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Dick Storey
Sent to me by a friend who once lived in Roswell.
Truthout July 14, 2023
https://truthout.org/articles/desantis-claimed-pandemic-success-in-florida-as-excess-deaths-skyrocketed/
Presidential hopeful Gov. Ron DeSantis frequently pitches his response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Florida as a top reason why Republican primary voters should choose him over Donald Trump and other candidates. DeSantis fought off local mask mandates, questioned the safety of vaccines, and reopened schools, businesses and beaches before much of the country, policies he claims saved Florida’s economy while focusing prevention efforts on the elderly and vulnerable.
Or so the story goes. A national study on “excess mortality” published in the journal Science this week pours cold water on DeSantis’s claims and reveals that the number of COVID-related deaths outside of major metropolitan areas were likely much higher than initially reported. Like other rural and lower-income areas across the United States, and the Deep South in particular, counties in central Florida and the panhandle suffered tragically high death tolls during the second year of the pandemic despite a massive, nationwide effort to make COVID testing and vaccines widely available.
As of March 10 of this year, about 86,850 Floridians have died from COVID according to official tallies, with Florida ranking third in the nation for total COVID deaths behind the behemoth states of Texas and California. In the end, Florida’s response to COVID was not as effective as DeSantis and others may advertise, according to Andrew C. Stokes, a demographer and sociologist at Boston University who coauthored the study with scientists and public health
“Ron DeSantis has been able to sell Florida as a success story, but that does not bear out once you dig into the county level data,” Stokes said in an interview. “Much of central and rural Florida experienced exceptionally high mortality rates in the second year, when vaccines were available and other measures were in place, like increased access to [COVID] treatments.”
By comparing the total number of recorded deaths from April 2020 to February 2022 to the number of deaths scientists would normally expect to see over the same time period, the researchers measured “excess mortality” or “excess deaths” at the state and county level across the nation. Stokes said this method provides more accurate snapshots of the pandemic’s impact than official death counts from rural areas where COVID data reporting is spotty and fewer sick people die inside health care facilities.
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