Seasonal
Ron DeSantis seems to want to kill off most of the people who vote for him.
With the highly contagious Delta variant spreading, a state comprising little more than 6% of the US population was accounting for one in five of the country’s new cases, recording 50,997 in the three days to Tuesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
DeSantis says the spike is “seasonal” and opposes lockdowns or new restrictions. The Republican governor followed up his executive order banning mask mandates in schools by dismissed the burgeoning crisis in Florida’s hospitals as “media hysteria”.
So it’s hysteria to report the stats?
“Our hospitals are open for business. We’re not shutting down. We’re gonna have schools open. We’re protecting every Floridian’s job in this state, we are protecting people’s small businesses. These interventions have failed time and time again throughout this pandemic,” he said, referring to mask mandates.
Protecting jobs and small businesses won’t do anyone much good if most of the workers and business owners and customers and consumers die of Covid.
Seasonal, even though winter is months away, and no other state is experiencing the same surge. Okay.
Any reasoning will do if you’ve an ideology to prop up.
Madness. This is criminal. He thinks the virus is going to blink first? IT DOESN”T HAVE EYES!
There is IMHO a strong correlation: one denialism leads to another. Climate denialism links positively with Covid denialism. Business-as-usual must at all costs proceed as usual. Except it can’t. Best save your money if you don’t know what tomorrow will bring.
From the article linked to:
Executive orders are just DeSantis signing stuff, right? How the fuck does one asshole like him from overriding municipal health ordnances? States’ rights are cool, but cities and towns are shit out of luck? I hope there’s something he can be charged with.
Of course it’s not actually going to kill off most of his voters. It will kill off many people, maybe 1% or even more, but far from a majority. He’ll still be able to win the next election.
GW:
I have agonised over it, wrestled with it, tried to avoid it with all the avoidance skills I can muster, but at the end of it all I am forced most reluctantly to the conclusion that we voters as a collective get the politicians we deserve.
And now I need a drink; sun over the yardarm be damned.
Local control is great for when a school board wants to teach Intelligent Design, but not so much when there’s a health crisis interfering with Dollars to be Made (today.)
The sad thing is, that snowbirds who winter in warmer climes will continue to choose Florida because it has lower property taxes than California, so DeSantis can afford to let a few hundred thousand die. They’ll be replenished by aging libertarians enough to keep him in office.
In recent years, important elections (George W Bush, Warnock/Ossoff) have been decided by tiny margins in a few southern states.
It’s kind of gruesome, but Republicans may end up killing enough of their own voters to lose these elections going forward.