DeSantis’ COVID record is terrible. Lawmakers should remember that at special session | Opinion

This week, Gov. Ron DeSantis has called the Florida legislature into a special session in order to coerce his Republican majority to pass a series of measures intended to diminish the ability of private businesses and government to promote COVID vaccinations. Of course, this has very little to do with the welfare of Floridians. DeSantis is making his case directly to a right-wing swath of 2024 national primary voters that he is the most anti-mask, anti-vaccine governor in America.

And to prove that point, like a modern-day pied piper, he will continue to lead our state off the cliff. I hope our legislators consider our governor’s record on this pandemic before they blindly jump.

Under DeSantis, Florida is among the nation’s and world’s leaders in COVID sickness and death.

How does Florida rank?

While there are a ton of metrics available to evaluate performance, the two most obvious are your COVID infection rate, and your COVID death rate. Infections tell you how well you controlled the spread of the virus. Deaths tells you how well you protected those most likely to succumb to it. Using the “rate” rather than the gross amount makes comparisons fairer.

So how has Florida fared under DeSantis? Well, measuring from the beginning of the pandemic to the present, Florida’s infection rate was 14th worst and our death rate was eighth worst of the 50 states. The more than 60,000 people who died in Florida represent 281 dead per 100,000 residents.

To put it in perspective, if Florida were its own nation (and it’s bigger than most), it would have the 12th worst death rate of the more than 200 countries of the world. So yes, we are better than Bosnia and Mississippi. But nearly every other corner of the globe has had a more effective COVID response.

DeSantis was not always so wrongheaded about the pandemic. At the beginning, he seemed genuinely interested in curbing the spread of the disease. Last year, when I believed my city’s spring break was becoming a super-spreader event, I reached out to the governor and he was fully supportive of my decision to close beaches and promenades, and to implement curfews. I expressed my thanks to him publicly, because in a crisis we should put aside partisan differences and work together.

Soon thereafter, however, the governor made a calculated political judgment that opposing mask usage and vaccine requirements was good politics even if it was lethal policy. So, DeSantis jumped on board with the “herd immunity” crowd, started selling “anti-mask” beer koozies on his campaign website, fought private industry efforts to require vaccines, demonized local school boards trying to protect their students and, generally, declared himself the champion for all those Americans who demand the right to die a painful death and spread disease to others.

Miami Beach fared better

I spent a good deal of the pandemic urging my residents to not listen to DeSantis. We are a world-famous tourist destination, and with so many visitors from all over the world there is always added risk of COVID spread. And we certainly weren’t built for social distancing. So, we were the first city in the nation to issue a mask mandate after the CDC recommended so. And we have done all we can to push, bribe and prod people to get their shots. Our city employees must be vaccinated or produce weekly negative COVID tests. (DeSantis aims to stop this practice.)

Our residents followed this advice rather than the governor’s. Despite being in a county with one of the highest infection rates in the nation, our city has a mortality rate that is half that of the state’s.

At the special session, our governor will undoubtedly ridicule Anthony Fauci and declare freedom is alive in Florida. No doubt his hand-picked surgeon general, who recently refused to wear a mask with a state senator undergoing cancer therapy, will use the platform to disseminate harmful, outlier views that the mainstream medical community reject as dangerous. And DeSantis will use the stage to further burnish his anti-mask, anti-vaccine cred, and seek to even further hamstring local government and business efforts knowing full well the deadly results.

This makes even more ironic his mantra, “Make America Florida.” If America had Florida’s COVID fatality rate, an additional 171,00 Americans would not be alive to celebrate Thanksgiving this month. I hope the Legislature thinks about that before they blindly follow DeSantis off the cliff.

Dan Gelber is the mayor of Miami Beach.

This story was originally published November 13, 2021 at 8:00 AM.