Governor DeSantis is a Big Dumb Poopyhead

August 2, 2021August 3, 2021 ~ Joe Broadmeadow ~ Leave a comment

I generally don’t resort to name-calling as a matter of principle, but sometimes we are confronted with such a level of ignorance that it seems necessary to express the criticism at a level commensurate with the source of the idiocy.

Governor Ron DeSantis—who is being touted as the replacement candidate for Trump in 2024 (thus maintaining almost the same level of competency for the position)—issued a statewide Ban on School Departments issuing face mask mandates for kids returning to school. (Emphasis author’s because I have trouble believing it myself.)

The Governor based the ban on what he called “unscientific and inconsistent recommendations that school-aged children wear masks,” issued by the CDC and supported by the Biden Administration.

Of course, he left out presenting refutation of these “unscientific and inconsistent” recommendations with any scientific or consistent data of his own. Instead, he talked again about rights of a parent to decide on the health practices best suited for their children.

This ignorance will kill us all.
Author

Governor, if you or any member of your staff had bothered to look for justification for your ban and presented such an argument one might give some credence to the position. Perhaps if you found compelling evidence that masks do not work. Or that transmission rates and levels of infection among school age children are lower. Or that the overwhelming majority of students are vaccinated, and you would require all students to be vaccinated before returning to school. Then, you might have made a valid point.

But that’s not what you did. You’ve made this a purely political issue, kowtowing to the those who are incapable or unwilling to make informed decisions based on actual data.

One simple search about the actual situation in Florida might have opened your eyes to the growing level of infection from the Delta variant in your own state and the inherent risk to students. While some of this data is from the CDC, which you apparently believe is an unscientific organization, some of the data was from your own Florida Department of Health. (You may want to get right on silencing them. It is a bit embarrassing.)

“Florida had 32 pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations per day between July 24 and 30, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adjusted for population, that’s 0.76 kids hospitalized per 100,000 residents, the highest rate in the country.

The Florida Department of Health reported 10,785 new COVID-19 infections among children under 12 between July 23 and 29. That’s an average of 1,540 new cases per day.

The surge is worse for children who are eligible for the vaccine — 11,048 new cases among those ages 12 to 19 in the same week.”
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/08/02/florida-leads-the-nation-in-kids-hospitalized-for-covid/

Let’s hope the medical community in Florida can deal with this ever-increasing number and that the death rate for pediatric patients doesn’t start to climb. And keep in mind, children under twelve, who cannot as of this moment receive the vaccine, will be placed at the highest risk when exposed to their mask-less classmates and teachers who, as the scientific and entirely consistent data shows, can spread the Delta variant even if they have been fully vaccinated.

If you do run in 2024, I hope for your sake you don’t also bear the albatross of hundreds of pediatric deaths around your neck. “I Didn’t Lose Too Many Kids! DeSantis 2024” would be a poor campaign slogan.

Here is the press release from the Governor’s office. At the very end is the Governor’s email address, perhaps we should all drop him a line and tell him what we think.

I think he is a Poopyhead. This ignorance will kill us all.

Governor DeSantis Issues an Executive Order Ensuring Parents’ Freedom to Choose

On July 30, 2021, in News Releases, by Staff

MEMORANDUM

TO: Members of the Press

FROM: Taryn Fenske, Director of Communications, Governor Ron DeSantis

DATE: July 30, 2021

RE: Executive Order 21-175 (Ensuring Parents’ Freedom to Choose – Masks in Schools)

Good afternoon:

Today, Governor Ron DeSantis issued Executive Order 21-175, in response to several Florida school boards considering or implementing mask mandates in their schools after the Biden Administration issued unscientific and inconsistent recommendations that school-aged children wear masks.

The Florida Department of Health will enter rulemaking in collaboration with the Florida Department of Education to protect parents’ freedom to choose whether their children wear masks.

A copy of Executive Order 21-175 can be found here.

Sincerely,

Taryn Fenske

Director of Communications

Governor Ron DeSantis

STATE OF FLORIDA

OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR

EXECUTIVE ORDER NUMBER 21-175

(Ensuring Parents’ Freedom to Choose – Masks in Schools)

WHEREAS, a right to normal education is imperative to the growth and development of our children and adolescents; and

WHEREAS, last summer, at my direction, Florida’s Department of Education ordered schools to be open for in-person instruction for five days per week to ensure the continued well-being of students and families; and

WHEREAS, schools – including those that did not require students to be masked – did not drive community transmission of COVID-19; and

WHEREAS, despite recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “guidance,” forcing students to wear masks lacks a well-grounded scientific justification; indeed, a Brown University study analyzed COVID-19 data for schools in Florida and found no correlation with mask mandates; and

WHEREAS, masking children may lead to negative health and societal ramifications; and

