It's been a minute since we last waded into the 'media vs. DeSantis' fray, which is an endless and ongoing anthology. Here's the latest installment, via the Daily Beast, which is particularly sloppy and unseemly. The tweet below heavily implies that this individual's death is somehow linked to Florida's governor, a theme on which the story itself also harps. For reasons that we'll explain in greater depth, this is poor, bad-faith journalism, even if it's written by the outlet's "senior entertainment reporter:"
When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sparked outrage by calling students and teachers back to schools in July 2020, principal Jimbo Jackson pushed back. Now, nearly two years later, Jackson has died after suffering complications from long COVID. https://t.co/U94ncorYpg
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) June 1, 2022
Three issues: (1) This man contracted COVID over the summer of 2020, while schools were closed, before DeSantis ordered the resumption of in-person learning:
From the story: “In July 2020…Jackson, who was the head of Fort Braden School…had also just recently tested positive for COVID himself.”
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) June 1, 2022
He got COVID while schools were closed. The political implication here is false & gross. Also, reopening schools was 100% the right call. https://t.co/FQzSu0Po0H
(2) Suggesting that this person is dead because of Ron DeSantis' public policy decision on reopening schools would be grotesquely unfair even if the timeline aligned with that ghoulish implication -- which, again, it does not. Long COVID is a complex issue that is, at best, hard to pin down, so it's tricky to assign deaths to "complications" related to the phenomenon. Proving a direct link between his death and COVID might be straightforward. It might be hazy or tenuous. A direct link to DeSantis or his policies, however, is nonexistent. I am very sorry for this person's family and those who loved him. Every life is precious, and Mr. Jackson was reportedly a beloved pillar of his community. Exploiting that loss to score crass political points is wrong. Exploiting that loss to score crass political points that are totally unsupported by facts is appalling.
(3) Even if this individual had caught COVID inside a Florida school, then died from the virus after DeSantis' reopening decision (I'll repeat: none of that actually happened here), the governor's call would still have been the correct one. I'm sure Mr. Jackson's concerns at the time were heartfelt and came from a good place. But as a matter of public policy, the evidence shows that he was mistaken -- and his death, two years later, does not refute that reality. At this point, it's basically indisputable that prolonged pandemic-'justified' school closures were an absolute disaster on multiple fronts. Florida children were spared a great deal of harm because their schools were in session last academic year, as opposed to shuttered for a year-and-a-half. They lost far less learning. They suffered far fewer disruptions to their development and wellbeing. Lives were saved:
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 2, 2022
And as even an MSNBC panel had to concede recently, Florida's overall COVID outcomes weren't too bad, while their educational and economic outcomes soared. Schools safely reopened around the world within weeks or a few months of the pandemic's onset, and did not become super-spreader vectors. Schools were often among safest places to be, vis-a-vis COVID, in the entire community, including schools that did not mandate masks. The terrible costs that were inflicted upon children by closures are just starting to be quantified, and will echo for years. It's anti-science partisanship in the extreme to continue to attack the adults who made tough, correct decisions, but perhaps such sniping is to be expected from the people who got that crucial issue catastrophically wrong:
If anything, The Daily Beast should be apologizing for the fearmongering and scientifically illiterate post they linked from 2020, which suggested (wrongly) that reopening schools would bring disaster. We are now seeing the harm that fearmongering caused.https://t.co/Qoyeyb1cLH
— AG (@AGHamilton29) June 1, 2022
One last note on Florida, DeSantis, and COVID: Remember this conspiratorial crank, whose crackpottery has been promoted by both major Democrats running to challenge the governor? An independent watchdog delivered yet another blow to her shredded credibility:
A former dashboard manager at the Florida Department of Health made “unsubstantiated” claims that Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration fired her because she refused to obey her superiors’ instructions to fudge the state’s Covid-19 data, a new investigation has found. The extensive report from the Health Department’s Office of Inspector General found “insufficient evidence” that Rebekah Jones was ordered to falsify, alter, or misrepresent Covid positivity rates on the state COVID-19 Data and Surveillance dashboard that she helped build...The report addressed Jones’s accusations that Roberson, as well as two other state health officials, directed her to restrict access to underlying data that supported what was presented on the dashboard, finding them “exonerated.”...Jones still stands by her wrongful-termination claim that she was dismissed for refusing to take part in a massive cover-up, even though the inspector general’s investigation found no evidence to support it, and the state fired her for insubordination. She currently awaits a trial on a felony charge of illegally accessing government systems and downloading private personnel data. She also has a misdemeanor stalking charge, stemming from a different incident in which she was fired from Florida State University for having sex with a student in her class.
Quite the character. Never forget that she was embraced by many Democrats and journalists because she was telling them the exact lies that they wanted to hear (while such malfeasance was actually happening in New York). Jones is now running for Congress, appropriately enough.
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