Few Republican governors embraced the party's denial and dismissal of the COVID-19 pandemic than Ron DeSantis of Florida.
DeSantis completely reopened Florida just after the pandemic's first wave. In the face of the deadlier Delta variant, DeSantis has forbid private businesses from requiring their customers to be vaccinated, and he threatened to withhold funds from school districts who defied his ban on mask mandates for students.
As the Delta Variant overtook the nation, Florida's cases skyrocketed, jeopardizing hospital availability. Florida broke its all-time pandemic record for the daily number of new cases and hit reached an all-time high for hospitalizations as well, with over 11 thousand Floridians hospitalized with the virus. Nearly 60 thousand Floridians have died of the virus and the state has suffered more than three million cases.
Fortunately, this trend reversed in recent months and Florida now has the lowest COVID case rate in the nation—a development with which conservatives immediately began crediting DeSantis, asserting that his pandemic recklessness and bulwark against public safety guidelines was exemplary.
New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz was one such conservative.
In a tweet highlighting her recent piece crediting DeSantis for the lower transmission rate, Markowicz suggested that Florida's lack of COVID precautions saved it because "life simply went on."
Florida has lowest COVID-19 case rate in the country. They did it without vaccine mandates, without mask mandates in school & with no restrictions on businesses. Life simply went on. @GovRonDeSantis was right again. My latest in Friday's @nyposthttps://nypost.com/2021/10/28/florida-gov-ron-desantis-has-shown-how-to-handle-covid-19/\u00a0\u2026— Karol Markowicz (@Karol Markowicz) 1635474388
People found the comments dismissive of the tens of thousands of people who died of COVID in Florida.
Hi, Floridian here. Life did not go on for 59,495 Floridians, nor the tens of thousands more with long Covid. If you think they're insignificant, here's a context you may grasp: DeSantis's pre-pandemic margin of election victory was only half of our state's Covid death toll.https://twitter.com/karol/status/1453911081936621568\u00a0\u2026— Adam Weinstein (@Adam Weinstein) 1635514778
Actually "life" did not go on. \n\nThousands and thousands of people died. \n\nFlorida has one of the highest per capita death rates in the nation.https://twitter.com/karol/status/1453911081936621568\u00a0\u2026— Judd Legum (@Judd Legum) 1635521136
Please read my column, \u201cI\u2019m Fine with Thousands of My Neighbors Dying as Long As I\u2019m Not Slightly Inconvenienced\u201dhttps://twitter.com/karol/status/1453911081936621568\u00a0\u2026— Jason O. Gilbert (@Jason O. Gilbert) 1635516421
Thousands of people had to needlessly die when there was a vaccine, and hospitals came close to their breaking point -- with people having to delay procedures because oft he onslaught of COVID cases. This was not a win.https://twitter.com/karol/status/1453911081936621568\u00a0\u2026— Emily C. Singer (@Emily C. Singer) 1635514166
why yes, 60,000 deaths later we emerged unscathedhttps://twitter.com/karol/status/1453911081936621568\u00a0\u2026— Nate Monroe (@Nate Monroe) 1635516092
Narrator: In fact, life did not go on for 60,000 Floridians who were killed by the virushttps://twitter.com/karol/status/1453911081936621568\u00a0\u2026— David Sirota (@David Sirota) 1635514836
The praise didn't hold up to scrutiny either.
Even by DeSantis' own standards--protecting the elderly--Florida did a remarkably poor job, notching the highest per capita death rate among adults 65+ during the Delta wave. https://twitter.com/karol/status/1453911081936621568\u00a0\u2026pic.twitter.com/zIAZeyzFNr— Christian Vanderbrouk (@Christian Vanderbrouk) 1635513851
The timeline goes:\n\n1) Florida was relatively spared by early COVID wave\n2) By early 2021, its COVID deaths-per-cap were avg\n3) There was a round of self-congratulation\n4) Delta crushed FL; the state is now 7th in deaths/ capita \n5) We're just .... pretending (4) never happenedhttps://twitter.com/karol/status/1453911081936621568\u00a0\u2026— Derek Thompson (@Derek Thompson) 1635522288
Not the best day to post this since Florida has now moved up to 7th in the country in deaths per capita, the highest they\u2019ve been the entire pandemic. https://twitter.com/karol/status/1453911081936621568\u00a0\u2026pic.twitter.com/7SMSDgtlcd— Tim Miller (@Tim Miller) 1635514776
This has happened each wave. Cases/deaths skyrocket in FL and Texas and then when it finally slows down after burning through the population, conservative writers are like "Ha! Would yuh look at THAT. Lowest case count in the nation!"https://twitter.com/karol/status/1453911081936621568\u00a0\u2026— joe (@joe) 1635516679
Markowicz has already doubled down on her position on Twitter.
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