Ron DeSantis can blip right off
But so can the myriad American policies that helped contribute to our immigration crisis.
Credit: Netflix
Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is kind of a dick—most politicians are, I suppose, but DeSantis is especially prickish. Like the governor of my home state of Arizona, Doug “Il Douche” Doucey, Ron “The Dick” DeSantis has banned mask mandates across all public Florida schools. Kids can wear masks, but they don’t have to—which kind of defeats the point.
Think about it: What types of families will require their kids to wear a mask? Vaccinated families (even if their kids can’t be vaccinated yet).
What kind won’t require their kids to mask up? Ironically, those most at risk. Kids from families that refuse to be vaccinated. These kids will put fellow students at risk.
So yeah, cool, they have the “freedom” to go mask-less, but other kids don’t have the freedom to go to school without increased risk of infection, hospitalization and death. Freedom isn’t a zero-sum game. Never was, never will be. And this makes it even tougher for communities, and the nation, to get a grip on this disease. The less we’re in this together, the more COVID-19 is going to spread.
Once upon a time, Americans actually rationed their food and other goods in order to help with the war effort against the Third Reich. Now we bitch about wearing masks to the grocery store and it’s almost always freedom—something I’m quite fond of actually—that’s used as an excuse.
Yes, we absolutely need to be aware that trading our freedoms for “safety” or “security” can be the wrong move. Skepticism of government overreach is valid, especially when that overreach can have a profound impact on our lives.
The Patriot Act is a great example of this. Fear should not dictate massive cultural shifts, let alone this kind of oppressive, big government policy ostensibly created to combat terrorism, but with far-reaching implications for all Americans and their privacy and freedom. We should be more resilient than this, not rush to enact policies that actually do roll back freedoms in the name of national security. I’d also argue that, in the social justice space, the tendency to place “safety” over free speech and endorse censorship if it prevents “harm” is colossally wrong-headed. I’ve written about that plenty because I am concerned that freedoms are being swallowed up and shat out the other end.
But . . . .
I simply do not see the mask/vaccine debate in the same light as these other issues, namely because wearing a mask is more like wearing a seatbelt than forming the TSA or censoring art or literature. For one thing, it’s temporary. We’ll always need seatbelts but, Bog willing, we won’t always need to wear masks (though it seems like the smart thing to do even during regular ol’ flu season to me).
DeSantis and the GOP are trying to spin all of this in really hilarious, infuriating ways. DeSantis says he doesn’t want to hear a “blip” about COVID from President Biden until the borders are secure and, I guess, the decades-old problem of illegal immigration is solved.
Mind you, no Republican president—not even Donald “Build-A-Wall” Trump—has been able to secure the US-Mexico border. No president of either party has and none ever will. It’s not possible without either a full-scale military presence on the border or, equally unlikely, a sea change in myriad US policies toward Latin America (and changes in Latin American governments’ policies, too) that could, theoretically, lead to economic sea changes across the Latin world (see below). And from there, reforms and peace and prosperity and less of a reason to jump ship and head north.
Without this kind of broad approach to undoing decades of meddling, no wall and no border patrol and no president will ever stop illegal immigration. Countless immigrants come via plane, for one thing. But Biden must achieve this enormous, impossible task before he’s allowed to fire off even just one tiny blip about COVID to DeSantis. Blip off, dude.
Meanwhile, Florida is racing toward its worst outbreak yet as the Delta variant rages across the South.
What does DeSantis have to say about masks and schools? When a reporter asked the governor if seven kids at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital (two of whom were in the ICU) would have been helped by masks, “America’s Governor” and definitely-gonna-run-for-POTUS-in-2024 DeSantis said:
“You’re blaming the kids saying they weren’t wearing masks so they’re in the ICU. With all due respect, I find that deplorable to blame a victim who ends up being hospitalized.”
No you dick, we’re blaming you. Or at the very least, you’re just being asked if masks would have helped, and if your pearl-clutching “freedom” bullshit might be getting in the way of these kids’ actual freedom to not contract a deadly disease. Victim-blaming is when you tell a rape victim she should have worn a longer skirt. Asking if a political leader’s policies are endangering kids isn’t blaming kids you mealy-mouthed weasel . . . .
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Don’t agree with everything but “literally no one has ever been able to solve this problem,” is a pretty fair response.
I’m also curious to more of your thoughts on masks and how permanent of a fixture they’ll be. I’m thinking that at least socially, they’re here to stay, sort of like some Asian countries whose citizens seem to wear them as a somewhat common practice.
There's ample real-world and randomized controlled trial data to determine that masks have minimal, if any, protective effect on an influenza-like respiratory infection. This was known to the WHO and CDC, and is reflected in the literature produced up to 2020.
For what it's worth I was pro-Mask in early 2020 as well, but my opinion changed the more I began to research the topic. There are hundreds of doctors & scientists who will acknowledge that typical cloth & surgical masks are not effective.
In 2020 no new high-quality scientific evidence emerged to suggest that masks were protective against SARS-COV2. There were a few low-quality, uncontrolled studies such that the infamous hairdresser study, but a political decision was made to encourage masking as a way of making the virus visible & suggest that public health authorities had any power over transmissability.
The problem now exists entirely in the political realm, because political "leaders" cannot admit they made a mistake on masks even though the evidence continues to mount that masks aren't effective at reducing the spread.
One of the problems in the public health realm is that recommending ineffective treatments leads to reduced trust in public health authorities. Mask mandates were a huge mistake that ruined the credibility of the CDC, and have probably actually increased transmission by creating a false sense of safety.