Florida State Rep. Shevrin Jones (D) criticized the state’s contact tracing initiative on Tuesday, calling his own recent experience with a call from a tracer “a joke.”
Thanks for this article.
Its being covered by all the major media in the state right now, because it is a joke.
Personally, I think its pretty clear that DeSantis just wants to throw up his arms about the entire crisis ala Trump (and he has tried on multiple occasions to do just that), and just pretend it isn’t happening.
But with Dems fielding candidates for every seat in the State Legislature, his own people realize that that approach is political folly that may very well cost them the Legislature for the first time in over 2 decades.
Its also probably dooming his re-election plans for 2022 too.
Thanks for the up close view, very informative
All I can figure at this time is GOP must think their constituents are stupid. I guess time will tell…
They are figuring that their constituents hate Dems more than they hate any of their screw ups.
Interesting. My retired law partner got a job as one of the first contact tracers in Massachusetts. He’s worked himself out of a job–there are so few new cases being discovered here that most of the tracers have voluntarily taken unemployment or been let go. (I just hope none of them have to be called back.)
My only problem with contact tracing in GA was that it took them 2 weeks before they even called me. Most people wouldn’t remember where they had been 2 weeks ago if they are relatively active.
See that’s why introverts will survive. All you social butterflies are the problem.
(I was listening to my local Public Radio station yesterday. They had an assistant prof of psychiatry on and she’s been do telle therapy sessions. She mentioned that anxious introverts are calling her and saying that they feel bad because they like the stay at home orders.)
DeSantis is DeMented.
Hardcore introvert here, and it didn’t change much in my life at all (besides no longer feeling guilty for being a homebody), but I was concerned that my hardcore extrovert husband might just shrivel up and die. So this introvert is worried about the extroverts out there who aren’t coping well. I know he’s not, and just like the professor said, I feel bad for not feeling bad.
And I will say that wearing a mask and not hearing “you should smile more!” is an absolute dream. Might keep wearing it even after the crisis passes!
I am a bit of an introvert myself but I am starting to get antsy from the lack of contact. I would like to cut loose but the possible consequences for me and those few people I come into contact with regularly just helps me put the kibosh on it.
Remember mood rings? I wonder if someone will come up with a mood mask?
The problem with Florida is that the highest level of government wants to sweep it all under the rug and pretend everything is OK. An efficient tracing program would demonstrate how big the problem actually is and they also don’t want to spend money on ANY social program.
Well I got a reprieve yesterday, they cancelled my high school reunion.
And for me cutting loose is taking long drives, or short drives, something to just explore the streets that I’ve never been down before. But then I feel guilty about greenhouse gasses and I just stick closer to home.
Classic GOP Story: The party that thinks government is bad does it very poorly.
DeSantis and his hires are following the playbook: make government bad so they can point and say government is bad, so therefore we need less government. All while being part of a machine that guarantees them riches for very little work, riches now and in the future. I mean, how much work does it take to do a crappy job?
But this standard playbook doesn’t work now, when the data so starkly and so quickly shows their true incompetence. There’s no cover for them, no where to hide, no-one else to blame. The test data, the hospitalization data, the tracing data (and lack thereof) is plain to see.
Thanks for this post.
Yep, same here. I actually did get takeout once to support one of the local restaurants, which I hadn’t done in probably a year before then.
The entire reign of #45 has been a tsunami of bad jokes, both what he has himself done and what he has made permissible: if it was made into a movie it would be even wackier than Airplane! but the laughs would be few and far between, and come hard even then.
Speaking from the experience of having worked in public health epidemiology and disease surveillance/eradication efforts in the States and abroad, what’s not understood by many people is that when a disease’s prevalence gets to a certain point, contact tracing systems not only become overwhelmed, but more importantly they lose effectiveness, even if there are enough tracers. The reason why is precisely what the Representative in effect elaborates: the disease becomes so ubiquitous that often one has no idea where they picked it up.
From the things they have been saying, starting at the WH on down, it looks as if you have it exactly right. The R’s evidently think their 35-40% supporters in the electorate will buy just about anything they say without thinking or questioning.
From the slow trickle of voters who appear to be deserting them with each new Trump blunder, even their voters may not be a gullible as they wish them to be.