Florida hits new COVID death records... "DeSantis for the win" Florida COVID update: 1,059 deaths added, with most spanning the past 28 days https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article254382593.html September 21, 2021 Florida on Monday reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 9,022 more COVID-19 cases and 1,059 deaths, according to Miami Herald calculations of CDC data. In all, Florida has recorded at least 3,503,976 confirmed COVID cases and 51,884 deaths. The majority of the deaths added Monday, about 91%, occurred over the past 28 days, according to Herald calculations of CDC data. Half of those people, about 51%, died in the past two weeks. In the last seven days, the state has added an average of 376 deaths each day, the highest ever reported, according to Herald calculations of CDC data. In the last seven days, on average, the state has added 8,841 cases to the daily cumulative total, the lowest seen since mid-July, according to Herald calculations. (More at above url)
After a mere day in office DeSantis' new Covid-denier Surgeon General and the governor do their best to kill the children. Florida Just Found a Way to Be Even More COVID Reckless SUNSHINE CESSPOOL “It is literally a political ploy,” one expert said of a wild new policy in the U.S. capital of pandemic death. https://www.thedailybeast.com/flori...-joseph-ladapo-kills-mask-mandate-stokes-shoo Florida on Wednesday escalated its war with school districts over mask mandates when a newly appointed, controversial surgeon general issued a rule making it even harder for schools to enforce them while also setting what experts called a dangerous new quarantine policy. Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who was appointed on Tuesday by Gov. Ron DeSantis, instituted his first rule Wednesday to give parents “sole discretion” over whether their child wears a mask. The change, as reported by the Miami Herald, will also allow students who come in contact with the virus to continue attending class if they remain asymptomatic. In addition to representing just the latest chapter of pandemic recklessness in a state that has often set the international bar, experts said, the policy also short-circuited a legal challenge to an already-risky policy, effectively trolling parents in the state. “Essentially, when you have one losing, unlawful policy being challenged, you withdraw it and put in another losing, unlawful policy,” said Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at Georgetown University who specializes in public health and is also a Daily Beast contributor. “It is literally a political ploy.” A spokesperson for DeSantis told The Daily Beast that “back-to-back legal victories for Florida parents’ rights were conveniently ignored by many of the governor’s critics, because they disregard facts that do not suit their preferred narratives.” She also pointed to a Wednesday press conference from the governor. The Surgeon General’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. During the Wednesday press conference, DeSantis touted the new rule and went after critics who want to follow public-health measures. “Quarantining healthy students is incredibly damaging for their educational advancement. It’s also incredibly disruptive for families, all throughout the state of Florida,” DeSantis said. He added that the state is going to be following a “symptoms-based approach” for a deadly disease that often does not produce symptoms. The rule’s implementation gives the state another tool to push back on parents and schools worried about mass death, which is already spiraling at districts nationwide this year. Among other things, it forced the dismissal of the case brought by five school districts challenging a ban on mask mandates by DeSantis—days before arguments were set to begin. “I don’t see any wiggle room whatsoever in doing anything other than dismissing this case,” Judge Brian Newman said during a Wednesday hearing. The case is separate from one brought by parents who have sued for school mask mandates, whose initial win was stayed as DeSantis lobbies an appeal. Some of the districts in the case at issue Wednesday—Alachua, Miami-Dade, Broward, Leon, and Orange—told the Herald they would consider whether to challenge the new rule, but they did acknowledge the political elephant in the room. “It’s just political maneuvering to change the rules in the middle of the game,” Leon County Schools spokesman Chris Petley said. Meanwhile, parents actually dealing with sending their kids to school in a state that accounts for a lion’s share of national daily COVID-19 deaths were left reeling from the latest anti-science move from on high. Amalia Fernandez, a mom whose two daughters attend Henry S. West Laboratory public elementary