Florida governor Ron DeSantis wrested a temporary win from an appeals court on Friday in his battle against school mask mandates, the latest development in the Republican leader’s fight against rudimentary public health measures that could help curb the spread of a deadly virus. Thanks to the ruling, ABC News reports, Florida has the ability to continue withholding school board members’ salaries in districts that require students to wear masks.
That means the state can effectively punish local educators for trying to protect their students as they return to classrooms amid “a variant that’s more infectious and more dangerous to children than the one we had last year,” as Florida judge John Cooper put it last week when he overturned DeSantis’ ban on school mask mandates. Friday’s order reversed that decision, reinstating the ban pending the outcome of an appeal. Florida saw record highs in cases, hospitalizations, and death over the summer, per the Washington Post. While the surge appears to be easing overall, “the number of Covid-related child deaths in the state has more than doubled” since August, according to Politico. Ten children under the age of 16 have died from the virus since July 30, the outlet reported last week, bringing the total number of child COVID-19 fatalities in Florida to 17.
The increase in child deaths connected to Covid comes as Florida’s school districts, which include some of the biggest in the country, have reopened their doors while facing DeSantis’ ongoing war on public health. Intensive care units are also reportedly admitting and intubating more kids, according to officials at Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Florida. “Unfortunately, some of these children will not survive,” Dr. Mobeen Rathore, Wolfson’s chief of pediatric infectious disease and immunology, told Politico. Many of the 17 total childhood fatalities had underlying medical conditions such as obesity when they became infected. “Having said that, it doesn’t mean we’re not worried sick about it,” said American Academy of Pediatrics Florida President Lisa Gwynn. (In a statement to Politico, DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw said "pediatric hospitalizations are not, in fact, increasing,” citing a statewide decrease over the past two weeks; the administration reportedly did not answer questions about the uptick in deaths.)
Last month for Miami-Dade County Public Schools was an especially grim sign of the times. At least 13 employees—including teachers, school bus drivers, and a cafeteria manager—have died “from complications of COVID-19” since August 16, NPR reports. “It is a big number. It is a bruising statistic that we need to absolutely internalize,” Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told the outlet. The majority of the 13 workers became infected and died prior to the beginning of the school year; all were unvaccinated and African American, United Teachers of Dade President Karla Hernandez-Mats also told NPR. The loss, Carvalho said, “underscores the impact of misinformation and disinformation efforts through some vocal entities, who quite frankly profess anything but scientific reality.”
Florida isn’t the only state reckoning with how to keep kids safe during the evolving pandemic. “Pediatric hospitalizations, driven by a record rise in coronavirus infections among children, have swelled across the country,” the New York Times reports, as nearly 30,000 kids were admitted to a hospital with COVID-19 in August. Data suggests that places with lower immunization rates, such as Louisiana and Texas, are helping drive the increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations for children. Compared to states boasting the highest vaccination rates nationwide, the Times reports, “states with the lowest vaccine coverage have child hospital admissions that are around four times as high.”
— How a Deadly Crash Upended South Dakota Politics
— Matt Gaetz Tries to Shift the Narrative With a MAGA Romance
— Sebastian Junger on How the U.S. Corrupted Afghanistan
— Rudy Giuliani Is One Week Away From Waxing His Back in a Sweetgreen
— New York Prosecutors Are Full Steam Ahead to Take Down the Trump Organization
— How Turf Wars Mucked Up America’s Exit From Afghanistan
— Biden’s COVID-19 Origins Report Leaves the Lab Leak on the Table
— Governor Kristi Noem Joins Fellow Republicans in Quest to Kill Constituents
— From the Archive: The Man in the Window
— Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.
Florida Governor Celebrates Ban on School Mask Mandates as More Kids Die From COVID - Vanity Fair
Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment