If your Florida Thanksgiving comes with a side of DeSantis’ COVID politics, don’t be the turkey | Opinion
Update: A new COVID-19 variant, B.1.1.529, has been identified by South African scientists and it’s too early to know how well the vaccines work against it — another reason to remain cautious this holiday season.
Let’s be grateful for being the lucky ones who are still here, but don’t forget the losses and the lessons of the coronavirus pandemic as we gather this Thanksgiving.
I’m not here to dampen the joy over the relatively low number of COVID infections in Florida, but we can’t afford delusions of normalcy.
The pandemic has taken so much from us, a fact lost on Gov. Ron DeSantis, too busy playing anti-Biden politics to acknowledge the forfeitures on this holiday or any other — and warn the public to still be cautious.
Yes, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, has been advising Americans that we can gather safely with our families — and without masks — this Thanksgiving if we’re all fully vaccinated.
Unfortunately in Florida, only 60.9% of the people are in that category. That means someone at your table is likely to be unvaccinated.
A new surge in cases
In addition, the nation is seeing a new surge in cases.
The seven-day average of reported coronavirus cases are up by 18%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The daily average of COVID infections surged about 30 percent this month, The New York Times reports.
Other parts of the world transitioning into the cold winter, including Europe, are seeing significant hikes — and now that we’ve opened up, they can travel to the United States.
A Miami friend who traveled to Vienna to spend the holiday season with her family, for example, is under lockdown right now. Supermarkets, drugstores and bakeries are open, but most other businesses are closed in the city, she reports.
DeSantis’ COVID politics
It’s exasperating and anxiety-producing, but what makes it worse is our divisive political COVID culture in Florida.
We don’t pull together to fight the virus; we pull apart.
There’s another footnote to Fauci’s green light to gather: If you’re traveling or don’t know the vaccination status of the people around you, he advises, then you should wear a mask.
Florida’s herd immunity-believing crackpot of a governor, however, doesn’t want to hear any of it.
He likes to boast that Fauci doesn’t need to tell Floridians what to do.
Throwing common sense and expert guidance to the wind, DeSantis continues to downplay the deadly virus still with us, making us all less safe, including the Floridians who enable and applaud him.
Please don’t let your guard down during the holidays. Protect yourself and the vulnerable by getting vaccinated. And it won’t hurt you to wear a mask in the close company of immunocompromised relatives like diabetics and people undergoing cancer treatment.
Loss and gratitude
Thanksgiving calls for gratitude, and we shall gather and celebrate, loving perhaps more deeply than ever, despite the losses in Florida, where at least 61,147 people lost their lives to COVID-19.
At many tables, there will be an empty place and broken hearts.
I’m thinking, most of all, about the young Jacksonville mother, the daughter of a colleague, taken from her family by COVID. She left three children, the youngest 18 months. If that isn’t a tragedy that shakes one to the core, I don’t know what is.
I, too, am still mourning a loss, and although the death of my mother last December won’t be counted among the COVID casualties, the compounded suffering by the pandemic also played a role.
Those of us who loved her didn’t get to see her in person for the last nine months of her life because not enough people in this state, led by DeSantis, would simply follow the science and the rules to stop the spread of the disease.
Those precious months of lockdown were time we lost with her.
People are still losing time with their loved ones in nursing homes because, even though we don’t report often enough about the elderly in nursing homes the way we did at the onset of the pandemic, nursing homes are still going on lockdowns because of COVID infections.
Why?
Unvaccinated employees are bringing the virus in. Unvaccinated healthcare workers infect the elderly who have to leave nursing homes and ALFs for services like dialysis.
“Yo sin mi familia, no quiero vivir,” Mami told me during a rare lucid moment on a FaceTime call.
Without my family, I don’t want to live.
At that moment, I wanted to bring her home against all reason, only to be told that this was impossible given her condition, and even if it were possible, I would be exposing her to untold risks as the medical and service professionals visiting her would bring the disease into our home.
This will be my first Thanksgiving without Mami, and the tears have been flowing for days.
It will take all I have to keep it together at the Thanksgiving table.
So I beg you, hate my politics, if you will, but heed the advice of experts: Don’t forget COVID is still here.
And have a happy, delicious Thanksgiving.
This story was originally published November 24, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
