It’s always amusing to watch the media complain that the coronavirus was “politicized” and then shamelessly continue politicizing it. They pretend they’re on the side of science, and then they cook up a story or cable news segment casting only President Trump and Republicans as failures in managing the pandemic.
MSNBC’s Joy Reid did exactly that this week when she continued the media campaign to make Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis look bad, though all indications are that his state has made it through the pandemic relatively well.
“As Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis has made one hideous move after another,” babbled Reid. But, she said, his biggest screw up has been “when it comes to the coronavirus.”
Her leading data point to back up that accusation is that Florida “is only one of the three states with more than 1 million cases, and those case numbers are rising.”
Wow, that’s devastating!
Actually, it’s not. Of those three states with 1 million cases, California, led by shutdown advocate and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, is number one, with more than 1.5 million cases. And, as Reid would say with grave concern, “those case numbers are rising!”
The third state with 1 million confirmed cases is Texas. And weirdly enough, all three of those states also happen to have the largest populations in the country. That almost suggests that the more people in any given state, the higher the likelihood that they have more cases of a highly contagious virus! What a coincidence!
Either Reid is dumb, or she thinks her audience is.
California is completely shut down, with even outdoor dining banned. Florida, by contrast, is mostly wide open, with bars and nightclubs functioning (at a reduced capacity), and even movie theaters permitted to return to business. California has nearly 21,500 total deaths from the virus. Florida has 20,000.
To be fair, something Reid would never do, the death rate relative to population is currently worse in Florida, where it’s 93 deaths for every 100,000 people. In California, it’s 54 deaths. But, it’s worth noting that California’s rolling average of daily new case numbers has been surging since the start of November. California right now is averaging almost 33,000 new cases per day, whereas in Florida, it’s 10,000. Because new deaths tend to lag large numbers of new infections, there’s a strong likelihood that California is about to undergo a very dark few weeks.
Because my heart grew three sizes the day that Democrats failed to take the Senate and saw their House majority shrink, I’m reluctant to blame anyone for virus infections and deaths. Unlike Reid, I don’t look at it in purely political terms.
But if she’s going to make me, the truth is that she’s lying to her audience.