school in Coral Gables, said both her kids are currently at home after coming into contact with a positive case. Her fourth-grader went into a 10-day quarantine last Friday after being in close contact with a school staffer who tested positive, and her kindergartner was placed into quarantine Wednesday after coming into contact with a student who was exposed to a positive case, she said. “As a mom working remotely from home, it is difficult having them here, but as a mom concerned about their health, I prefer to have them at home,” Fernandez told The Daily Beast. “I think it is stupid and very regressive to not place kids into quarantine if they have been exposed. I want my girls and other children to be protected and safe. If that means quarantining my child even if they have been minimally exposed, I will do it.” The new rule by DeSantis’ recently appointed surgeon general is just another example of the governor politicizing the health and safety of public school children, she said. “He is going to win certain voters, but he will also lose many others,” Fernandez added. “DeSantis putting everybody at risk is a never-ending story.” The move marks Ladapo’s first major act as surgeon general, an indication he plans to instill his skepticism toward masks in policy even as the state leads the United States in daily COVID-19 deaths and ranks second-highest in cases, per The New York Times. Among other highlights, Ladapo wrote in an April Wall Street Journal op-ed that “mandating masks may help in some settings, but masks are not the panacea officials have presented them as,” decrying them in a Journal op-ed last October titled “Masks Are a Distraction from the Pandemic Reality.” After being appointed Tuesday, he also suggested vaccines were somehow getting too much hype as a safety measure. “It’s been treated almost like a religion, and that’s just senseless,” he said. The saga marks the continuation of Florida’s insistence on regulating how localities address COVID-19, even as Gov. DeSantis says the choice lies with the public. The governor signed legislation earlier this summer banning mask and vaccine mandates, warning last week of a $5,000-per-violation fine if a local government employee was required to show proof of vaccination. Dr. Jill Roberts, a University of South Florida epidemiology professor, told The Daily Beast the new policy was not appropriate for two reasons. “We are just weeks away from a vaccine for children and it makes sense to revisit the policies after vaccinating kids,” Roberts said. “The Delta variant is clearly waning, so why increase the risk of spread in children, allowing it to resurge, or allowing the next mutation to occur?” Cutting off the only mitigation measures—masks and isolation—still in place at a critical moment of the pandemic is foolhardy, Roberts added. “Social distancing is impossible with full schools, and improving ventilation is cost-prohibitive, so it is unclear why it would make sense to remove them at this time,” Roberts said. “There has been no indication whatsoever that masks are impeding learning, so again it is unclear what benefit occurs by changing this policy, while the potential to do harm is evident.” DeSantis has also shot down counties that have tried to implement their own mask mandates, such as Alachua, while the state’s education department has withheld the salaries of school officials who have continued to enforce a mask mandate. Meanwhile, even as he purports to back vaccines, DeSantis has continued to pal around with those skeptical toward COVID-19 safety measures, shots included. He held a roundtable discussion in April that included Dr. Scott Atlas, a former Donald Trump adviser who has previously blasted masks as a safety measure. In July, DeSantis also met with Mark McDonald, a clinical psychiatrist in California who has claimed that to mask and vaccinate children is harmful “physically and psychologically.” Ladapo also appeared with other doctors at a notorious July 2020 press conference touting the benefits of hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus. Included in that group: Dr. Stella Immanuel, a woman who, in other settings, has suggested medical ailments are caused by dream-sex with demons and that alien DNA can be used in actual treatment. Also on the scene that day: Dr. Simone Gold, who is now facing charges for participating in the Capital riot. The DeSantis brain trust notwithstanding, teachers in the classroom were still struggling to make sense of the change on Wednesday afternoon. “I’m terrified going to school now,” one Miami-Dade middle school teacher, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of professional retribution, told The Daily Beast. “This will also constantly derail children’s educations. Nothing good can come from this.”
