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."
People found the comments dismissive of the tens of thousands of people who died of COVID in Florida.
The praise didn't hold up to scrutiny either.
Markowicz has already doubled down on her position on Twitter.
