Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber ripped Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis as the “pied piper” of COVID-19 who is “leading everybody off a cliff.”
Gelber blasted the governor’s opposition to COVID-19 health measures, including masks, even as the state has become an epicenter of soaring delta variant COVID-19 cases.
“The governor has made it as difficult as possible to make people safe,” Gelber said on CNN Saturday. “He’s like the pied piper leading everybody off a cliff right now by letting them know that they don’t have to like the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], they don’t have to wear masks, that they can do whatever they want when we’re in the midst of an enormous pandemic.”
He spoke as Florida recorded its highest-ever number of COVID cases in a single day since the start of the pandemic — 21,683, according to federal health data, The Associated Press reported.
I’ve driven through and stayed in western, northern and southern NY, (No NYC), Vermont, and New Hampshire in the past month. Nothing is in lockdown anymore. Just restaurants and hotels are way understaffed because free money to stay home. People go to Florida in summer because they’re on family vacation.
Imagine a politician wanting to actively go against health experts. A true sociopath.
“While hospitals in our state were filling up, DeSantis was shouting about ‘Freedom over Faucism,’” Bernard Ashby, a Miami cardiologist who leads the state’s Committee to Protect Health Care, told WLRN. “If DeSantis were as concerned about stopping COVID-19 spread as he was about coming up with these clever jabs about Dr. Fauci, we might not be in this position.”
“There is no higher risk area in the United States than we’re seeing here,” Dr. Aileen Marty, a Florida International University infectious disease expert, told the Miami CBS affiliate. “The numbers that we’re seeing are unbelievable, just unbelievably frightening.”
At this point it appears Rona is all in on actually wanting the CCP virus to succeed. Same with his buddies in the party.
Wanting to protect your state economy is one thing, but attacking health experts, threatening to defund schools with mask mandates, it couldn’t be any clearer that they think there are benefits to covid spreading as much as possible.
I guess DeSantis et al have yet to realize that, at this point…having the constituents that vote for them be vaccinated will keep them alive longer and thus remain part of the R base longer? Republicans are in a way killing off their own right now in exchange for a brief wave of popularity. COVID in US is pretty much exclusively killing/maiming the unvaccinated now…how predictably myopic.
So, why does Rona want to punish schools with mask mandates, and belittle health officials, if his motivations are pure? He’s actively fighting measures to combat covid.
Yes, this makes much more sense than the idea that somehow he believes he will somehow benefit from spreading the virus. He’s playing to the base not because he benefits from the spread (which is a ridiculous idea even the poster who put forward wouldn’t clarify or justify) but because he benefits politically from the polarization and from telling people what they want to hear.
It makes sense he’s doing it because it makes him popular. Yes, like I said, more covid benefits him. We can stop pretending he’s not aware of the consequences, I know you trust politicians and all but this is getting silly.