Category — Florida

Digby provides the long form of unGovernor DeMentis’s battle againt medical reality, but Twitter feeds it to you in bite-sized chunks:

Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) notes:

After the FDA discontinued use of monoclonal antibodies because they don’t work on Omicron, which Eli Lilly and Regeneron acknowledge, Dr. Ron Desantis says they are wrong and vows, “We’re gonna fight back!”

DeMentis is definitely not a “doctor” in any sense of the word.

Lindy Li adds:

Regeneron, which makes monoclonal antibodies, says that they don’t work against Omicron

Ron DeSantis is falsely claiming that they do

Citadel owns $16 million of Regeneron stock. Citadel CEO, his biggest donor, gave DeSantis $11 million

I’m sure this is just a coincidence 🙁

You’re right, Lindy. It’s not as if Florida politicians are known for doing “special favors” for their big donors 😉

If DeMentis continues with the monoclonal antibodies, the state is going to be paying for them at $2K a dose. Up until now the Federal government has been paying for the treatment.

Many Australians believe Prime Minister Scott Morrison is incompetent, while many Floridians believe Governor Ron DeSantis is evil. Let’s compare Scomo to DeMentis…

Two tweets from Dean Obeidallah (@DeanObeidallah)

Australia compared to Florida:

As you read about Australia deporting Novak Djokovic for not getting vaccinated keep this in mind: Australia is a country of 25 million and only 2,670 people have died of Covid. Florida is 21 million people and OVER 63,000 people have died of Covid.

Florida vs the average and Florida vs New York:

BTW in 2021, Florida saw 190 deaths per 100,000 from Covid totaling nearly 41,000 dead, well above the 144 per 100,000 national average and far worse than New York’s rate of 107 dead per 100,000 that totaled 21,000 deaths. (this is only 2021 since vaccine) source

.

Thanks to a friend, I was able to obtain an at-home Covid-19 test and am currently adjudged to be negative – I got a C line but no T line on the test. I’ve been feeling better, but don’t want to take chances.

I’ll continue my practice of wearing a mask when I’m around people. There are people who suggest that having the Omicron variant doesn’t provide long term protection against getting it again. Why take a chance?

So, ‘tattletale’ Gaetz is sucking up to DeMentis by claiming that
the “30A Songwriters’ Festival” that is funded in part by Walton County Tourism, is imposing a vaccine mandate and dissing ‘Big Ron’. Gaetz, naturally didn’t ask anyone associated with the Festival, a major cultural event in Walton County, what was going on. There is no vaccine mandate. Like most festivals you need a vaccine or a negative test for admittance. If you’re a singer/songwriter in folk/country/bluegrass/blues this is a place to go to network and get noticed. People like Emmylou Harris, Dar Williams, Kathleen Edwards, Mavis Staples, Patty Griffin, Rickie Lee Jones, Steve Earle are playing this year.

Meanwhile, one of Matt’s ex-girlfriends is talking to a Grand Jury about trafficking under-age women. This is the quality of representation I have to put up with.

I was symptomatic starting on Saturday. I’m still waiting for the doctor to get back to me. The home tests are missing from the local pharmacies. This is life under the GQP.

Twelfth Night Update: I got tested this morning and am waiting for the results. My throat isn’t sore but I now have a head cold. There are cases popping up of people with the flu and Covid, so I deem myself lucky.

They don’t make sense. If the unGovernor’s office had said he was taking time off because of his wife’s illness or for a vacation no one would have really cared. Instead they lied about it. Then DeMentis brings his wife, who is having cancer treatments, to a mass event where no one is wearing a mask while Covid is running wild.

Florida’s Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo stands behind a lectern that says “Early Treatment Saves Lives” and declares testing causes mental health problems. Logically testing would catch Covid early and allow for treatment, rather than waiting for severe symptoms.

Cancer treatments reduce your ability to fight infections. What DeMentis did was dangerous for his wife. What Dr. Ladapo did is dangerous for the people of Florida. What price for the GQP Presidential nod is DeMentis willing to pay – how many Floridians must die for his political ambitions?

