TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lashed out again at the news media when he suggested a bias in the coverage of the pandemic on Wednesday, even as concerns swirl about more contagious species of COVID-19 that may be spreading at rallies that the The Tampa Bay Buccaneers win in the Super Bowl.
“The media is of course concerned about that,” DeSantis said at a press conference in Venice.
“You don’t really care if it’s a ‘peaceful protest’,” he continued. ‘You don’t really care if you celebrate a Biden election. You only care if they are people you don’t like. “
DeSantis has routinely argued that there is a bias against Conservatives and Republicans, especially among reporters who have asked awkward and sometimes uncomfortable questions about the governor’s way of dealing with the public health crisis.
But when a journalist asked DeSantis about the spread of a more contagious variant of the virus in the context of superspreader events after the Super Bowl, the governor considered it an unwarranted hit against the home side.
“I’m a fan of Bucs,” the governor exclaimed. “I’m damn proud of what they did on Sunday night.”
The birthplace of the Bucs held a boat parade along the Hillsborough River Wednesday afternoon – a party officials said was more conducive to social aloofness. They invited fans to join, but urged them to wear masks and keep their distance along Tampa’s Riverwalk.
After the Buccaneers’ victory, celebrations erupted across the region – causing maskless crowds to pour into the streets. The governor’s comments seemed to blame the news media for focusing some of their coverage on revelers openly ignoring public health measures, such as wearing masks or observing social aloofness.
DeSantis himself didn’t appear to wear a mask – at least sometimes – while attending the Super Bowl. He later joked that according to a report from Politico, he couldn’t drink with a mask.
‘How the hell can I drink a beer with a mask on? Come on, ”the governor said through a Politico reporter.
The public health implications of the celebrations will not be known in the coming weeks, said Dr. Jay Wolfson, professor of public health and associate dean of the college of medicine at the University of South Florida.
“It is very difficult to punish people who wanted to let go this time. We’ve been locked up for a year, ”he said. “Now we just sit back and do the surveillance and monitoring.”
The Florida Health Department has reported that nearly 1.8 million people have been infected with the disease since the outbreak began a year ago. More than 28,000 have died so far.
While hospital admissions due to the virus have been on a downward trend for nearly a month – from peaks above 7,600 to below 5,000, according to Wednesday’s census – concerns remain about potential additional casualties.
Of particular concern are new strains of viruses that are more contagious, including a variant first discovered in the UK last year that could now take hold in Florida.
There are now 343 known cases of the British variant in the Sunshine State – more than twice what has been discovered in California, which has nearly double the population of Florida.
State health officials have said the high number is also indicative of the state’s more robust testing program for the new variants.
The spread of the more contagious forms of the virus also raises concerns about the effectiveness of current vaccines against new variants.
“We have not seen any data or any evidence to suggest that these vaccines are ineffective,” the governor said at his news conference, adding that his state would remain on track to vaccinate its sizeable elderly population.
To date, more than 2.1 million Floridians, nearly three-quarters of them seniors over 65, have received at least the first shot of one of two vaccines approved in the United States for use against the coronavirus. More than 800,000 of them have completed the two-stage regime.
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