A mess...

Florida’s long Omicron recovery

By DAVID KIHARA

First, the good news: The Omicron variant that has swept though Florida, leaving schools understaffed and hospitals desperate for resources, appears to be plateauing. Florida Hospital Association president and CEO Mary Mayhew told POLITICO’s Arek Sarkissian this week that hospitalizations, which are still in record high numbers, are even decreasing in places.

“We are very, very encouraged by what we’re seeing right now,” Mayhew said. “Things have either leveled off, and in some areas you’ve even seen things go down.”

Now, the bad news: Across the board, Covid-related hospitalizations are still hovering around record-breaking numbers and have inched up recently. In Florida, there were 11,839 people in hospitals with Covid on Wednesday, an increase from the 10,893 people counted just the day before. Arek also reports that the number of ICU beds occupied by Covid patients has also gone up from roughly 1,500 beds on Monday to 1,615 as of Wednesday.

Fatigue or indifference? There was a greater sense of alarm when the Delta variant surged in Florida over the summer and early fall. DeSantis came under increasing criticism in early August when hospitalizations topped 10,000 in early August — which at the time was the highest number of hospitalizations up to that point in the pandemic.

Yet DeSantis has weathered the criticism and, arguable has become even more popular in the state and across the nation among conservatives for his resistance to Covid-related mandates. So it’s ironic that his handling of the virus has caused such a rift with former President Donald Trump. We’ve all heard by now that Trump delivered a thinly-veiled blow to DeSantis over the GOP governor’s non-answers over his booster status, and that DeSantis fired back last week over the Trump administration’s Covid response. And now we’re waiting to see who will take the next shot.