Why won’t DeSantis give Florida a shot in the arm?
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinio...0210706-zh6vpfanp5b6xlf4fdigaigqn4-story.html
When it comes to COVID-19 vaccinations, Florida is failing — like most Republican-led states.
As of Tuesday, according to Becker’s Hospital Review, Florida ranked just 26th in percentage of population fully vaccinated. Slightly more than 46% of the state’s residents have had both shots.
Over the weekend, Republican governors of Arkansas, Utah and West Virginia urged residents to get vaccinated. They noted polls showing widespread Republican opposition to the vaccine. Jim Justice essentially pleaded with fellow West Virginians to save themselves from themselves.
Even as the more contagious Delta variant rises in Florida, Gov. DeSantis has shown no similar urgency about the virus. He’s been saving Florida from other menaces.
Thanks to DeSantis and the Legislature, Floridians won’t have to worry about indoctrination of students in critical race theory. The students will be indoctrinated only as DeSantis and Republicans want them indoctrinated.
DeSantis has been saving the state from election fraud that he can’t identify. Female high school athletes are safe from transgender competition that hasn’t happened.
DeSantis also wants to save Florida from efforts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help the cruise ship industry reopen safely. The governor sued the CDC, claiming that vaccination requirements discriminate against children and, without DeSantis saying, Republican anti-vaxxers.
Yet Royal Caribbean just announced that non-vaccinated passengers must buy travel insurance to cover $25,000 in medical expenses and pay for on-board COVID-19 testing. The company is restricting activities for the unvaccinated. Will DeSantis now sue Royal Caribbean?
From the start, the way out of the pandemic has been vaccines. Now that multiple effective shots are available to so many, the state and country should be much closer to the end than we are. DeSantis could help.
But while the vaccinated governor has recommended that Floridians get vaccinated, he hasn’t pushed to raise the state’s numbers. DeSantis lost interest after his rush to get those 65 and over vaccinated. Without the state’s lopsided senior population, vaccination numbers would be even worse.
So as DeSantis claims that Florida “has so much immunity,” Covid Act Now ranks Florida’s risk as High. Infections are spiking among the unvaccinated.
Florida lags because DeSantis is running for president. He won’t confront the Trump cultists. In the 17 counties where Trump got the highest percentages, fewer than 30% of residents had received at least one shot by late May. Florida thus aligns with GOP sentiment nationwide.
According to a recent
Washington Post-ABC News poll, 45% of Republicans are unlikely to get a vaccine. Among Democrats, only 6% plan to refuse.
Of the 21 states that lead in vaccination rates, 18 have Democratic governors. The exceptions are Maryland, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, all states that President Biden won. Unlike DeSantis, those GOP governors don’t grovel before the insurrectionist former president.
Massachusetts’ Charlie Baker supported Trump’s impeachment for his Jan. 6 attempt to subvert the Constitution. New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu called the Capitol mob “domestic terrorists.”
The 15 states that trail in vaccination rates have Republican governors. Trump won all of them except Georgia. In last-place Mississippi, the rate is less than 30%.
One might argue that vaccine hesitancy among African-Americans, not just Trump voters, brings down the rates in some GOP-led southern states. But Utah (43rd) and Idaho (46th) have tiny percentages of African-American residents.
The development and rollout of vaccines validates the science-based response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last week came news that those who received the
Moderna and Pfizer vaccines may not need booster shots for years.
Yet the longer it takes to achieve herd immunity, the greater the risk of an especially dangerous variant emerging. The next big inflection point will come when vaccines become available for children younger than 12.
Will the vaccinated DeSantis work to persuade parents that the shots are safe and the best way to fully open schools? Or will he side with the minority that opposed the masks that helped to keep Florida’s death rate at a middling 24th?
As he courts the Trump cultists for 2024, DeSantis is failing Florida today.