As there isn’t a lot I can do under “house arrest”, I installed Ubuntu on my 8GB Raspberry Pi 4. It’s a completely useable desktop with Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc. I used a 128GB micro SD I had in spare parts and it is faster than my Toshiba laptop, but not as fast as my AMD tower. It’s better than working from my iPAD which lacks a decent SFTP app.

In local news, now that the number of Covid cases has skyrocketed in Florida, unGovernor DeMentis has gone missing. Has anyone checked Cancun? That seems to be a refuge for GQP pols when the going gets rough. The last post on his social media account was posted weeks after the fact.

A typically snarky article in The Reg concerning a well-known scofflaw: Florida man accused of breaking Mastodon’s open-source license with botched social network launch.

If you don’t pay your contractors, the competent people won’t work for you. Mastodon isn’t Twitter, but it’s open-source and free. There are rules about open-source software and lawyers who will help you enforce them.

These people get to vote in our elections‽

Florida couple arrested after entering Hawaii with fake vaccination cards, officials say:

The couple’s children were too young to be inoculated with any of the approved vaccinations, according to WTVJ. That raised a red flag with authorities on the ground in Honolulu when they were presented with vaccination cards for the children, who were born in 2016 and 2017.
…
Being vaccinated is not a requirement to visit Hawaii. The Aloha State’s official travel website says only a negative test within the last 72 hours is required to avoid a mandatory 10-day quarantine upon arrival. Domestic travelers who are able to offer proof showing that they have been fully vaccinated have been able to visit Hawaii without testing or quarantine since July 8.

If you get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccinations both shots take around a month and cost you the time to get them. If you go for the Johnson & Johnston it’s only one shot and is also free. I’ve heard that a fake vaccination card can cost up to $400. Which is still more expensive than getting a quick Covid test before your flight. They are facing fines of $2000 per fake card to avoid a 10 day quarantine period. These are the type of criminals that annoyed me the most when I was wearing a badge. I wanted New York to pass a law making this level of stupid a felony.

The media is letting their love of wars get away with their reporting. The attacks on the Biden administration’s exit from Afghanistan is unwarranted and ill-informed.

Ex-Official: Trump Knew Afghan Army Would Surrender, Made Deal Anyway:

Former National Security Director John Ratcliffe on Thursday revealed that former President Donald Trump knew that the Afghan military would fall to the Taliban within 48 hours but negotiated a deal to pull U.S. troops out of the country anyway.

Ratcliffe made the remarks during an appearance on Fox News.

On Twitter: James Fallows [@JamesFallows] ·
Aug 17
I agree w this by @EricBoehlert:

The date when US “lost” in Afgh was Dec 2001, when GWB and Cheney shifted resources, attention, troops, international focus toward prep for invading Iraq.

Over 8,000 students in Florida school district isolated or quarantined a week into school year:

Just a week into the school year, some 8,400 students in and 307 employees of the Hillsborough County Public Schools district in Florida have been isolated or quarantined as districts across the state grapple with COVID-19.

Hillsborough is the seventh-largest school district in the U.S., with more than 213,000 students.

In total, there were 1,695 COVID-19 cases among students and staff, according to the Tampa-area district’s COVID-19 dashboard.

So far in the exit from the Kabul airport there has been one Afghan security officer shot and 7 civilians crushed in the attempts to enter the military side of the airport. That is a much better situation than the 5+ law enforcement officers killed this week from Covid in South Florida and the number of people who have been crushed at many rock concerts or soccer games.

The reality is that Covid is killing 200 people every day in Florida and there is almost no mention of not just the incompetence of ungovernor DeMentis, but his actions to prevent the sane local officials from taking common sense measures. Instead of 24 hour coverage of the Kabul airport how about giving the ongoing disaster in Florida some coverage.

Orlando is having to take short showers, accept brown lawns and dirty cars to try to save the people in the local hospitals with severe Covid symptoms – Orlando residents asked to limit water usage to help Covid-19 patients:

(CNN)Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer is asking residents to conserve water because liquid oxygen, used to treat the community’s water supply, is needed to treat the surge of Covid-19 patients in the community.

