To what depths has Gov. DeSantis sunk to please President Trump? Secrecy, deception and even a raid

From the starting, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ dealing with of the COVID-19 crisis has been a training course of secrecy, deception and willful, cold-blooded negligence.

Now arrives the bad-joke raid by Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents on the residence of Rebekah Jones, the ex-state overall health data analyst who started out her own COVID-19 dashboard right after complaining that the DeSantis administration was twisting studies to underplay the severity of the pandemic.

The governor promises he did not know about the raid, a facet-splitting lie that would fly only on Fox Information. Seizing Jones’ computer – ostensibly to examine a “hacking” incident – is clumsy retribution for uncomfortable DeSantis.

So lame was the FDLE lookup warrant that it prompted the resignation of previous prosecutor Ron Filipowski from the 12th Circuit Judicial Nominating Fee, to which DeSantis had just lately reappointed him.

Filipowski, a Marine veteran and lifelong Republic, stated that DeSantis has been “reckless and irresponsible” in dealing with the pandemic and that Floridians “are not becoming told the fact about COVID.”

A the latest investigative series in the Sunshine-Sentinel provided sickening specifics about the depths to which DeSantis sunk to be sure to President Trump, his super-spreader idol.

In late September, for occasion, the Florida Office of Well being – DeSantis’ pliant Ministry of Propaganda – explained to county officials to halt creating general public statements about COVID-19 until finally soon after the Nov. 3 election.

News releases or media posts must not point out the virus, the buy mentioned. It came from Alberto Moscoso, communications chief of the point out health and fitness department. He still left his work on Nov. 6.

The motive for muzzling community overall health departments was apparent. Florida remaining a crucial point out for Trump, DeSantis didn’t want voters to be reminded that COVID-19 was on a fatal surge.

On Sept. 25, DeSantis himself ordered a full reopening of bars and eating places and sought to quit area governments from imposing mask mandates. Between Sept. 30 and Election Day, at least 2,526 Floridians died of COVID-similar causes.

That selection, which came from the condition, is most likely higher. Real industry experts believe that the state’s demise toll has now handed 20,000. Many of individuals victims could have prevented having ill, but we have a governor who has shunned health-related warnings in favor of “blue sky messaging.”

DeSantis’ personal spokesman has disparaged the use of masks and tweeted that the coronavirus is “less lethal than the flu.” That yammering stooge, Fred Piccolo Jr., nevertheless has his occupation, which is all you need to know about DeSantis’ genuine priorities.

From the pandemic’s early days, his administration hid crucial information and facts about the spread of the virus in nursing residences, prisons, hospitals and even general public educational facilities. Only the risk of lawsuits by loved ones associates, information organizations and affected person advocacy groups has pried free the information.

The governor habitually edits COVID studies to paint the cheeriest possible photo. His most up-to-date spin is that most freshly infected patients are more youthful, more healthy and asymptomatic, which curiously fails to make clear why hospital beds and ICUs are filling up with coronavirus clients.

Who in Florida can neglect DeSantis’ smug victory sit-down with Trump at the White Residence? That was more than 7 months and 18,000 deaths ago, but the governor’s arms are likely still sore from patting himself on the back.

Afterwards he toured the point out with Trump’s pandemic guru, Dr. Scott Atlas, a radiologist and Stanford University Fellow who does not like masks and preaches for a fully reopened economy.

Looking for infectious-disorder assistance from a man who reads X-rays for a residing is like selecting a dentist to do your colonoscopy — it is not just in his wheelhouse. The Stanford College Senate “strongly condemned” Atlas’s position as “contrary to health care science,” and he just lately resigned from the White House.

Mercifully he has not resurfaced at DeSantis’ facet, but there’s however time.

These days — when he’s not harassing the whistleblower that caught him fudging the COVID data — the governor is subsequent Trump’s cue and focusing solely on the coming vaccines.

Like the President, DeSantis experienced minimal use for virus experts until eventually now, when they’re poised to help save his political upcoming.

In the meantime, Johns Hopkins College stories that new COVID-19 conditions are doubling just about every 78 days in Florida. As of this composing, more than 4,500 people are hospitalized here with the disease, approximately twice as lots of as a month back.

Correct, tons of persons who once scoffed at the concept of masks are sporting them now, but a lot of men and women are dead who might hardly ever have been contaminated if their pals and liked ones experienced been a lot more mindful.

Or if we’d experienced management that sent the proper concept from the initial day, as a substitute of spinning upbeat storylines although trying to gag local overall health officials who realized what was coming.

Heartsick families, packed hospitals, crushing unemployment – but in the DeSantis version of fact, almost nothing but blue skies.