Florida Gov. DeSantis’ politics-over-health approach is bad for business recovery | Opinion
Ron’s gone wrong again.
Blindsiding local officials — most egregiously, in the COVID-19 epicenter of Miami — Gov. Ron DeSantis declared Florida fully opened on Monday.
Without enough Floridians vaccinated and virus mutations a new concern, issuing a sweeping executive order that overrides local restrictions was a highly irresponsible move. It sends false free-for-all signals at a time when the governor’s message to the public should clearly be first and foremost: Please, vaccinate.
Vaccine hesitancy
Vaccine hesitancy is all too real, thanks in large measure, to politicians like DeSantis, who have downplayed the virus since the beginning, giving wings to debunked mythology and conspiracy theories over science.
The way to a real safe new normal depends on whether enough Floridians vaccinate.
Yet, only 27 percent of the population is fully vaccinated and only 42 percent has received one dose as of this writing. Experts estimate 80 percent to 90 percent of the population has to be vaccinated to reach COVID-19 immunity.
So, no, we’re not in a place where we can throw caution to the wind, vaccine-wise. Nor are we free and clear to abandon mask-wearing and social distancing when cases of infection by coronavirus variants more than doubled in Florida during the past two weeks.
“This pandemic is real and it’s still a present danger to our public health,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava tweeted after the DeSantis announcement. “Pretending it’s over won’t make it go away. Lifting orders won’t make it go away.”
She added: “What will: Getting vaccinated.”
A recent study by the University of Miami published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine confirms the correlation between stringent public safety measures against COVID-19 and lower cases of deaths in Florida and Miami-Dade County during the first two months of the pandemic.
Once restrictions were loosened, researchers note, there was a surge in transmission between the Memorial Day and Independence Day holidays. When statewide restrictions reached their lowest enforcement during October, a second surge in coronavirus cases was seen immediately after.
That’s the science, not the lip service DeSantis gives COVID-19 to justify his premature, politically motivated decisions.
But what else can Floridians expect from DeSantis?
He has waged a political culture war over the highly contagious and deadly disease since the pandemic reached our shores. And now, he’s endangering not only Floridians’ health, but also threatening, with his haste, business recovery.
He contradicts himself with this new edict, when in the same breath, he signs a bill banning businesses from asking for proof of vaccination, the so-called “anti-vaccine passport” law.
The CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings said Thursday that if Florida won’t allow operators to require proof of COVID-19 vaccination for passengers and crew, he will take NCL ships elsewhere.
Cruise liners were counting on asking people for proof of vaccination to ensure a safe return to cruising. Now they can’t do that — and guess what? A substantial number of people aren’t going to patronize businesses that put their health at risk.
Certainly not when 41 percent of Republicans say they aren’t getting the vaccine, according to a PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll. They are DeSantis’ base, and he should be doing the hard work of persuading them, not dissuading them by giving them a free pass to contaminate others.
Florida needs — has always needed — a public-education campaign, but it hasn’t gotten one from its top leader.
Business leaders, step up
The state needs business leaders to step up and, if only for their own survival, publicly encourage people to vaccinate. They must reach their hesitant populations, and workplaces must provide incentives like time off or a bonus to vaccinate.
If Target, for example, gives customers a $5 gift card when they get the flu vaccine at store pharmacies, why don’t COVID-19 vaccine providers like Publix do so as well? And also CVS and Walgreens, which have wasted more COVID vaccine doses than most states combined?
It’s a crime to see empty seats at these vaccination sites, no lines when the rest of the world is in need.
But that’s what happens when a governor plays to political division instead of facts.
Late responding to the pandemic, which DeSantis downplayed, the governor plays blind man to the horrors that families sickened by COVID have endured, then calls his latest move “evidence-based.” And he does so to the rousing applause of Republican legislators and the lieutenant governor from Miami flanking him, acquiescent despite the losses of her people.
Let’s see that evidence.
DeSantis doesn’t show it because: First, he doesn’t have it; second, it doesn’t swing in his favor, so he hides it from the public and won’t discuss it with journalists, whose questions he won’t answer.
And, what he does say, is deeply flawed.
He touts a COVID mortality rate of 2 percent, as if that’s some kind of a success measure when the death toll is a horrific 35,399 in Florida — and counting.
Deaths have slowed, but they’re still happening.
Just ask the family of a beloved school worker who died of COVID-19 infection in Jacksonville last weekend. The school is shut down for two weeks of quarantine.
Maskless during mass political rallies he allowed during the worst of the infection, DeSantis is impetuous and premature during economic recovery.
His politics-over-health approach is bad for business.
This story was originally published May 5, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
