It’s no secret that Democrats have weaponized the coronavirus, using it to push a false narrative that inaccurately places the blame on Republicans. One only needs to look across the Sunshine State to see how liberals have created their own pandemic by using shotty fear tactics to paint the opposite side of the aisle as the culprit.
What should’ve been a concerted effort to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and get Florida’s economy back on its feet has all but turned into a political power grab by two of the state’s most prominent Democrats looking to increase their political stock and implement a “one size fits all” approach to tackling the virus.
Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gwen Graham have not shied away from lambasting Governor Ron DeSantis and other GOP leaders for their “role” in the recent increase in cases across the state.
Both Democrats have made the “DeSantis = Death” argument time and time again, using social media to prop up their disjointed claims.
“As the situation has gone from promising at beginning of the pandemic to desperate, the county judge will soon issue a stay-at-home order.”@GovRonDeSantis, now is the time to issue a stay at home order, before “death panels” become necessary in Florida.
Do it. Save lives.
— Gwen Graham (@GwenGraham) July 24, 2020
And while the state did see an influx of positive cases during the months of June and July, Florida fatalities remain much lower than comparable states. According to an article published by The Heritage Foundation, Florida’s coronavirus deaths per million residents are nowhere near as bad as New York’s.
Despite rising cases and deaths, Florida’s COVID-19 mortalities per million residents remain below the national average, according to data accessed on July 27 from Worldometer. It is well below death rates in New York City, New York state (including New York City), New Jersey (whose counties with the most deaths are New York City suburbs), Connecticut (which similarly experienced large numbers of cases in suburban New York City counties), and Massachusetts.
In reality, Florida is miles ahead of New York when it comes to the case fatality rate (CFR). While that particular metric is a constantly moving target computed by taking the total number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 (excluding motorcycle deaths) and dividing it by the total number of cases, as it stands, Florida has one of the lowest CFR’s in the country — 1.66% as of today.
While Florida is the third or fourth-largest state in the nation (depending on your measurement metric), it is nowhere near the abysmal rate posted by smaller states like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois or Pennsylvania — all of which are governed by pro-lockdown Democrats. The hardest hit states, and the ones managing the pandemic with the least success, are pro-lockdown states governed by Democrats. Expect to see and hear that fact many, many times in the years to come.
Yet, media outlets across the country would have you believe that Florida is the epicenter of coronavirus death and destruction. This blatant bias in the media has run rampant for months, with reporters across the U.S. praising Democrat Andrew Cuomo for his leadership — despite his nursing home fiasco and 32,000+ coronavirus deaths — while simultaneously criticizing DeSantis for his handling of the contagion.
Aside from the death rate, Florida is also doing much better than the media would have you believe in other relevant categories — such as hospitalizations and the positive test rate. Both metrics are dropping and have been trending downward, with the number of patients hospitalized declining by nearly 40 percent and the rate of infected finally seeing a dip. All without following the advice of Florida’s leading Democrat voices, namely, Graham and Fried.
On top of these encouraging numbers, the state added just 2,678 new coronavirus infections and 87 deaths on Monday — the largest daily decrease in both metrics in two months.
It goes without saying that Florida is bound to see more outbreaks before this virus is defeated. The state will inevitably surpass 10,000 coronavirus deaths (we’re currently at 9,539 and counting), and the media will continue to push misleading headlines that suggest Florida — and mostly DeSantis — is to blame for an uptick in cases.
But that won’t change the truth surrounding the virus. Facts trump feelings, and in the long run, Floridians will thank DeSantis for resisting the siren song of flexing his authority through a Democrat-approved, “big government” approach that would’ve crippled the state’s economy and led to even more people out of work.
History, however, likely won’t be kind to Democrats like Fried and Graham. Both may be eyeing a potential run at governor in 2022, and to this day, continue to promulgate the idea of a statewide lockdown. They also remain DeSantis’ biggest critics, trashing the governor daily to virtue signal to their base and promote their potential next move.
People are taking notice of their political grandstanding and playing politics with the pandemic. Republicans will undoubtedly use this as ammunition in 2022.
As Senator Mitt Romney stated, the federal government dismissed the virus’s threat and failed to protect Americans as infections spiraled out of control. “Short term, I think it’s fair to say we really have not distinguished ourselves in a positive way by how we responded to the crisis when it was upon us,” Romney said, “And the proof of the pudding of that is simply that we have 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s deaths due to covid-19.” “And there’s no way to spin that in a positive light,” Romney This is not a democrat narrative, this is a fact.