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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCoronavirus ravaged Florida, as Ron DeSantis sidelined scientists and followed Trump
As Florida became a global epicenter of the coronavirus, Gov. Ron DeSantis held one meeting this month with his top public health official, Scott Rivkees, according to the governor's schedule. His health department has sidelined scientists, halting briefings last month with disease specialists and telling the experts there was not sufficient personnel from the state to continue participating.
"I never received information about what happened with my ideas or results," said Thomas Hladish, a University of Florida research scientist whose regular calls with the health department ended June 29. "But I did hear the governor say the models were wrong about everything."
DeSantis (R) this month traveled to Miami to hold a roundtable with South Florida mayors, whose region was struggling as a novel coronavirus hot spot. But the Republican mayor of Hialeah was shut out, weeks after saying the governor "hasn't done much" for a city disproportionately affected by the virus.
As the virus spread out of control in Florida, decision-making became increasingly shaped by politics and divorced from scientific evidence, according to interviews with 64 current and former state and administration officials, health administrators, epidemiologists, political operatives and hospital executives. The crisis in Florida, these observers say, has revealed the shortcomings of a response built on shifting metrics, influenced by a small group of advisers and tethered at every stage to the Trump administration, which has no unified plan for addressing the national health emergency but has pushed for states to reopen.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/coronavirus-ravaged-florida-as-ron-desantis-sidelined-scientists-and-followed-trump/2020/07/25/0b8008da-c648-11ea-b037-f9711f89ee46_story.html
Poiuyt
(18,122 posts)Sadly, I don't think we'll be going this year.
Way to go, DeSantis!
vlyons
(10,252 posts)It's called "depraved indifference manslaughter" and sometimes called "depraved heart murder," Definitely a crime in all 50 states and US territories.
In Florida, state laws establish several types of homicide, the unlawful killing of a human being. The state prosecutes homicides as murders and manslaughters -- it may be helpful to know the multiple types of murders established by state law and understand the differences among them. In particular, second degree murder lacks the premeditation often required for the prosecution of a first degree murder. To prove second degree murder, a prosecutor must show that the defendant acted according to a "depraved mind" without regard for human life.
I wish more people would come right out and call Trump and his MAGAT RW govs exactly what this is -- depraved indifference manslaughter.
https://statelaws.findlaw.com/florida-law/florida-second-degree-murder-laws.html