“Nationally, the demand for liquid oxygen is extremely high as the priority for its use is to save lives,” the mayor said in a Facebook post on Friday.

To reduce demand, the Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC) asked customers to immediately limit watering their lawns and landscapes, take short showers, repair leaking faucets and toilets, stop washing their vehicles and performing “non-critical activities” like pressure washing, the municipal utility said in a notice.

Now we will have another way of telling sane people from MAGats – the sane people will have dusty cars and burnt lawns. DeMentis will probably issue an executive order saying people don’t have reduce their water use because “FREEDOM!!!!!” 😈

Governor DeMentis just announced his plan to deal with Covid-19 – an outpatient IV center at a sports arena in Mouseland (Orlando) to give people monoclonal antibody infusions:

Gov. Ron DeSantis revealed Thursday the creation of mobile rapid response units to deliver the COVID-19 antibody treatment Regeneron to Floridians at higher risk for the virus.

Regeneron, a monoclonal antibody cocktail, is an FDA-approved treatment for those who have already gotten sick. DeSantis said vaccination, while effective at preventing severe illness and death, hasn’t been as successful as hoped in preventing waves of infection.

Regeneron has the same Emergency Use Authorization as the vaccines. It has to be administered soon after someone contracts the virus to be effective. It does not protect you from getting Covid again in a few months. It is a treatment, not a cure, and not a vaccine replacement. It was used on Trump before it had received its EUA and Trump was vaccinated after he recovered.

Let’s look at the economics. You can get a decent mask for under $2/day. The vaccine costs under $40 for both doses. Regeneron costs $2100 per infusion. The “rapid response units” can process 320 people a day.

Convenience: You have to go to a special facility to go through the IV infusion; almost every supermarket and drug store in the state can vaccinate now; I can get masks online, or at any store that I enter.

Why is DeMentis pushing an expensive treatment instead of a cheap vaccination? Why is he banning masks? What is his problem? The people his policies are killing are mostly Republicans, except for the children.

New Daily Record in Florida:

A record-breaking 23,903 new Covid-19 cases were reported in Florida on Friday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
…
On Saturday, Florida recorded 13,747 hospitalizations related to Covid-19, with at least 2,753 patients in intensive care units statewide, accounting for 43 percent of the intensive care units beds available in the state.

ABC (US) notes that Florida reports over 134,000 new COVID-19 cases in past week.

From Crooks & Liars: St. Louis Taxi Company Rejects Masked Or Vaccinated Passengers – “It’s definitely not right to wish someone gets COVID, but…if anyone deserves it Charlie Bullington of Yo Transportation Services certainly fits the bill.” If you need a taxi in St. Louis avoid the Pepto pink ones.

In Florida they are starting to refuse “elective procedures” because they have no room or personnel to support them. If you need joint replacement, a hernia fixed, or cataract surgery, you have to hobble along, suck it up, and try to avoid running into walls until the wave breaks and the hospital system recovers. Hospitals make the bulk of their money on elective procedures. Many Covid patients have little or no insurance, and it’s worse with the new wave of younger patients. In the initial wave the older patients tended to have Medicare at a minimum.

In response to concern over the worsening Covid situation in Florida and his blocking others from taking reasonable public health measures, ungovernor DeMentis says the real problem is people seeking amnesty crossing the southern border.

News Flash for DeMentis: Florida has borders with Alabama, Georgia, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean. Florida has no border crossings anywhere in the state. The nearest foreign country is 90 miles across the Florida Strait and if you try to block Cubans from coming to Florida you won’t win a Republican primary or general election.

Deflection won’t work when a significant number of the new cases are children. Nikki Fried and Charley Crist are no doubt printing “child murderer” signs for their campaigns. He’s going to be compared to Nero. Grandparents don’t like people who endanger their grandchildren.

Ron, if you don’t want to do your job and protect the people of Florida, just quit. You can’t hide the mess you’ve made of the pandemic response.