Ron DeSantis hits a new low with his Covid-denialist surgeon general New appointee Joseph Ladapo has called vaccination efforts a misguided "religion." https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/ron-desantis-hits-new-low-his-covid-denialist-surgeon-general-n1279889 Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has long been at the forefront of the Republican Party's Covid-19 denialism, opposing mask mandates and social distancing and condoning the spread of vaccine misinformation — all while boasting about it on Fox News as a victory for freedom. He’s now breaking frightening new ground by appointing a surgeon general who has likened vaccination efforts to a misguided “religion” and believes the dangers of Covid are widely exaggerated. DeSantis’ appointment of Joseph Ladapo is troubling on two levels. It means the state’s top public health official will be disseminating health advice out of line with leading public health guidance across the country and downplaying the state’s extraordinary Covid crisis. It will also give more expert heft to DeSantis’ extreme policy choices as he continually denies the dangers of Covid in his state despite jaw-dropping hospitalization rates and casualties in recent months. DeSantis never had a particularly close relationship with his previous surgeon general, Scott Rivkees, who had been in his post since 2019 and stepped down this week after an employment agreement expired. In April 2020, he was whisked off stage at a news conference after saying that mask-wearing and social distancing could be expected for up to a year. After that conference, he rarely made public appearances. And an exposé by the Tampa Bay Times based on schedules and email correspondence found that during the first six months of 2021, DeSantis did not meet one-on-one with Rivkees, but he appeared dozens of times on Fox News. DeSantis' new surgeon general, Ladapo, has elite institutional affiliations: He received his medical degree from Harvard University and was most recently a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles. But it appears UCLA's website has recently scrubbed his profile, and according to an archived version of it, his research specialties were cardiovascular health and the cost-effectiveness of diagnostic technologies — which is to say, he doesn't appear to be an expert in the science he routinely contests. Ladapos' Covid-related views are out of line with many of the medical experts who populate his previous institutional homes, as well as mainstream scientific thinking about threats of Covid and how to mitigate them, like the efficacy of masks. And it appears he deploys his fringe views to support lax policies to guard against Covid. During a news conference marking his new position Tuesday, Ladapo said of vaccines, “There is nothing special about them compared to any other preventive measure.” This is despite the fact that medical experts and public health officials around the world have described the vaccine as the best defense against Covid. He also suggested that getting one should be a personal decision. “It’s been treated almost like a religion, and that’s just senseless,” he said of the vaccines. “We support measures to good health. That’s vaccination, losing weight, exercising more, eating more fruits and vegetables, everything.” In a foreboding moment, Ladapo said, “Florida will completely reject fear.” While it is a common and sensible practice for government officials to call for calm in moments of crisis, the problem is that Ladapo’s track record suggests he thinks people are overreacting to a problem that his state is in fact under-reacting to. Ladapo is a signatory of the controversial 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, a statement published on a website sponsored by a libertarian think tank and signed by scientists calling for non-high-risk people to resume normal life during the pandemic and to let herd immunity protect the public. (Some of the names on the list were fake, and almost all were later made private.) This theory of resolving the pandemic was a fringe view: Most scientists and public health experts pointed out that this approach would be unprecedented, lacked scientific backing, ethically problematic and that there was no plausible way to prevent transmission to high-risk people. The Orlando Sentinel has a good rundown of Ladapo's skepticism of or advocacy against many of the standard public health protocols adopted around the world to mitigate the virus: In a June Wall Street Journal piece headlined, “Are Covid Vaccines Riskier Than Advertised?”, Ladapo wrote, “Some scientists have raised concerns that the safety risks of Covid-19 vaccines have been underestimated.” He argued that COVID vaccines could be attributable to a spike in deaths in some countries such as Norway and decried “Anti-Trump politics in the spring of 2020 [that] mushroomed into social-media censorship.” He wrote another Wall Street Journal op-ed last week entitled, “Vaccine Mandates Can’t Stop Covid’s Spread.” He argued that because many carriers are asymptomatic, “It isn’t practical to punish adults who have no symptoms. … Doctors and public health officials used to understand that stopping spread is usually not practical.” In an April Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled, “An American Epidemic of ‘Covid Mania’,” Ladapo argued the U.S. response to COVID, which has now killed 676,000 in the U.S. including nearly 52,000 in Florida, was an “overreaction” and the disease “never posed a serious threat to social and economic institutions.” DeSantis will be able to use Ladapo as a weapon as he proceeds with his war on Covid restrictions, which have included punishing school districts that have defied his attempts at banning mask mandates in schools and barring companies from requiring employee vaccines. With Ladapo’s elite credentials, DeSantis can claim his denialism has the imprimatur of an elite doctor, and he likely can feature Ladapo far more regularly in news conferences than his predecessor without worrying about being contradicted. DeSantis seems to be taking Florida even further down a path of Covid chaos. One hopes other Republican governors don’t try to follow his lead.
Let's see what's going on in DeSantis land... State GOP leader: This refusal to mandate a Covid vaccine is working out so well, let's take a critical look at polio, rubella, and mumps vaccine mandates also.
