Floridians will be keeping their distance and wearing face masks for up to a year until a COVID-19 vaccine exists, Florida Surgeon General Scott Rivkees said Monday before being whisked away by the governor’s spokeswoman.
Rivkees told reporters that Floridians needed to get used to current precautions, such as avoiding crowds of 10 or more and wearing face masks in public.
“Until we get a vaccine, which is a while off, this is going to be our new normal and we need to adapt and protect ourselves,” he said.
And then Gov. DeSantis had the top health care official in the state kicked out of the room.
What.
The.
Fuck.
All because Rivkees was speaking to the reality that we're unable to safely co-mingle until there's a cure? It's the truth: This coronavirus is highly effective at spreading, and reducing the risks is our only means to combat it right now.
Our governor kicked out his key player because said player wasn't on message?
DeSantis is already in a lot of trouble for showing clear ignorance of COVID-19 and his refusals to issue stronger protections for the public - he foolishly kept the beaches opened during Spring Break season even as the theme parks voluntarily shut themselves down - as well as making too-early noises about reopening the schools so that businesses can get back to making money by the start of May.
But DeSantis can't be bothered. Like other Republican leaders - Governors like South Dakota's Kristi Noem, Nebraska's Pete Ricketts, Arkansas' Asa Hutchinson - they don't want to deal with the serious ramifications of what spreading the coronavirus will do to their own states' citizenry.
The lack of empathy stems from the ALMIGHTY REPUBLICAN NARRATIVE that government is "the problem" never a "solution," and that businesses take priority over everyone's health and well-being.
In the process, they're letting their own voting constituents fall prey to a disease that's currently best fought by giving it no targets to hit (US).
Because somehow, some way, these Republican leaders know they'll be let off the hook come election day. That enough of their own base will forgive as long as they're convinced "the libruls" and "the Dread Other" took it worse.
Either that or they'll try cheating some more.
Even though the latest results from the Wisconsin primary and local judicial elections proved that gameplan has a few flaws (i.e., pissed off voters who overwhelming went with the Democratic candidates).
Of course, the Republicans tend to respond to these setbacks with more cheating, more denial, more suffering for others.
Gods help us if the GOP keeps playing this as a game with everyone else as their expendable pawns.
3 comments:
One of the reasons they were so freaked out about the Wisconsin election to begin with is that the state supreme court election was the same day as the Democratic primary, attracting a Dem heavy turnout, which it did, so I'm not getting too comfortable about the state of play in Wisconsin.
I wrote the following mostly about Fergus, but it applies to DeSantis and the other delusional Republican governors as well:
Things aren't going back to the way they were, full stop.
They won't go back to whatever semblance of normal we do manage to attain until people feel safe from a hideous death while doing the normal activities they always do.
That won't happen until certain things are in place. First would be an effective and widely available vaccine. Herd immunity could bring back herd behavior.
Until that happens, most likely some time next year, we have behavioral mitigation and pharmacological intervention, the latter of which is actually looking promising right now, but again won't be in wide use for at least months.
So as much as he wants it to be otherwise, the choices on immediate offer are social distancing or body counts in line with the first estimates from a month ago.
What we have done has lowered those estimates from hundreds of thousands to perhaps sixty to eighty thousand, but only contingent on the distancing staying in place.
It's a simple choice, and to any leader worth the title, an easy one.
What we will get remains to be seen.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
I would love to copy and paste this. May I?
Allan, as long as you provide a link and citation, you can share this article. thank you for asking.
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