NYT: DeSantis Worsened Florida’s COVID Death Toll

The New York Times reports:

In Florida, unlike the nation as a whole — and states like New York and California that Mr. DeSantis likes to single out — most people who died from Covid died after vaccines became available to all adults, not before. As the governor’s political positions began to shift, so did his state’s death rate, for the worse.

Mr. DeSantis and his aides have said that his opposition was to mandates, not to the vaccinations themselves. They say the governor only questioned the efficacy of the shots once it became evident that they did not necessarily prevent infection — which prompted him to criticize experts and the federal government.

Tapping into the Republican revolt against scientific authority made him a political star. But that revolt came with costs. “These were preventable deaths,” Dr. Rivkees, who resigned as Florida’s surgeon general in September 2021, said in a recent interview.

Read the full article. It’s quite the deep dive. Gift link.