The tale of two governors

Willie99 · May 22, 2020

One was mocked and ridiculed, called dangerous or reckless, we were told he's killing people

The other was praised. Articulate and poised, smart, he should be the next president.

Then a funny thing happened, time did it's thing.

What follows is a description of two men taking different paths, and the RESULTS, and why the man who should be president keeps changing his policies

Willie99 · May 22, 2020

A couple 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.

In an interview with National Review, 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.”

The conventional wisdom has begun to change about Florida, as the disaster so widely predicted hasn’t materialized. 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. DeSantis and his team have followed the science closely from the beginning, which is why they forged a nuanced approach, but one that focused like a laser on the most vulnerable population, those in nursing homes.

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. Florida went out of its way to get COVID-19-positive people out of nursing homes, while New York went out of its way to get them in, a policy now widely acknowledged to have been a debacle.

The media didn’t exactly have their eyes on the ball. “The day that the media had their first big freakout about Florida was March 15th,” DeSantis recalls, “which was, there were people on Clearwater Beach, and it was this big deal. That same day is when we signed the executive order to, one, ban visitation in the nursing homes, and two, ban the reintroduction of a COVID-positive patient back into a nursing home.”

DeSantis is bemused by the obsession with Florida’s beaches. When they opened in Jacksonville, it was a big national story, usually relayed with a dire tone. “Jacksonville has almost no COVID activity outside of a nursing-home context,” he says. “Their hospitalizations are down, ICU down since the beaches opened a month ago. And yet, nobody talks about it. It’s just like, ‘Okay, we just move on to the next target.’”

Perhaps more understandably, The Villages, the iconic senior community, was a focus of media worries. According to DeSantis, as of last weekend there hadn’t been a single resident of The Villages in the hospital for COVID-19 for about a week. At one point, the infection rate in The Villages was so low that state officials were worried that they were missing something. “So I got the University of Florida to do a study,” he says. “They did 1,200 asymptomatic seniors at The Villages, and not one of them came back positive, which was really incredible.”

So how did DeSantis go about responding to the epidemic? It began with the data, and trying to learn the lessons of other countries.

Learn from the Evidence

At the outset, DeSantis looked at South Korea’s experience: “I just thought it was so dramatic, the extent to which this was concentrated in the older age groups. I think the first real fresh set of South Korea numbers I looked at, I think it had no fatalities under 30, and then 80 percent of them were 70 and above or something like that. It was really, really dramatic.”

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Then there was Italy: “I think a lot of the policymakers in the U.S. acted like Italy would happen in the United States, but when you look under the hood of Italy, there were huge differences, and there were reasons why that part of Italy fared as poorly as it did. I think the median age of fatality was something like 82 in some of those areas in Northern Italy. So we looked at that, but that really helped inform the strategy to focus most of our efforts on the at-risk groups.”

</aside>He was hesitant about sweeping lockdowns, given that there wasn’t much of a precedent for them. “One of the things that bothered me throughout this whole time was, I researched the 1918 pandemic, ’57, ’68, and there were some mitigation efforts done in May 1918, but never just a national-shutdown type deal,” he says. “There was really no observed experience about what the negative impacts would be on that.”
<aside class="ad-unit ad-unit--center ad-unit--inline" style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: inherit; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></aside>“So I was very concerned about things on that side as well,” he continues, “and I think that’s why I had a more nuanced and balanced approach than some of the other governors. Because you have some of these health officials saying, ‘You’ve got to do this. This is science,’ or whatever. But really, these were unchartered territories.”

Willie99 · May 22, 2020

One man studied the evidence and decided accordingly. He said let's protect the vulnerable people, an argument I've been making for two months now. He saved lives AND has a better economy.

The other man shut down everything in an attempt to save lives. HE KILLED PEOPLE AND HE KILLED THE ECONOMY. More deaths are coming, he owns the worst results in the world. That's right, that brilliant man who should be president owns the worst results in the world.

Time marches on, some people will never learn.

StevieRay · May 22, 2020

Gloom and doom, the sky is falling, glass half full

gamblingshark1 · May 22, 2020

Willie99 said:
One man studied the evidence and decided accordingly. He said let's protect the vulnerable people, an argument I've been making for two months now. He saved lives AND has a better economy.

The other man shut down everything in an attempt to save lives. HE KILLED PEOPLE AND HE KILLED THE ECONOMY. More deaths are coming, he owns the worst results in the world. That's right, that brilliant man who should be president owns the worst results in the world.

Time marches on, some people will never learn.

If you had a youtube channel on this topic of the virus and the shutdown I think your content would constantly get shutdown.

