DeathSantis bars school masking.

[Ombligo]

Politically he is taking an unnecessary risk. He could go with masking and blame the feds for it. Then when fewer kids catch it, he can pontificate about how unneeded it was. Instead, he won't be able to dodge the criticism if a bunch of cute kids die. Especially since those kids are going to primarily be from his supporters.

[p8712]

Ombligo wrote:
Politically he is taking an unnecessary risk. He could go with masking and blame the feds for it. Then when fewer kids catch it, he can pontificate about how unneeded it was. Instead, he won't be able to dodge the criticism if a bunch of cute kids die. Especially since those kids are going to primarily be from his supporters.

He just signed into law the school with mask mandates will have their funding withheld.

He’s not an idiot. He’s the smart Trump we’reall afraid of.

[Lux Interior]

Diana wrote:
A week ago, Stitt (R, OK) did the no-mask thing also. A look on the oklahoma.gov website today (regarding Covid) says that they follow the CDC Guidelines. Where’s the popcorn? :popcorn:

Just wait until the infrastructure bill passes.

I guarantee that most, if not all republicans that vote against it will be telling their constituents about how they "brought the money home."

[pdq]

Yesterday DeSantis’ state just set its latest record for largest number of Covid cases reported in one day. That’s the state’s record over the entire time period of the pandemic. Yikes.

Putting politics aside, one would pray that the mortality rate has decreased - perhaps many of these cases are breakthrough infections in the vaccinated*, which we can expect to be mild. Or perhaps the virus is less deadly now (which is not unexpected, over time - it does a virus no good, in an evolutionary sense, to kill hosts). But we haven’t seen this so far, empirically.

Putting my political hat back on, DeSantis’ personal dogmatic crusade against Covid restrictions is not going to be very popular in retrospect if past mortality trends hold.

Worth posting (from the link above):

Florida on Friday reported 21,683 new cases of COVID-19 — the most infections in a single day since the start of the pandemic, according to…the CDC.

Over the last seven days, Florida saw a 50% weekly increase in cases…In July…the Sunshine State recorded one out of every five of the nation's new cases, he said.

"There is no higher risk area in the United States than we're seeing here," Florida International University infectious disease expert Dr. Aileen Marty told CBS Miami. "The numbers that we're seeing are unbelievable, just unbelievably frightening."

* Unfortunately, doesn’t look like it:

On Wednesday, 8,816 Florida residents were hospitalized from COVID-19 complications, and more than 95% of those were not fully vaccinated,

[pdq]

Graphically:



(although I think I see one day last December w over 30k - maybe that was a multi-day total?)

[kj]

deckeda wrote:
But people WILL vote for him and he knows it.

Florida is so close to a 50-50 split between liberals and conservatives — but leaning conservative —- that it’s a cynical if effective method of garnering enough support to get elected.

I guess that's an empirical question. We'll see what happens. We've got some clown doing exactly the same thing here, and I personally don't think it's working, but we'll see.

[space-time]

At least you can still wear a mask if you want to. I imagine he would try to ban this as well, if he could.