Of months ago, the media, almost as one, decided that Governor Ron DeSantis was a public menace who was going to get Floridians killed with his lax response to the coronavirus crisis.
DeSantis says he was surprised at "How knee-jerk" the hostile coverage was, but he "Also knew that none of these people knew anything about Florida at all, so I didn't care what they were saying."
It's worth delving into the state's response - as described by DeSantis and a couple of members of his team - because it is the opposite of the media narrative of a Trump-friendly governor disregarding the facts to pursue a reckless agenda.
An irony of the national coverage of the coronavirus crisis is that at the same time DeSantis was being made into a villain, New York governor Andrew Cuomo was being elevated as a hero, even though the DeSantis approach to nursing homes was obviously superior to that of Cuomo.
"Many states simply did not have the data infrastructure that Florida has," says Mary Mayhew, secretary of Florida's Agency for Healthcare Administration.
The Florida Department of Health produces a report that DeSantis sees every morning: new cases, number of tests, positivity rates, etc.
"We advised, before there was even mitigation," DeSantis points out, "If you're 65 and older, stay home as much as possible and avoid crowds. And that was just something that made sense." The state talked to senior communities like The Villages about what they were doing to mitigate risk, and they took common-sense measures, such as stopping big indoor gatherings.
Florida, DeSantis notes, "Required all staff and any worker that entered to be screened for COVID illness, temperature checks. Anybody that's symptomatic would just simply not be allowed to go in." And it required staff to wear PPE. "We put our money where our mouth is," he continues.
Florida fortified the hospitals with PPE, too, but DeSantis realized that it wouldn't do the hospitals any good if infection in the nursing homes ran out of control : "If I can send PPE to the nursing homes, and they can prevent an outbreak there, that's going to do more to lower the burden on hospitals than me just sending them another 500,000 N95 masks."
At the same time Florida was devoting enormous attention to nursing homes and establishing highly restrictive policies to protect them, it was giving its counties latitude in how they reacted to the crisis.
DeSantis eventually did issue his own statewide order, but he argues that it was more flexible and less prescriptive than those of other states.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-crisis-ron-desantis-florida-covid-19-strategy/
DeSantis says he was surprised at "How knee-jerk" the hostile coverage was, but he "Also knew that none of these people knew anything about Florida at all, so I didn't care what they were saying."
It's worth delving into the state's response - as described by DeSantis and a couple of members of his team - because it is the opposite of the media narrative of a Trump-friendly governor disregarding the facts to pursue a reckless agenda.
An irony of the national coverage of the coronavirus crisis is that at the same time DeSantis was being made into a villain, New York governor Andrew Cuomo was being elevated as a hero, even though the DeSantis approach to nursing homes was obviously superior to that of Cuomo.
"Many states simply did not have the data infrastructure that Florida has," says Mary Mayhew, secretary of Florida's Agency for Healthcare Administration.
The Florida Department of Health produces a report that DeSantis sees every morning: new cases, number of tests, positivity rates, etc.
"We advised, before there was even mitigation," DeSantis points out, "If you're 65 and older, stay home as much as possible and avoid crowds. And that was just something that made sense." The state talked to senior communities like The Villages about what they were doing to mitigate risk, and they took common-sense measures, such as stopping big indoor gatherings.
Florida, DeSantis notes, "Required all staff and any worker that entered to be screened for COVID illness, temperature checks. Anybody that's symptomatic would just simply not be allowed to go in." And it required staff to wear PPE. "We put our money where our mouth is," he continues.
Florida fortified the hospitals with PPE, too, but DeSantis realized that it wouldn't do the hospitals any good if infection in the nursing homes ran out of control : "If I can send PPE to the nursing homes, and they can prevent an outbreak there, that's going to do more to lower the burden on hospitals than me just sending them another 500,000 N95 masks."
At the same time Florida was devoting enormous attention to nursing homes and establishing highly restrictive policies to protect them, it was giving its counties latitude in how they reacted to the crisis.
DeSantis eventually did issue his own statewide order, but he argues that it was more flexible and less prescriptive than those of other states.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-crisis-ron-desantis-florida-covid-19-strategy/
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