Ron DeSantis

Fabiola Santiago, Tribune News Service

Don’t listen to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a follower of debunked science. Keep that mask on indoors when social distancing isn’t possible and it’s prudent to do so, Floridians.

DeSantis has a masking complex not even a wife can fix.

“The political science show cannot go on,” an arrogant and defiant DeSantis tweeted Thursday, doubling down on his outrageous, mocking anti-mask behaviour in Tampa the day before.

“It’s curtain call for COVID theatre,” he repeated.

But ask yourselves: How can a man, whose wife is being treated for cancer, thoughtlessly walk up to strangers — active high school students at that — and bully them into taking off the masks protecting them and others from COVID-19 infection?

The ranting twit who did this was none other than Republican DeSantis, incorrigible man-child that he is. Follower of quackery that he is.

His wife and mother of his three small children, Casey, whom DeSantis declared “cancer-free” in a statement on Thursday, had been undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer at a Tampa hospital. Masks are life-saving protection for people like her whose immune systems are compromised by treatment.

No, face coverings aren’t “ridiculous,” as the governor called them. Why take a needless risk? To make a political statement, a dangerous one, but in line with DeSantis’ mismanagement of the coronavirus in Florida from the onset.

“You do not have to wear those masks,” a visibly annoyed DeSantis said to the students as he walked up to them, thrusting his finger in their faces. “Please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything. We’ve got to stop with this COVID theatre. So if you wanna wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous.”

And then, as some did (later telling the media they felt pressured to do so), the bully huffed and puffed, still annoyed, at the University of South Florida podium where he staged a press conference about investments the state is making in cybersecurity workforce education.

DeSantis couldn’t control his annoyance at the sight of young people doing the right thing: wearing a mask, as is still recommended by the nation’s top health experts, while in close proximity to strangers at an indoor event during a pandemic.

For one, Hillsborough County, where the governor spoke, remains one of the Florida regions with high levels of coronavirus where the CDC has recommended that masks still be used indoors.

That Florida coronavirus infection numbers are down-trending isn’t an excuse for DeSantis’ behaviour.

The low numbers aren’t really so low when you take into account that home COVID test results  aren’t reported, and therefore, not counted.

The highly contagious virus, which can have long-lasting effects on a person’s health, has killed 70,247 Floridians to date, and is still with us, no matter how much the governor tries to hide it from view.

His antics are meant to camouflage his failures.

They range from petty stuff like photo ops in lab coats at the beginning of the contagion to sheer incompetency that hurt Florida families in their time of need, like when he refused to prioritize fixing the unemployment benefits website that kept crashing on people.

Berating kids is another low blow. The one staging political “theatre” around COVID is and has been the governor, a follower of herd immunity theories whose latest behaviour shows us, once more, that he can’t be trusted with medical decision-making.

Gov. DeSantis, you’re dangerous and reckless, especially given your wife’s condition. She is, too, as she wasn’t wearing a mask at the Florida Legislature’s opening, where she sat shoulder-to-shoulder with people in the balcony. And while Casey DeSantis’ positive surgery and treatment outcome is really good news, doctors don’t consider a patient truly “cancer-free” until they’ve been in remission for five years.

Personal choice, fine, but don’t peddle irresponsibility as public policy for the rest of us. I’m proof that masks work.

An N95 mask most likely saved me from contracting COVID a couple of weeks ago after close relatives who attended a Super Bowl party — and with whom I shared a car ride — tested positive and became sick enough to need medical attention.

It’s not the first time proper mask protection, coupled with vaccination, protected me from the highly infectious virus. As a journalist, I’m not one to sit still. From the beginning of COVID, I’ve travelled around the state — safely, thanks to protective measures — and gotten to see the virus’s handling play out in different cities.

Had I been a DeSantis devotee instead of a critic of his bad, medically unsound COVID policy, I would have probably already been infected more times than I care to count and been part of the 5.81 million Floridians on the books who tested positive. There are many more who haven’t reported their positive diagnosis.