DeSantis’ emotional announcement seemed a rare, welcome and overdue display of empathy | Editorial
Gov. DeSantis choked up during a press conference last week. He took a time-out — several seconds of silence in front of the media, to compose himself before continuing to discuss his order to allow family members back in to the nursing homes and assisted living facilities where their loved ones have been isolated … since March.
The sight was, at once, heart-warming and heart-rending. We have no idea what exactly rendered him speechless that day, but it was a display of empathy that has been missing for far too long from his handling, and mishandling, of the coronavirus pandemic in Florida.
“It weighs on me to think of people who passed away not just from COVID, but from natural causes, without being able to say a goodbye. We had to do something,” DeSantis said.
So many missteps
Had empathy informed his leadership since March, perhaps he would have realized that, yes, he had to “do something,” but, perhaps, it would have been something different.
Like not denying there was community spread in Florida when Dr. Anthony Fauci said there was. Like closing the beaches to Spring Breakers. Like mandating wearing masks. Like ordering Floridians to stay home earlier in the pandemic. Like reopening later, rather than sooner. Like not pushing a dubious cure. Like choosing a more credible role model than his mentor in Washington, D.C.
In March, the Board acknowledged that DeSantis was being saddled with an unfathomable responsibility: “There is no operator’s manual for handling the most singular health threat in this country in more than a century.” At the time, there were only — only! — 700 cases of COVID-19 in the state, and about a dozen deaths.
And now, here we are, stunned at more than 640,000 cases, and more than 11,800 dead in Florida.
Rare awareness
So when the governor seemed overcome at the thought of people who have died in nursing homes, alone, during the pandemic, we prefer to see it as one of his first public displays of a true and deep awareness of the pain that so many hundreds of thousands of Floridians have experienced in the past six months.
An awareness of all the residents, young, old and in between who lost their lives to the coronavirus.
Of the medical professionals who worked so hard to save those lives — some of who themselves died of the virus.
Of the livelihoods on hold, or gone completely.
Though it was just for a brief moment, it was reassuring to see the governor, seemingly at one with so many of us, who, in the face of the virus’ rampage, are bereft, without words.
This story was originally published September 6, 2020 at 9:42 AM.