Willie99 · May 22, 2020

gamblingshark1 said:
If you had a youtube channel on this topic of the virus and the shutdown I think your content would constantly get shutdown.

You're probably right, and how scary is that?

The screamers would be screaming, calling me every name imaginable, even more so than all the things democrats already are calling me. Stuff like "white supremacist", "deplorable". "selfish greedy white man" and my personal favorite, "the problem with this country"

TomGshotput · May 22, 2020

Willie99 said:
One man studied the evidence and decided accordingly. He said let's protect the vulnerable people, an argument I've been making for two months now. He saved lives AND has a better economy.

The other man shut down everything in an attempt to save lives. HE KILLED PEOPLE AND HE KILLED THE ECONOMY. More deaths are coming, he owns the worst results in the world. That's right, that brilliant man who should be president owns the worst results in the world.

Time marches on, some people will never learn.

Willie makes a lot of great points. I especially love the line you put in all capitals: the governor of New York killed his own people, the economy of the entire state is now dead because of Cuomo. Any predictions on how bad New York is going to be in the future? I think that Cuomo will continue to Kill New Yorkers and the economy of the state will never be alive again until he is removed from office. Also, any possible way of measuring economic strength, such as employment, income, GDP, or public finances will show Florida as far better than New York.

TheComputerGroup · May 22, 2020

Willie99 said:
One man studied the evidence and decided accordingly. He said let's protect the vulnerable people, an argument I've been making for two months now. He saved lives AND has a better economy.

The other man shut down everything in an attempt to save lives. HE KILLED PEOPLE AND HE KILLED THE ECONOMY. More deaths are coming, he owns the worst results in the world. That's right, that brilliant man who should be president owns the worst results in the world.

Time marches on, some people will never learn.

Great proints........

camy · May 22, 2020

When the media is reduced to being a shill for the Socialist Party of America we are already phuckoed as a democratic society. God help this country if the socialists win the presidential election and ... gulp... gain control of both houses.

bodyforlife · May 22, 2020

I honestly wasn't sure if you were talking about Cuomo or Newsom

Willie99 · May 22, 2020

bodyforlife said:
I honestly wasn't sure if you were talking about Cuomo or Newsom

Newsom doesn't own Cuomo's deaths, maybe he didn't send Covid-19 patients into nursing homes.

Cuomo moved the foxes into the chicken coop, then locked down rivers and lakes and mountains because chickens were dying

LENBO · Jan 18, 2021

Former NYS Dem Party head gets vaccinated — in Florida

https://nypost.com/2021/01/17/former-nys-dem-party-head-gets-vaccinated-in-florida/

It’s all going south. A former head of New York state Democratic Party has already received his first dose of the coronavirus vaccine — no thanks to Gov. Andrew Cuomo

John Sullivan, who was co-chairman of the state party in the 1990s, was among the New York snowbirds to become eligible for the shot in Floridabefore Cuomo opened vaccination sites to senior citizens in the Empire State.

“I got the vaccine down here. I probably wouldn’t have gotten it by now in New York,” Sullivan, 73, told The Post on Sunday.

PoundFoolish · Jan 19, 2021

very good chance I will move to FL

Knightrofins · Jan 19, 2021

Curious to see if DeSantis runs for POTUS in 24.

I feel like his haters wouldnt vote for a republican anyway.

He is tight with Trump which will both help and hurt him.

He had a WONDERFUL reputation (pre covid) from many rational democrats that i speak to

PatsFanatic · Jan 19, 2021

PoundFoolish said:
very good chance I will move to FL

I'm taking the family for February vacation and will try to convince the wife to stay w-thumbs!^

THawk+ · Jan 19, 2021

Knightrofins said:
Curious to see if DeSantis runs for POTUS in 24.

I feel like his haters wouldnt vote for a republican anyway.

He is tight with Trump which will both help and hurt him.

He had a WONDERFUL reputation (pre covid) from many rational democrats that i speak to

It does not matter who runs, they have zero chance of winning with elections being rigged moving forward.

There will never be another fair election

KennyB · Jan 19, 2021

In Florida there are fair elections because of the id laws and absentee ballot verification. He should run for governor again.

Mr_Mark · Jan 19, 2021

T Hawk said:
It does not matter who runs, they have zero chance of winning with elections being rigged moving forward.

There will never be another fair election

agreed

LENBO · Jan 22, 2021

Our one millionth senior will be vaccinated in Florida today.” @GovRonDeSantis
#SeniorsFirst

w-thumbs!^

Willie99 · Jan 24, 2021

Kenny B said:
In Florida there are fair elections because of the id laws and absentee ballot verification. He should run for governor again.

and Trump won that purple state easily

The tale of two governors

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