It’s become routine. Every time there is a dip in Florida’s Covid-19 cases, our self-absorbed governor and hopeful 2024 ‘daddy’s best boy’ Ron DeSantis can’t resist patting himself on the back.
In an interview last Sunday, he gave us his latest take:
"Freedom works," he said. "People vote with their feet. If the media was right and those other states, New York did the right way and Florida did the wrong way, you would see people leaving Florida to flock to those states."
"There was a lot of pressure on the media from some of these scientific elites. They didn’t want a control group because they were advocating policies that were going to have a hugely detrimental effect to the social fabric," DeSantis said. "If you could show a Sweden or a Florida or some of these other places that didn’t pay those terrible costs and still had similar outcomes in terms of COVID, then it would show that what they were advocating was not only misguided but it was actually harmful."
"It would be one thing if we could all just go in a cave for two weeks and the virus would disappear, but that is not true. So, you’re going to have to deal with it. And I think we’re finding that out now because you look, some of these very highly vaccinated countries in Europe are having massive spikes; Vermont in the United States hitting records," he added. "So, that’s just the reality, and I think that living with it and not destroying your society was something that made sense. And, quite frankly, was what the literature up until COVID for pandemic preparedness had said, they always said, don’t let the fear overcome society. You have to keep things going."
(Emphasis added)
There’s plenty in there to chew on — like the bit about the ‘scientific elites’ not wanting ‘a control group’, as if the public health response to a global pandemic should be ‘you billion folks wear masks and you billion don’t, and we’ll see who dies faster’ — but I’m going to focus on the parts I highlighted.
Desantis singled out Sweden and Florida as not paying ‘those terrible costs’. Let’s see if that’s valid.
Sweden got publicity early in the pandemic for adopting a sort of ‘live with it’ policy. How well did that work? I’m going to focus mostly on deaths in this diary, because the number of cases has become less important due to the vaccines and therapies available.
OK, Sweden got hit hard early, and again in the Delta surge over the winter last year. Since then they’ve done rather well. Now Florida:
Florida actually did pretty well during the first Covid-19 surge, when nobody really knew what was happening or had any idea how to treat the people who fell sick, much less even that masks were useful. That had nothing to do with anything DeSantis did — the whole country basically shut down while we waited to see what happened in the first set of hot-spots like New York city, Italy, New Orleans, etc.
Then, on May 20, 2020, DeSantis took his first victory lap. Read and watch the video here. He had already forced the state to re-open starting May 4, 2020, and 6 weeks later there were over 10,000 cases per day in Florida. A month after that, over 200 people were dying daily. Great leadership, eh?
Here’s a look at the overall statistics for Sweden and Florida:
Sorry for the lousy graphics — I’m unable to figure out how to make them bigger or clearer.
Sweden has reported 1,484 deaths per million population since the beginning of the pandemic. Florida has reported 2,847.
Almost exactly TWICE as many people per capita have died from Covid-19 in Florida compared to Sweden, and DeSantis dares to claim some sort of equivalency. That’s 30,000 extra deaths.
So where would Florida actually rank world-wide in Covid-19 deaths if it was a country?
Yeah, right behind Brazil, in 12th place in deaths per capita… in the world! Ahead of the USA as a whole, and every other developed country in the world. Take a bow, DeathSantis!
Actually it’s not that surprising, as DeathSantis’s pro-Covid policies are quite similar to those of Brazilian strong-man Bolsonaro’s.
Alright, this is getting long, and I’m tired. I’m not going to go through the same exercise with his dig at the ‘highly vaccinated countries in Europe’, except to note that Germany’s death rate is 1,202 per million, well under half of Florida’s. Yes, cases are surging in western Europe, but deaths aren’t.
I am, however, going to take exception with DeSantis’s dumping on Vermont. Look at Vermont’s daily deaths:
Look at the scale of this graph. I know Vermont is far smaller in population than Florida, but most days it’s either zero, 1 or 2 deaths.
Yeah, Vermont ranks 51st out of 51 states+DC in deaths per million — less than 25% of Florida’s lofty 2,847 per million, which ranks 9th.
This is part of what makes Ron DeSantis so incredibly terrifying to me: he can lie with a straight face better than TFG, he has absolutely no moral compass, and he doesn’t have the baggage of TFG.
The thought of him as president is mortifying.
Cheers.