Here is Jon Authors in his “Points of Return” newsletter for Sept. 16, 2021:
Looking at the numbers for Texas and Florida, the two large states where Republican governors have vocally refused to enforce social distancing and where there is great skepticism toward the vaccine, the results are startling. I compiled the following chart the same way as the earlier comparison of the U.S. and the U.K., indexing both states’ death rates to the peak in the first wave, which in the southern U.S. came in August last year. As with the U.S. and the U.K., the pattern was remarkably similar until early this summer. Since then, Texas has endured a clear-cut third wave. The experience in Florida is remarkable, and suggests that there is more to the problem than vaccine hesitancy:
Unlike virtually anywhere else in the Western world, Florida is in the midst of a third wave much worse than the first two. Without getting too political, this makes the state’s current policies toward the virus very hard to understand; and also makes the current death toll look like the result of deliberate decisions, both by politicians and individuals. This is only a hypothesis, and it looks as though there is more to the Floridian third wave than resistance to vaccines, but numbers like this help explain why investors are calm.
Let me repeat the key bit: “Without getting too political, this makes the state’s current policies toward the virus very hard to understand; and also makes the current death toll look like the result of deliberate decisions, both by politicians and individuals.”
Thank you, Ron DeSantis!
Republicans love DeSantis. and death, I guess.
It’s a virus that can mutate at any time, but only if you have it — and a lot of Floridians have it. One of those mutations could make a new and deadlier COVID that kills more ferociously than anything we’ve seen, but they’re still not going to get vaccinated.
The whole endless show is an invitation to the Russkies or Chinese. If they ever have an urge to attack, like we’ve been told for decades they’re itching to, they should use a biological agent against Americans. Even if there’s an easy way to prevent the infection, millions and millions of us are so stupid we’ll refuse it.