'Twenty-three thousand Floridians died': A settlement over DeSantis’ Covid-19 lies imperils campaign

15 October 2023

Despite Florida governor and 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis' claim that he is a "champion for 'medical freedom', by "defying federal health guidance to advise Floridians against taking new Covid-19 booster shots," a $152,000 "settlement over withheld Covid-19 data that critics say cost thousands of lives" could tank his campaign, The Guardian reports.

Per The Guardian, "Critics dubbed DeSantis 'the Pied Piper of Covid, leading everybody off a cliff', as he forged ahead with an executive order banning mask mandates in schools, having already signed legislation awarding himself veto power over coronavirus mandates set by municipalities."

Furthermore, the news outlet notes "DeSantis dismissed reporting on the pandemic as 'media hysteria', the Delta variant of the virus was just taking hold, and cases and fatalities spiked, to a record 385 a day in Florida by September 2021. Simultaneously, Florida led the nation in pediatric Covid hospitalizations."

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Now, the Florida Health Department "will pay the plaintiffs' $152,000 legal bill and resume regular posting of the data that DeSantis's communications team insisted at the time was no longer necessary because cases had 'significantly decreased' and that Florida was 'returning to normal.'"

Ex-Democratic Florida state congressman Carlos Guillermo Smith, who filed the lawsuit, said, "Twenty-three thousand Floridians died during the Delta surge, and not only did the DeSantis administration restrict information on Covid during that time, they repeatedly downplayed the severity of the outbreak to fit their political narrative and help DeSantis run for president. That decision cost lives. Our school leaders were struggling to make informed decisions about how to mitigate the spread of Covid, whether it be masking or social distancing policies, or other strategies. They needed data, they needed information, but the state made it unavailable, then said it didn't exist."

The Guardian reports, "Smith said the settlement became inevitable when an appeals court ordered the health department earlier this year to produce documents containing Covid data it claimed did not exist."

He emphasized, "The DeSantis administration was caught red handed lying about the existence of these public records in court, repeatedly claiming that the records we were requesting didn't exist, then saying even if they did exist, they would not share them because they were somehow exempt. All Floridians have a constitutional right to public records and receive them in a timely manner. And what's interesting about the governor's arguments about Covid is he repeatedly talks about giving people the choice over masks and vaccinations, but without critical public health data how are they able to make informed choices?"

Smith added that DeSantis "launched his presidential campaign with a continuation of his war on woke and culture wars and gender ideology and all kinds of stuff. When Republican voters grew tired of that he shifted over to his record on Covid, which still didn’t earn him any points. He keeps changing the subject to see what sticks, but at the end of the day, whatever he’s selling people aren't buying."

Per The Guardian, "The settlement ends a two-year legal battle between the DeSantis administration and a coalition of Democrats, open government advocates and media outlets that began in June 2021 when the Florida health department ended daily updates of Covid cases, deaths and vaccinations on its online dashboard."

University of South Florida distinguished professor of public health, medicine and pharmacy Jay Wolfson told the news outlet, "There's no valid excuse for withholding information from the public except in the rare circumstance where there's a bona fide concern that if you release certain data you'll cause panic, and that the panic itself would cause more damage than the withholding of the data. I don't think there was any case for that to be made here."

The Guardian's report is available at this link (subscription required).

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