APOCALYPSE POSTPONED (LIBERAL PUNDITS HARDEST HIT): An Orgy of Plague Death, Deferred. Caseloads have declined in Florida and Georgia since the lockdowns were eased by Republican governors who were denounced for ignoring “the science.”
In the Atlantic, Amanda Mull’s dispatch anticipating Georgia’s apocalyptic future was entitled simply, “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice: The state is about to find out how many people need to lose their lives to shore up the economy.” According to her reporting, though Georgians chafed under lockdown, there was no serious insurrectionary sentiment among the people when Kemp announced his intention to relax restrictions on service industries. “Georgians are now the largely unwilling canaries in an invisible coal mine,” she wrote, “sent to find out just how many individuals need to lose their job or their life for a state to work through a plague.”
“Public health experts fear coronavirus will burn through Georgia like nothing has since William Tecumseh Sherman,” read a florid analogy from the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank. His tongue-in-cheek piece, “Georgia leads the race to become America’s No. 1 Death Destination,” toyed with the notion that Peach State residents were dying to work out at their local gyms including “CrossImmunity” and “Superspreader” boot camp. Cosmetologists could perform a “deep lung-tissue massage.” Restaurant-goers could enjoy “wet-market-to-table restaurants to experience a growing sampling of zoonotic dishes.” This columnist clearly enjoyed the time he spent crafting witty prose around the prospect of plague.
Those who did not strike either an authoritative or flippant tone struck a more somber note. “Mark this day,” Ron Fournier wrote on April 20. “Because two and three weeks from now, the Georgia death toll is blood on his hands. And as Georgians move around the country, they’ll spread more death and economic destruction.”
Florida’s DeSantis was, according to state Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, “reckless, premature, and irresponsible” to allow municipalities to reopen their coasts in mid-April. When stores began reopening, the Miami Herald editorial board accused the governor of serving up his state’s citizens as a sacrifice in return for some imagined “political favor” from the president. As recently as this week, the Washington Post’s Ben Terris and Josh Dawsey described DeSantis as the prototypical “Florida Man”—a “devil-may-care and slightly oafish, beloved but not admired” cliché of a human being.
Actually, Florida Man is more admired than the mainstream media. And apparently has a better grasp of “the science.”
