Florida's Gov. DeSantis sat on 800,000 COVID tests

[lady_*nix]

https://nbc-2.com/news/state/2022/01/07 ... the-state/

The tests were never distributed, and are now expired.

At the very least, this is incompetence to a level that should be criminal, but with DeSantis' other COVID history I have to wonder if he just wanted more people to die. Like, IDK, seemingly every other Republican these days, and a good portion of Democrats too.

[SciFiFisher]

https://nbc-2.com/news/state/2022/01/07/nikki-fried-claims-nearly-1-million-covid-19-tests-are-being-stockpiled-by-the-state/

The tests were never distributed, and are now expired.

At the very least, this is incompetence to a level that should be criminal, but with DeSantis' other COVID history I have to wonder if he just wanted more people to die. Like, IDK, seemingly every other Republican these days, and a good portion of Democrats too.

He doesn't care if people die. Especially if it scores him points with his base. It's a form of tribalism. Anyone who is "other" is less than human. We have a crop of people who can't see any value in caring about others if there is no immediate benefit for them in it.

[lady_*nix]

Aye.

One commenter mentioned that a top donor for DeSantis has a lot of money invested in monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID, which... is true: https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-bu ... 19b3ed994f

My brain wants to reject the idea that DeSantis would enable more hospitalizations and deaths deliberately in order to raise his donor's stocks, but, well... It's not like US politicians haven't already done as bad and worse. Just look at Flint, MI.

[SciFiFisher]

Aye.

One commenter mentioned that a top donor for DeSantis has a lot of money invested in monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID, which... is true: https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-bu ... 19b3ed994f

My brain wants to reject the idea that DeSantis would enable more hospitalizations and deaths deliberately in order to raise his donor's stocks, but, well... It's not like US politicians haven't already done as bad and worse. Just look at Flint, MI.

Or consider the congress critters who were publicly saying COVID was not a big deal and selling or buying stocks based on how bad they knew it would be. Because they sat in on the briefings to Congress. But, yes, it would be natural for De Santis to consider how his donors will benefit from his decisions.

[Rommie]

I've been in Florida a few times during this pandemic to visit family, and the amount that they just don't give a fuck about the pandemic beyond their immediate wealthy class is insane and well documented throughout. They just really think it's not that big a deal because they don't personally know many people affected.

Which is nuts btw because while I don't think Florida is as big a swing state any more as it was, it's well documented that many more people have died from Covid there than the margin of the last governor's election. So it might ultimately matter.

[SciFiFisher]

I've been in Florida a few times during this pandemic to visit family, and the amount that they just don't give a fuck about the pandemic beyond their immediate wealthy class is insane and well documented throughout. They just really think it's not that big a deal because they don't personally know many people affected.

Which is nuts btw because while I don't think Florida is as big a swing state any more as it was, it's well documented that many more people have died from Covid there than the margin of the last governor's election. So it might ultimately matter.

Sadly, I think the more cynical ones believe they can go on gerrymandering, discouraging voters, and winning elections by buying them. The naive ones pretend that none of that stuff happens and that their candidate wins because they represent truth, justice, and the American Way!

[lady_*nix]

What Fisher said... and also, they may still be banking on COVID killing more Dem-voting POC than Repub-voting white people. Which it very well might. COVID anti-vax crap is mostly a white people thing AFAIK, but distrust of medical institutions runs deep (for good reason) among Black and Latine people, and many have jobs that won't give them the time off to get vaxxed. This is probably the case even now, and even more liberal states, let alone in Florida.

Basically the usual answer holds IMO... Anything bad Republicans do, they do at least in part out of racism.

[SciFiFisher]

What Fisher said... and also, they may still be banking on COVID killing more Dem-voting POC than Repub-voting white people. Which it very well might. COVID anti-vax crap is mostly a white people thing AFAIK, but distrust of medical institutions runs deep (for good reason) among Black and Latine people, and many have jobs that won't give them the time off to get vaxxed. This is probably the case even now, and even more liberal states, let alone in Florida.

Basically the usual answer holds IMO... Anything bad Republicans do, they do at least in part out of racism.

That just gave me a random thought. In the conflict and competition for power is there any way to differentiate between racism and class/elite power structures. For example, if you study poverty there are a lot of non-POC living in extreme poverty and suffering many of the same negative outcomes as POC. The term "white trash" and the examples that come with that. What you wind up with is a bunch of people who think they are not racist but they wind up doing the same things racists do but to a slightly wider group. i.e. "White trash", hispanics, blacks, Asians, and anyone else who is not from the "right side of the tracks".

elitism or classism? similar but not the same as racism? Try not to conflate one with the other? Lots of overlap between the two?

[lady_*nix]

@Fisher

Yes and no. Especially in the US. Race and class are heavily intertwined here. They're different things (as you can see from any case of a poor white person being believed by cops over a poor Black person). But also e.g. a lot of Black people would be blocked from money, housing, and education, even in the absence of actively racist policies or people, because Southern slavery left that level of material debt. You can see this by just looking at inherited wealth vs. race; on average, white families have far more inherited wealth and savings than Black families.

I've found a useful way to think of it is that oppressions multiply on each other rather than add linearly. Being poor is always shit, but being Black and poor multiplies the suckiness and danger. And even if you're Black and "middle class", your money is effectively worth less. Being Black loses someone class privilege.

A good way to think about it IMO is that oppressions act as multipliers on each other, rather than just stacking linearly. Basically any single way that someone is marginalized, tends to worsen a little the other ways they're marginalized, or create weird new specific cases of being fucked over.

e.g. If you've ever heard the term "intersectional feminism", that was Kimberly Crenshaw's addition to the sociology of racism and sexism, for cases where the statuses of "being Black" and "being a woman" combine to create new and unintuitive forms of oppression. It's... not the correct term for discussing other such cases, e.g. sexism x ableism (Ms. Crenshaw herself has pointed out the problems with that). But I think there are analogies elsewhere at least.

Also relevant, from a different viewpoint: there's a movement called ADOS - American Descendants of Slaves - that works specifically on how race and class blend together. I don't roll with that crowd because they tend to be anti-immigration and pro-business, but the gist of their idea is very good: they want the US government to financially compensate descendants of slaves for the enslavement and abuse of their ancestors, not as an abstract form of justice, but because slavery stole the fruits of their labor and created a concrete and measurable wealth gap. To ADOS, reparations from the US govt aren't about assuaging some sense of guilt, they're about giving back labor value that was literally stolen from enslaved Black families, who are still struggling to dig themselves out of the hole created by that theft.

Anyway yeah, hope that helps contextualize some stuff.