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Sunday, October 15, 2023

DeSantis "teetering" campaign: Florida had withheld Covid-19 infection/death data from the public, but has settled to release past truth, and report publicly, regularly, in the future.

AP posts a short basically neutral report. I.e., mentioning DeSantis once only, in passing:

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida will have to provide COVID-19 data to the public again after a former Democratic state representative settled a lawsuit with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration over the decision two years ago to stop posting information on the virus’ spread online.

websearch = florida covid historic data litigation 

Guardian and USAToday report a bit more on political implications for the failing DeSantis campaign.

Guardian:

[Headline] ‘That decision cost lives’: Covid data case further deflates Ron DeSantis’s campaign - Settlement over withheld virus data that critics say cost thousands of lives comes at pivotal time for Republican governor and his teetering campaign

courtroom settlement over withheld Covid-19 data that critics say cost thousands of lives has deflated Ron DeSantis’s campaign trail persona as a courageous freedom warrior who kept his state open during a deadly peak of the pandemic.

It comes at a pivotal time for the Florida governor, whose teetering run for the Republican presidential nomination is mired in financial difficulties and collapsing poll numbers in early primary states.

Among the efforts DeSantis has made to try to arrest his slide among Republican hardliners include positioning himself as a champion for “medical freedom”, and defying federal health guidance to advise Floridians against taking new Covid-19 booster shots.

The settlement ends a two-year legal battle between the DeSantis administration and a coalition of Democrats, open government advocates and media outlets that began in June 2021 when the Florida health department ended daily updates of Covid cases, deaths and vaccinations on its online dashboard.

The department will pay the plaintiffs’ $152,000 legal bill and resume regular posting of the data that DeSantis’s communications team insisted at the time was no longer necessary because cases had “significantly decreased” and that Florida was “returning to normal”.

In reality, as DeSantis dismissed reporting on the pandemic as “media hysteria”, the Delta variant of the virus was just taking hold, and cases and fatalities spiked, to a record 385 a day in Florida by September 2021. Simultaneously, Florida led the nation in pediatric Covid hospitalizations.

[...] In a statement to the Guardian, the Florida department of health noted that the settlement did not include any admission of wrongdoing or violation of any law, and that the state had always reported data to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

[...]

USAToday

The department will also have to pay $152,500 in legal fees. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit included former Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando; the Florida Center for Government Accountability; the USA TODAY Network; the Miami Herald; the Associated Press; Scripps Media Co.; The New York Times; The Washington Post; the Sun-Sentinel; the Tampa Bay Times and the First Amendment Foundation.

“All Floridians have a constitutional right to public records and the right to receive critical public health data in a timely manner in order to make informed decisions impacting the health and safety of their families," Smith said in a Monday press release.

"The Department lied about the existence of these public records in court and did everything to restrict information and downplay the threat of COVID even while the delta variant ripped through Florida – a decision that cost many lives," said Smith, who is running for a state Senate seat. "The DeSantis Administration settled in our favor because they knew what they did was wrong."

[...] The governor's office referred a media request to the Florida Department of Health.

Williams, the department's press secretary, called Smith's news release a "political stunt" and its characterization strange, pointing to a line in the settlement agreement that reads it "is not and shall not in any way be construed as an admission by any Party of any wrongdoing or any violation of any law."

[...] What spurred the lawsuit?

An Orange County Board member requested Smith gather data from the state Department of Health on pediatric hospitalizations and cases. This happened as the state was the epicenter of the COVID-19 surge during the summer of 2021 from the delta variant and ranked No. 1 in pediatric cases.

The department denied Smith's request, stating in part, that the data for Orange County is "confidential and exempt from public disclosure” under Florida statutes and rules.

The nonprofit watchdog organization Florida Center for Government Accountability made the same records request for all of Florida's 67 counties and the request was denied for the same reasons.

[...] The watchdog group and Smith filed suit. Several major news media companies, including the USA TODAY Network, joined the suit. So did the First Amendment Foundation.

The department claimed in court that the requested records didn't exist, according to a press release. But the department released the records in March following a state appellate court order.

The parties agreed to a settlement after the watchdog group informed the department that those records satisfied the public records requests made almost two years before, according to the release.

Michael Barfield, director of public access initiatives at the Florida Center for Government Accountability, said the department hid the records to validate a narrative the state was open for business.

“Transparency and accountability are not negotiable. The Constitution mandates it,” he said.

DeSantis uses COVID-19 record to build support

The settlement comes during Gov. Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign. The Republican has used his COVID-19 record to try and gain more support in his White House bid.

He rose to conservative stardom early in the pandemic in large part due to his COVID-19 policies, such as penalizing mask and vaccine mandates.

His administration, at the same time, slow-walked or refused coronavirus-related public information requests, drawing controversy and lawsuits, such as those by Smith and the Florida Center for Government Accountability.

He picked Joseph Ladapo as Florida's surgeon general. Ladapo, who's also named in the lawsuit, frequently defies medical consensus to boost vaccine skepticism.

Attempting to chip away at some of the MAGA vote, DeSantis has elevated coronavirus and vaccine skepticism conspiracies and attacked Trump for the COVID-19 restrictions that happened during his presidency.

"Why are we in this mess? Part of it, and a major reason is because how this federal government handled COVID-19 by locking down this economy," DeSantis said during the first GOP presidential primary debate. "It was a mistake. It should have never happened. And in Florida, we led the country out of lockdown."

When the reports reach into the politics of DeSantis within the context of the withheld data, the governor is cast in an unfavorable light. Does it matter?

Readers are aware polling is consistent that the 2024 Presidential election yet again will be a Biden v. Trump contest, already leaving DeSantis and the others whistling into the wind. 

Crabgrass contends that MSM should simply admit there is no real "contest" story until later; and that these "debates" are futility personified; but not news.

MSM now, anyway, has international news to meet its need to sell content to the masses. Death and more in the Middle East. And Trump criminal charges sell too as "news" while the big trials have not yet started. And Ukraine, who's moving how, and will funding be pulled?

Biden has Harris as VP, while the Republican news will be who Trump picks and why. 

Not Liz Cheney. Not Ron. But, who?