Fort Lauderdale newspaper dubs Gov. Ron DeSantis 'Florida's mis-communicator in chief'

Gov. Ron DeSantis really tried to redefine his own failure to order enough doses of a much-anticipated coronavirus vaccine as an error on the part of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer Tuesday. Of course, few people are buying it, but he tried. When posed with the prospect of Florida getting less than the needed 452,000 vaccine doses the state was anticipating, DeSantis tried to explain the problem away as a Pfizer "production issue." Pfizer, however, said in a statement the Tampa Bay Times obtained that the pharmaceutical giant is having no such issue.

"Pfizer is not having any production issues with our COVID-19 vaccine, and no shipments containing the vaccine are on hold or delayed," the company said in the statement. "This week, we successfully shipped all 2.9 million doses that we were asked to ship by the U.S. Government to the locations specified by them. We have millions more doses sitting in our warehouse but, as of now, we have not received any shipment instructions for additional doses."

For this example of DeSantis' departure from reality and more, South Florida Sun-Sentinel's editorial board blasted the governor, President Donald Trump's mentee, as "Florida's mis-communicator in chief."

"DeSantis has been off-pitch since the coronavirus first hit our shores — denying community spread, spinning happy talk about scarce protective gear, and shielding data about nursing home infections, hospital bed capacity and the lack of contact tracing," the editorial board wrote. "But in the weeks before and since the 2020 presidential election, he's gotten worse."

The newspaper cited as evidence the governor's claim that reports of Florida's 1.19 million COVID-19 infections and 20,473 deaths have been manipulated to seem worse than they are. He's deemed "anti-masker" Kyle Lamb and conservative blogger Jennifer Cabrera more reliable sources on the virus, and DeSantis is dodging South Florida mayors seeking mask mandates like an anti-masker dodges common sense.

"Never have we heard DeSantis admit a mistake," the editorial board wrote. "Rarely have we heard him express empathy for those who've been infected, placed on a ventilator or died. He talks in terms of numbers, not people — people with real names like Christine and Earl, Doris and Stuart, Adrian and Shannon, Thom and Jose, and tomorrow, perhaps your name, too."