WHEREAS, studies have shown that children are at a low risk of contracting a serious illness due to COVID-19 and do not play a significant role in the spread of the virus; and

WHEREAS, forcing children to wear masks could inhibit breathing, lead to the collection of dangerous impurities including bacteria, parasites, fungi, and other contaminants, and adversely affect communications in the classroom and student performance; and

WHEREAS, there is no statistically-significant evidence to suggest that counties with mask requirements have fared any better than those without mask requirements during the 2020-2021 school year; and

WHEREAS, on April 29, 2021, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Scott Rivkees issued a Public Health Advisory stating that continuing COVID-19 restrictions on individuals, including long-term use of face coverings, pose a risk of adverse and unintended consequences; and

WHEREAS, on June 29, 2021, I signed into law H.B. 241, the Parents’ Bill of Rights, which prevents the state, its subdivisions, or any governmental institution, from infringing on the fundamental rights of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, health care, or mental health of a minor child without demonstrating that such action is reasonable and necessary to achieve a compelling state interest and that such action is narrowly tailored and is not otherwise served by less restrictive means; and

WHEREAS, pursuant to Florida law, all parents have the right to make health care decisions for their minor children; and

WHEREAS, many school districts are scheduled to begin classes on August 10, 2021, which is less than two weeks away, and within four weeks virtually all public schools across Florida will be underway; therefore immediate action is needed to protect the fundamental right of parents to make health and educational decisions for their children; and

WHEREAS, Section 1003.22(3), Florida Statutes, mandates the Florida Department of Health to adopt rules, in consultation with the Florida Department of Education, governing the control of preventable communicable diseases, including procedures for exempting children from immunization requirements; and

WHEREAS, Florida’s State Board of Education, the chief implementing and coordinating body of public education in Florida, has the authority to adopt rules pursuant to Sections 120.536(1), 120.54, and 1001.02, Florida Statutes, and may delegate its general powers to the Commissioner of Education; and

WHEREAS, pursuant to Section 1008.32(4), Florida Statutes, if the State Board of Education determines that a district school board is unwilling or unable to comply with the law, the State Board shall have the authority to, among other things, withhold the transfer of state funds, discretionary grant funds, discretionary lottery funds, or any other funds specified as eligible for this purpose by the Legislature until the school district complies with the law or state board rule and declare the school district ineligible for competitive grants; and

WHEREAS, given the historical data on COVID-19 and the ongoing debate over whether masks are more harmful than beneficial to children and to school environments in general, we should protect the freedoms and statutory rights of students and parents by resting with the parents the decision whether their children should wear masks in school; and

WHEREAS, we should equally and uniformly protect the freedoms and rights of students and parents across the state.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Ron DeSantis, as Governor of Florida, by virtue of the authority vested in me by Article IV, Section 1(a) of the Florida Constitution, and all other applicable laws, promulgate the following Executive Order, to take immediate effect:

Section 1. I hereby direct the Florida Department of Health and the Florida Department of Education, working together, to immediately execute rules pursuant to section 120.54, Florida Statutes, and take any additional agency action necessary, using all legal means available, to ensure safety protocols for controlling the spread of COVID-19 in schools that:

Do not violate Floridians’ constitutional freedoms;
Do not violate parents’ right under Florida law to make health care decisions for their minor children; and
Protect children with disabilities or health conditions who would be harmed by certain protocols such as face masking requirements.

Section 2. Any action taken pursuant to Section 1 above shall at minimum be in accordance with Florida’s “Parents’ Bill of Rights” and protect parents’ right to make decisions regarding masking of their children in relation to COVID-19.

Section 3. The Florida Commissioner of Education shall pursue all legal means available to ensure school districts adhere to Florida law, including but not limited to withholding state funds from noncompliant school boards violating any rules or agency action taken pursuant to Section 1 above.

Section 4. This does not prohibit the Florida Legislature from exploring legislation to further protect the fundamental rights of students and parents to be free from excessive, harmful regulation in schools.

Section 5. This Executive Order is effective immediately.

Continue reading the full Executive Order here.

Contact Governor DeSantis

Executive Office of Governor Ron DeSantis
400 S Monroe St
Tallahassee, FL 32399
(850) 488-7146

Email Governor DeSantis

Email Lt. Governor Nuñez

Information Center

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Risky Business: Rolling the Dice

August 1, 2021August 3, 2021 ~ Joe Broadmeadow ~ Leave a comment

People are terrible at risk assessment. They commonly overestimate the risk based on factors that have nothing to do with the issue. Studies have shown people are more motivated by unreasonable fear or peer pressure to see risk in some activities than by rationality. https://www.cogencyteam.com/news/2018/02/why-are-humans-bad-at-calculating-risk/

This may explain the anti-vaxx phenomenon, particularly the resistance to getting the Covid-19 vaccine, despite overwhelming evidence of the efficacy and benefit of receiving vaccinations and their effect on staying healthy and preventing death.

