“BEYOND EXPLANATION”; Biden Advisor Stunned That Florida Numbers Remain Stable Despite Open Economy.
By Emily Smith
Ron DeSantis, successfully kept its COVID-19 death and illness rates steady despite the fact that he is working by the ‘open the economy’ principle, rather than a ‘lockdown the economy’ approach, which is the way of his blue state rivals.
“I want to start with what we just saw, contrast states like Florida and California,” during a segment this week MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle told Andy Slavitt, who serves as Biden’s senior coronavirus response adviser.
“California, basically in lockdown and their numbers aren’t that different from Florida?”
“Look, there’s so much of this virus that we think we understand that we think we can predict, that’s just beyond, a little bit beyond our explanation, but we do know is that the more careful people are, the more they mask and social distance, and the quicker we vaccinate, the quicker it goes away and the less it spreads,” Slavitt responded.
“But we have got to get better visibility into variants. We don’t know what role they play, large events, etc. But the, you know, this is a, as we all have learned by this time, this is a virus that continues to surprise us. It’s very hard to predict. And you know, all around the country, we’ve got to continue to do a better job. And I think, I think we are but we’re not done yet,” he said, and continued “there’s so much of this virus that we think we understand that we think we can predict, that’s just beyond, a little bit beyond our explanation.”
It is very simple to figure out that DeSantis, early on, decided to work just opposite to his Democratic gubernatorial colleague from New York, Andrew Cuomo. DeSantis moved specifically to protect the elderly and the infirm in nursing homes; Cuomo, on the other hand, ordered eldercare facilities in his state to take in patients sick with COVID-19 and the outcome was anticipated.
COVID erupted in those New York nursing homes like a volcano, and now, Cuomo is very close to facing impeachment as both Democrats and Republicans in his state demand explanation why his administration allegedly faked the real number of nursing home deaths, which are thousands more than officially reported.
Politico pointed out DeSantis’s approach:
“In response to his critics, DeSantis has counter-accused them of elevating the work of a “conspiracy theorist” who publishes false information about Florida’s death numbers. He has fought with reporters over mask-wearing and the state’s vaccination efforts. And he also notes that his resistance to closing beaches wasn’t the disaster critics predicted, the forecasts of overwhelmed hospitals never happened statewide and schools have been operating without community spread (even though a teachers union sued him for opening schools), and he boasts that he was among the first governors to reserve vaccines for those over 65 years old.”
He said:
“What we showed in Florida is you need to lead. I got a lot of blowbacks. A lot of that was BS, quite frankly. We led on schools. We led on putting people back to work. We would not have had a Super Bowl [in Tampa] if it was not for me.”
The Republican from Florida also fired back at “the national media and all these people who are self-anointed experts … They all said Florida would be the worst. But COVID mortality is less than the national average per capita.”
“Our economy is better than the national average,” he added, underlining that the state has a low unemployment rate. Also, there is a prospering real estate market and the state treasury is taking in higher-than-expected tax revenues.
On the other hand, residents of New York and California running away, evacuating themselves from there, with a high number of them going in the direction of the free states of Florida and Texas.
