Florida shrugs off COVID threat to us oldsters | Fred Grimm

Emulating the old Inuit custom -- abandoning the elderly on arctic ice floes -- has never seemed a practical way for subtropical Florida to lessen its geriatric burden.

But now we have the coronavirus.

No wonder Florida has been partying like it was 2019, with the president and our governor leading the conga line. The rising infection totals sound alarming, but don’t worry. Us old farts will be doing most of the dying.

Gov. Ron DeSantis and the governors of 20 other states where COVID-19 infections have been increasing over the last few weeks are not about to admit they re-opened their respective economies before the pandemic was under control.

“We are not shutting down. We are going to go forward,” DeSantis told reporters on Tuesday, the very day when Florida recorded a single-day record of 2,783 new infections (breaking the previous record set on Monday). A day later, Florida reported yet another record -- 3,207, topped on Friday with 3,822 new infections. Florida’s coronavirus death count now exceeds 3,060 fatalities.

Unfazed by unfavorable data, President Trump and DeSantis devised a rousing way to say to hell with pandemic panic: Let’s cram 15,000 screaming human vectors into an indoor Jacksonville arena for the Republican National Convention and see what happens.

At that same press conference, DeSantis explained why he was determined to keep commerce humming, no matter this spike in infections. Eighty-six percent of the state’s COVID-19 fatalities were among oldsters, 65 and up, he said, adding that disease has killed more people over 90 in Florida than under 65. (Most of Florida’s other fatalities were suffered by other expendable demographics: prison inmates and migrant farm workers.)

Last month, in a similar argument about how Florida death rates are skewed by an overabundance of retirees, DeSantis dredged up the old joke characterizing Florida as “God’s waiting room.”

Apparently, DeSantis wouldn’t mind shortening the wait.

Public health docs say the spike in infections is almost certainly a consequence of DeSantis’s decision six weeks ago to reopen the state’s economy, ignoring the CDC’s recommendation to delay re-opening until a state has recorded a decline in new coronavirus cases for 14 consecutive days.

Florida didn’t bother with that CDC stuff and has now reported record daily totals of new cases six times in the last week. Still, DeSantis has refused to adopt the simplest, least disruptive disease preventative -- mandatory masks in public.

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia require masks. The advocacy group Physicians for Social Responsibility claimed this week that wearing a face mask would reduce the chances of contracting COVID-19 by six-fold. DeSantis won’t budge. “I don’t think it’s a reasonable thing,” he said. “We should be trusting people to make good decisions.”

Stroll down Las Olas Boulevard and those “good decisions” are a slap to your sensibilities. Street life appears to be as cozy as ever, with lots and lots of bare faces wandering about. The happy rabble, taking a cue from our mask-eschewing president, has decided to just let the good times roll.

Street protesters clustered on city streets these last three weeks have been no more diligent. Partiers and protesters alike seem to have shrugged off their elders as so much collateral damage.

It’s as if Florida’s rush to resume its rock ’n’ roll lifestyle has an unspoken subtext. The demographic most threatened by coronavirus is not only expendable, but a costly drag on the economy.

Selfish me. I suppose us endangered oldsters ought to consider the potential savings embedded in Florida’s What me worry? strategy.

Healthcare for Americans over 65 costs three times more on average a year than that of a working-age adult, most of it paid for by Medicare (an outlay of $713 billion in 2018). And the older we get, the more we cost taxpayers.

Add the Medicare costs to social security’s trillion-dollar-a-year suck on the federal budget and Republican deficit hawks can barely keep from blurting out the obvious: Cull a big chunk of those geriatrics lounging around God’s waiting room and the savings will be terrific.

Meanwhile, don’t expect the governor to order Floridians to don masks in public. Or to forbid the staging of big super-spreader events like a presidential nominating convention. Not to protect the likes of me.

As an ancient, I admit that I’m less than objective about a pandemic strategy that might hasten my demise. OK, I admit -- I’m prejudice against dying. Especially, with a ventilator tube jammed down my throat.

By comparison, the ancient ways of the Inuit, setting granny or grandpa adrift on a chunk of ice, no longer seem so primitive.

Fred Grimm, a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976. Reach him by email at leogrimm@gmail.com or on Twitter: @grimm_fred.

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