The reality of the risk is in stark contrast to media outlets — on both sides of the political spectrum — crafting attention-drawing headlines distorting the actual risk.

Less than 0.004% of people who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 experienced a breakthrough case resulting in hospitalization, according to CDC’s latest data, and less than 0.001% have died from the disease.

Breakthrough cases occur when the virus infects fully vaccinated people, but the severity of the case is mitigated by the vaccine thus reducing the morbidity potential. Put simply, unvaccinated you can get very sick, require hospitalization, and have a higher risk of dying than if you are vaccinated and the risk of death is greatly diminished.

The CDC reported a total of 6,587 breakthrough cases, including 6,239 hospitalizations and 1,263 deaths as of July 26. At that time, more than 163 million people in the US were fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

By comparison, if on the recommendation of a physician one were to take low dose aspirin, as millions of Americans do, studies found some startling information,

For 50-year-old men, taking a full-sized, 325 mg aspirin every day to prevent heart disease and stroke carries a risk of 10.4 deaths per 100,000 men per year over and above their overall death risk.

This is comparable to the risk of driving a car or working as a firefighter.

Thus the risk associated with the commonly used aspirin, of which there is no cry of outrage over the recommendation for using such medication, is higher than the vaccine, which prevents Covid-19 in the majority of cases or mitigates the severity of the virus in virtually every case.

It calls into question the ability of Americans to have empathy for their fellow Americans. Instead, out of some warped sense of personal choice smoke-screened by unreasonable risk assessment, they demand “rights’ where they should feel a sense of responsibility.

I find it ironic that Americans are so willing to demand the right to bear arms to protect themselves against a potential but unlikely threat, yet when presented with a genuine and often deadly threat, they prefer to wallow in ignorance.

I need a gun to protect myself from something unlikely to happen but have the right to refuse to protect myself and others from something with a much higher probability.

It makes little sense.

If one were to accept the CDC data for the sake of argument—and no one has ever refuted the data with any level of scientific reliability—and if every American who could be vaccinated were, then we would expect 128,000 hospitalizations and 32000 deaths from breakthrough cases.

While any death is one too many, the unvaccinated are being hospitalized and dying at a much higher rate yet the solution to the problem is right in front of them.

But then again, in a country where a significant number believe the Q-Anon myth and that the election was stolen, I suppose we should expect no less. Maybe we should just defer to nature and natural selection.

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Santa’s Other List: Thoughts for the Twelve Days of Christmas

December 12, 2016 ~ Joe Broadmeadow ~ Leave a comment

Most of us are familiar with the famous lists kept by Santa Claus. As children, we strive to be on the nice list.

As the hormones of puberty arise, we respond to our new-found sexuality. We live in hope that those we find attractive are on the naughty list. There is an irresistible draw to stray a bit.

Through parental intervention, shit luck, positive pregnancy tests, emergency room visits, or one too many rides in the back seat of a police car, most return from the dark side.

Or do we?

I think there is a third list.

The Numb List.

We become numb to the spirit that is Christmas.

We become numb to wonder, excitement, and hope.

We become numb to life in exchange for living.

When we are most suited to understand opportunity in our lives, we settle for becoming numb to the world.

We ignore injustices inflicted on others, if it has no effect on us.

We ignore the growing gap of the haves and the have nots, if we see ourselves content with our life.

We take offense at those who would cause us harm, yet stand idly by as others face harm.

We immerse ourselves in our iPhones, iPads, and iWorlds. Substituting email, tweets, and texts for human interaction.

Think about it. When was the last time you had a conversation with a friend? One that didn’t involve emoticons or videos of dogs riding on the backs of elephants?

I think the “I” in idevices stands for idiots. Or worse, impotent.

We’ve become “useful idiots” to our devices. They have made us impotent to making a difference in the world.

We are all on the numb list.

Numb to feeling any real emotion for our fellow humans.

Numb to the spirit of Christmas, or any other myriad traditions, that once were so important to us all.

Numb to being human beings, in a vast universe, open to unimaginable possibilities.

We are on the precipice of an unprecedented change in this country. We need to pay attention, lest we lose everything to ignorance and blustering intolerance.

Now is not the time to be numb. Now is not the time to be nice.

Now is the time for reclaiming hope. Yet, I fear it will go unheeded. The numb list is a comfortable place to be for most.

If that is the case, I prefer to rejoin the naughty list. Make noise in the presence of things that are wrong in the world.

Laugh with the sinners, not cry with the saints. At least they lived a life, not tolerated an existence.