Reckless Disregard in Opening Schools: As Florida Schools Prepare to Reopen, New COVID-19 Cases Among Florida Children Top 1,000 Per Day
July 28th 2020
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (Gage Skidmore)
By Hunter
In Florida, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to escalate. That's taking a worrying turn as the state's incompetent Gov. Ron DeSantis remains absolutely determined to open schools mere weeks from now: There are now over 31,000 children in the state who have tested positive for the virus.
That isn't just a new high. As CNN reports, cases among children have soared 34% in just the past eight days. That means the last week has seen about 1,000 new cases among children each day.
The Trump administration's various toadies and hangers-on, along with Fox News talking heads and other conspiracy theorists, continue to assert that children aren't affected by the virus and can't easily spread it. They're lying, and they're lying as part of the overall effort to restart the all-valued economy before the full ramifications of the Trump administration's catastrophic incompetence result in late-election mass poverty. Three hundred Florida children have been hospitalized—50 of them in the past week—and that number can also be expected to increase sharply. There's no evident way to track how many of those children have spread the virus to others, because Florida. As the percent of positive tests ticks up—CNN reports the positive rate among tested children in Martin County, just north of Palm Beach, is over 25%—there's no plausible reason to believe Florida is even close to being able to measure the pandemic, much less contain it.
It's not likely schools will reopen in the state. It's simply not. No matter what retaliatory moves DeSantis takes to attempt to force them open, most teachers and most parents do not want children to die in order to boost conservative egos. Like Trump's asinine pandemic political convention, DeSantis will likely have to retreat from his position while making it look somehow look like it was his idea all along, like the craven jackass that he is.
It is either that, or three months and many deaths from now state residents are very likely to burn down his office. There is a level of incompetence that in and of itself should be considered criminal, and "open the schools while a deadly pandemic rages still-uncontrolled through the state" is well, well on the other side of that line.
Posted with permission