Let's hear some more from some of DeSantis' favorite people speaking at his events... Speaker at DeSantis event says Biden 'grabbed' Americans' ivermectin supply to stop them from learning 'it works' https://www.rawstory.com/ron-desantis-ivermectin/ Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, fresh off promoting a mask-bashing doctor as his surgeon general, held an event today in which a speaker accused the Biden White House of deliberately taking away Americans' supply of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. As reported by Florida Politics, 40-year-old Apollo Beach handyman Charles Craig talked about the purported wonders of several unproven treatments for COVID-19, and he then said that the White House had worked to stop Americans from having access to them. "To think that they're limiting the access of this is sickening -- it works!" Craig said. "In the beginning, hydroxychloroquine worked. They grabbed it. More recently, ivermectin worked. They grabbed it." In fact, the Biden White House has not "grabbed" ivermectin, although some feed supply companies have restricted purchases of it because some customers were trying to treat COVID by using horse deworming medicine that happens to contain ivermectin. Hydroxychloroquine, meanwhile, can still be obtained, although it's fallen out of favor and former President Donald Trump was not treated with the anti-malarial drug after he became hospitalized with COVID-19. Watch the video below.
Florida’s ‘Fully Vaccinated’ Rate Is the Same as Other Anti-Vax, Science-Hating States Delaware, Hawaii, and Pennsylvania Per the Times, Florida is 17th among all states in having delivered at least one dose of the vaccine to its citizenry; it is tied for 20th among all states in its fully vaccinated rate — it has the same percentage here as anti-vax hothouses such as Delaware, Hawaii, and Pennsylvania, and is just two percentage points behind California; and, having vaccinated 96 percent of its senior population, it is thirteenth overall in the 65+ category — ahead of a whole bunch of mouth-foaming, anti-science, slacker-jurisdictions such as Illinois, New Jersey, Virginia, Washington, Oregon, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, and Washington, D.C.
And yet Florida has much worse problems with Covid -- could it be due to the lack of proper public health measures which allows Covid to spread unchecked under DeSantis' poor leadership. While we are at it -- let's take a look at one of DeSantis' buddies in poor leadership... This Republican hasn’t been vaccinated for COVID-19 — but plays a major role in shaping Florida’s health policies https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/th...jor-role-in-shaping-floridas-health-policies/
Covid vaccine and mask mandate bans in Florida and elsewhere raise cynical questions Do Republicans think they can reap political benefits from the continued spread of the virus? https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opini...elsewhere-raise-cynical-questions-ncna1280069 On Tuesday, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis named Dr. Joseph Ladapo the state’s next surgeon general. Lapado shuns mask and vaccine mandates while pushing unproven treatments popular with the far right, like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. apado’s appointment is par for the course in Florida. At a news conference in Gainesville last week, DeSantis personally provided a platform for vaccine disinformation. One speaker stood next to the governor and said, “The vaccine changes your RNA.” Another implied that the vaccine can cause death. DeSantis later posted a video of the conference on Facebook. He also threatened to fine Florida cities and counties that require vaccines for employees and banned mask mandates in schools. DeSantis has also blamed President Joe Biden for the fact that Covid-19 still hasn’t been contained. "You know, he said he was going to end Covid. He hasn’t done that," DeSantis said in August. "At the end of the day, he is trying to find a way to distract from the failures of his presidency." Across the country, Republican leaders seem increasingly comfortable amplifying anti-vaccine rhetoric and conspiracies while banning mask and vaccine requirements, even though unvaccinated people are causing the virus to spread and increasing the likelihood of more coronavirus variants. And DeSantis is not the only Republican seeking to blame Biden for the latest Covid surge. This raises a cynical question: Do some Republicans think they can reap political benefits from the continued spread of Covid? And if so, how might that calculation factor into their policy decisions? Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas banned government mandates for vaccines and barred local governments and school districts from enacting their own vaccine mandates, even though schoolchildren are not yet eligible for the vaccine. Indeed, as of Tuesday, nine states have banned mask mandates in schools — all with Republican governors. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, leader of a state that has not yet banned masks in schools, issued an executive order banning proof of vaccination by state government — an order that includess public schools and public universities. On the federal level, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has introduced his own bills to ban mask and vaccine mandates. