Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida Republican leaders on Saturday transformed the backyard of the governor’s mansion into a GOP gloatfest with an epidemic-like twist.
Some of the leading players in the Sunlight State’s corona virus chaos party have posted photos and a video of DeSantis on Twitter to a crowd of roughly 50 GOP core organizers. Almost no one wore a mask – including DeSantis, who appeared with a mask at Donald Trump’s strange vaccination summit in DC on Tuesday.
One of the pictures tweeted Christian Florida Ziegler, vice president of the Florida Republican Party, shows a disguised DeSantis from behind, in front of his guests, most of whom were elderly – a particularly high risk of death through COVID-19. Ziegler boasted, “Florida is in great hands, and everyone in this picture is going to work hell to smash anyone running against them to keep going.
GOP official retweeted the same photo the next day. This time, he identified another reliable target for Republicans and DeSantis: “It will be a lot of fun for him to work and crush the Socialists in Florida.”
Florida GOP President Joe Gruters, a provincial senator, tweeted from another angle about a photograph of the crowd standing next to the governor. Gruters wrote: “Thank you to Governor @GovRonDeSantis for loving freedom and freedom and for all your help in achieving record success in this cycle here in Florida.”
Gruters also tweeted a two-minute clip from DeSantis, who cunningly suggested continuing to support the current commander-in-chief’s false account that Joe Biden won the presidency only because of massive election fraud.
“In Florida, people can trust that [election] over the deck and they did well, ”DeSantis moaned. “We don’t wait three weeks and then exchange votes for the winner, and all the things you see are going around.”
Gruters, Ziegler, and the GOP foot soldiers spun up, cheering their governor. But aside from MAGA’s conspiracies, the scene was a compelling antecedent to the problem a new Biden administration faces in coronavirus-skeptical states like Florida, where DeSantis has tripled its strategy of mocking mask assignments and non-core business shutdowns. and allows for large gatherings. people.
Meanwhile, experts said he could have risked his own stabs.
“Unfortunately, this event contradicts the council of public health experts in many ways,” Dr. Jill Roberts, an infectious disease expert and professor at the University of South Florida, told The Daily Beast. “Maybe this incident exposed people to coronavirus unnecessarily.”
Roberts added that while no case is related to the case so far, “it is entirely possible” that DeSantis hosted a so-called superspreader event, given the immediate proximity of participants not wearing the mask.
Gruters, Ziegler and a DeSantis spokesman did not respond to comment on the story.
In the months leading up to the election and its immediate aftermath, DeSantis excelled in its cowboy approach to the pandemic. One of the last governors to close his state reopened the state in a particularly aggressive manner and refused to issue a mask mandate. More recently, the Sun-Sentinel The investigation found that the governor and his administration had instructed county-level officials in the Department of Health not to discuss COVID-19 with the public prior to the election.
The governor’s office disputed the characterization of the paper and stressed that DeSantis had consistently contributed to promoting COVID-19’s precaution. But from the arbitrary reopening of bars to squeezing schools under personal pressure, the governor was shocked by virtually every pressure group imaginable by the recklessness of the epidemic.
At the same time, DeSantis made it possible for COVID-19 deniers by hiring an Uber-driven conspiracy theory as a data analyst and allowing his staff to share death records with a conservative blogger who described columns about the severity of the pandemic.
At a news conference on Nov. 30, DeSantis reiterated its false claims that mask orders and closures are ineffective in fighting proliferation. Concerning the masks, DeSantis said, “I don’t think you need to mount it with a bayonet for that. People’s fines are a complete exaggeration.
His position is in stark contrast to Biden’s plan to ask the Americans for a mask for the first 100 days of the administration and requires masks for interstate travel on planes, trains and buses. DeSantis is also putting the efforts of Miami-Dade’s new mayor at a disadvantage in the county, which has the highest number of coronaviruses in the state and is experiencing a third boom, from reinstating fines for not wearing masks. County Mayor Davaella Levina Cava, who revealed last week that she had contracted COVID-19 herself, said in a magnification call on December 4 that she had not been able to talk to DeSantis since the election. Miami Herald.
Pictures from the GOP event held at the governor’s mansion did not bring headlines, but were retweeted hundreds of times, including by DeSantis ’toughest critics. Among them: Orlando State Representative Anna Eskamani and Rebekah Jones, a Florida COVID-19 dashboard architect and former Department of Health data researcher who claims to have been fired because she refused to manipulate Florida coronavirus data.
On Monday, after state police raided his home with weapons pulled out to seize his computer and cell phone, Jones accused the DeSantis administration of targeting him by launching a criminal investigation. However, according to the house search order, someone who uses Jones ’IP address has illegally accessed the state’s emergency alert email system to send an unauthorized mass email, a claim he disputes.
“DeSantis has been trying – and failing – to close and silence him since May,” Jones told The Daily Beast. “It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.”
Eskamani, the state legislature, says the photos arbitrarily ignore the COVID-19 guidelines set by the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), for example, encouraging people to wear a mask when in close contact, even outdoors. . In September, DeSantis lifted most of the state’s measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus, including an enforcement order that limited social and leisure gatherings to a maximum of 10 people.
“The photos showed how reckless our governor is in allowing COVID-19 to spread,” Eskamani told The Daily Beast. “He doesn’t model good behavior and takes his role for granted. It’s completely discouraging.
Ignoring cases, hospital care, and data growth, which consistently proves that social distance works — not to mention the momentary incredible stress of health workers — is “quite deaf,” Roberts added. On Dec. 5, the day of the incident, the Florida health department reported more than 10,000 cases for the third consecutive day. Since then, the state has added approximately another 23,000 new cases, bringing the total cumulative value of Florida to 1,073,770 cases since the start of the pandemic.
As for the GOP rally, a seemingly super-spreader precedent for the White House Rose Garden party has emerged, with Amy Coney Barrett as the Supreme Court’s nomination. According to Dr. Marissa Levine, another professor of infectious diseases at the University of South Florida, even outdoor, well-ventilated events are considered a high risk if there is a high level of attendance, no facial coverage, and longer contact times.
But when new records were set nationwide, DeSantis seemed determined to set a new standard for pandemic absurdity.
“Of course, it’s not sending the right message about our efforts to combat the current epidemic,” Levine said.
