Now Alone at the Bottom – Florida is Officially the Biggest Loser

 

*Update 8/30/21

Maybe we should call it the “novel scarlet fever,” since the massive new Delta-variant novel coronavirus infection rate disproportionately impacts red states (and high-level red state vacation destinations like Vegas). Places where vaccination rates are below national standards and masks are anything but mandatory. But only one state, the reddest of the red when it comes to COVID (the darker the red in the above map, the greater the infection/mortality rates), Florida actually has more COVID-related deaths today than it did at the peak of the pre-vaccine infection period. The only state in the union with that ignominious distinction. Blame on undocumented aliens crossing the southern border hundreds if not a thousand+ miles away, which obviously should have registered greater-than-Florida increases in such border, is not statistically sustainable as the above map clearly indicates.

In effect, those who refuse vaccinations and will not mask and/or test accordingly, are inflicting millions if not trillions of dollars of hard economic damage on the nation without absorbing a whit of what they are rather directly the cause of. Not even counting the suffering and death they may be inflicting on innocents under some constitutionally unsupported, self-determined notion of “individual freedom.” The right to infect and kill others? 

One Delta infected individual, on average, transmits the disease to eight to ten other individuals, which obviously creates an exponential infection rate. As travelers from “wide open” states travel to states with appropriate COVID restrictions and regulations, they undo the efforts of safe and sane governmental regulation. And now that the FDA is fully approving the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer already and next Moderna), the remaining vaccine skeptics have just plain run out of legally tenable reasons not to get vaccinated.

As the newly elevated governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, adds new transparency to her office, as well as new vaccine and mask mandates particularly of school children (those under 12 still not eligible for vaccination), some red state governors, folks like Arizona’s Doug Ducey, Texas’ Greg Abbott and most all Florida’s Ron DeSantis, continue to issue and support anti-mask, anti-vaccination mandates from school districts, employers, etc. literally making it illegal for anyone to require such preventative measures. They’ve even cut funding to public schools and school districts that still have resisted these inane policies, even as the Biden administration is attempting to replace the withheld funding.

In Florida, “new daily cases appear to have topped out at 138 per every 100,000 residents — more than two and a half times last summer’s peak. As a result, the state’s current hospitalization rate (80/100,000) is nearly one and a half times last summer’s peak; new daily deaths (1/100,000) are higher than ever. And they’re both still climbing.

“In other words, Florida did roughly twice as badly as California last summer in terms of COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths. This summer, however, Florida is doing roughly four times worse in terms of cases and hospitalizations — and nearly six times worse in terms of deaths…

“‘Vaccines are working to prevent deaths in many other countries that have seen post vaccine spike in cases, and most other states in the U.S. as well. Florida is different,’ Dr. Vincent Rajkumar, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, recently explained on Twitter. ‘What’s different in Florida is that, relative to the vaccination rate (~50%), the relaxation of distancing and masking was disproportionately high. Leaders expressed disdain for masks and mask mandates. The total number of people unvaccinated is high. And hospitals got overwhelmed.’” Yahoo News, August 25th. 

That Florida and Texas public school teachers are resigning in record numbers as their own government leaves them unprotected, that it will take years to replace them, does not seem to trouble red state leadership. After all, science, medicine and full education are no longer red state values. And the infection and mortality rates incurred in defiance of science, medicine and a full education reflect that reality.

However, at least the Florida judicial system still cares about the rule of law and the health and welfare of its citizens, especially the youngest in public schools. “A Florida judge on Friday [8/27] knocked down the state's order banning local school boards from implementing mask mandates, saying the sweeping action from Tallahassee doesn't ‘pass constitutional muster.’

“Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Cooper's decision followed a four-day trial, which was held online as the state struggles to contain the spread of Covid-19… School districts have the right to set policies, like mask mandates, as long as they have ‘compelling state interest’ and have a ‘narrowly tailored’ plan of action, according to Cooper.” NBC News, August 27th. DeSantis faces reelection at the end of 2022. Let’s hope his endangering political career ends there. And that judges in other states with same inane rules see the issue with the same clarity.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I just wonder when such irresponsible governors become labeled as the obvious fomenters of unnecessary death and economic destruction that they truly are.