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is openly opposed to vaccine mandates as well. To encourage vaccine refusal, some Republican lawmakers are casting vaccine refusal as a civil rights issue. “South Dakota will stand up to defend freedom,” Republican Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota tweeted in response to Biden’s mandate that businesses with more than 100 employees require workers to be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing. Similarly, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called Biden’s vaccinate-or-test mandate “heavy-handed authoritarianism.” Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio has said vaccine requirements are “un-American.” Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi said vaccine mandates are an “attack” on “hard-working Americans,” adding that “in Mississippi, we believe in freedom.” “Keeping your neighbors and your co-workers healthy is a choice,” Reeves has said, suggesting his definition of freedom means being able to infect neighbors and co-workers with a deadly virus. Meanwhile, Mississippi has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country and as of last week had the highest death rate. People like Cruz, a Harvard Law School graduate, must know they are spreading a legal fallacy when saying things like Biden’s mask requirement is “unconstitutional” and that "the vaccine mandate is going to be struck down in court." On Feb. 20, 1905, the Supreme Court in a 7-2 ruling upheld the right of a city to fine residents who refused to receive a smallpox vaccination. More recently, the Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to a vaccine mandate. The precedent here is clear. Moreover, laws commonly limit the liberty of some people to protect the health and safety of others. That’s why we have speed limits, laws against drunk and reckless driving, worker protections and laws against dumping toxins in drinking water. But fired up anti-vaxxers are waving signs that say things like, “I call the shot, not you,” and, “My body, my choice: Say no to mask mandates.” While the virus is mostly crushing red states (for now), the damage is not limited to Republican voters or consumers of right-wing media. On the other hand, DeSantis, Abbott and Cruz are vaccinated. In fact, every single Republican governor and the majority of the U.S. Congress is vaccinated. Fox News implemented its own vaccine requirements even as their top personalities attacked them. In other words, Republican leaders are getting vaccinated while encouraging others to reject vaccinations, vaccine requirements and mask mandates. When their constituents do get sick, however, these same leaders are blaming everyone but themselves. DeSantis wasn’t the only Republican governor to try to blame the Covid surge on Biden. Kemp also tried to blame Biden for his state's low vaccination rate, accusing the president of giving “mixed messages” regarding masks and vaccinations. Scott Jennings, a Republican campaign adviser and former special assistant to President George W. Bush, railed against Biden’s “failures [in] handling the pandemic” and Biden’s inability to “convince the unvaccinated crowd to get their shots.” He also said that at the midterms, Biden should be held responsible for the number of people who died of Covid while he was in office. Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has claimed Americans are not taking the vaccine because they “don’t trust” Biden. Trump also claimed, without evidence, that people were more interested in taking the shot while he was president. At least among the conservative base, this tactic is working. At a Conservative Political Action Conference in July, the crowds cheered when a speaker said the U.S. government failed to "sucker" people into getting vaccinated. They also cheered the fact that Biden hadn’t met his summer vaccination goal. In 1992, President Bill Clinton’s strategist James Carville popularized the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Ever since, the idea that voters reward the political party that creates a strong economy has been conventional wisdom. It has already cost nearly $6 billion to hospitalize unvaccinated people during the latest Covid surge. These costs are "borne not only by patients but also by society more broadly, including taxpayer-funded public programs and private insurance premiums paid by workers, businesses, and individual purchasers," wrote the authors of an analysis published through the Kaiser Family Foundation and Peterson Center on Healthcare Health System Tracker. Bankrupting hospitals and depressing entire industries is obviously not good for the economy, but it could be good for the GOP in the midterms. While most Americans support vaccine and mask requirements, a majority of Republicans are opposed to them. Elected Republicans who are more afraid of conservative primary challengers than Democratic rivals may have concluded that keeping their base fired up and angry is a better strategy than bringing their views in line with a majority of Americans — and public safety. And the “Democrats want to take away your freedom” drum is certainly a way to thrill the base. Unfortunately, it also will lead to more illness and death.
The problem is all the Delta strain...Delta came up from Colombia and is moving south to north Just like Covid hit NYC first because of the flow of people is greater into NYC There is a significant amount of randomness to this