple precautions could save thousands of lives in the meantime, it would sure be helpful if a tea party-backed, Trump-loving governor promoted them. Maybe the next time the governor goes to a high school football game packed with maskless fans, as he did recently, he can give us all a lifesaving holiday gift: Suck it up, set a good example and strap on a mask.