[Not Enough Dead] Ron DeSantis appeals mask mandate ruling as Florida Covid deaths set record

Ron DeSantis appeals mask mandate ruling as Florida Covid deaths set 
record

August’s 5,721 deaths were highest since start of pandemic

Governor wants to ban mask mandates in schools, kill more people.


 
Fri 3 Sep 2021 19.08 BST

Last modified on Mon 6 Sep 2021 15.00 BST

The battle over mask requirements in Florida schools is headed for a new 
legal phase following an appeal by the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, 
of a judge’s ruling that a blanket ban on mask mandates exceeds the 
state’s authority.

The case heads next to the 15 judges on the 1st district court of appeal 
in the state capital, Tallahassee.

The issue is whether the state’s Parents Bill of Rights law means parents 
must decide if their child wears a mask or permits a school board to 
impose a broad mask requirement.
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Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine bottles are displayed during a 
vaccination event, in Key Biscayne, Florida, United States on August 24, 
2021. (Photo by Marco Bello/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
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Under the DeSantis executive order, state education officials have been 
seeking to penalize defiant school boards by deducting the equivalent of 
school board members’ monthly salaries from state funding.
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As of Friday, 13 districts representing more than half of Florida’s 2.8 
million public school students had imposed mask mandates despite the 
governor’s order that a parental opt-out must be included.

This as August emerged as the deadliest month for Florida since the 
pandemic began. Although the rate of new infections and hospitalizations 
is slowing, the state increased its coronavirus death count by 1,338 on 
Thursday.

Florida has reported a total of 5,721 deaths in August, surpassing the 
previous monthly high of 5,469 deaths in January, before vaccines were 
widely available, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control 
and Prevention (CDC).

Almost 46,000 Floridians have died of Covid-19 since the outbreak hit the 
US in January 2020.

The US continues to have the highest number of people in the world killed 
by the disease, as almost 640,000 people have died of coronavirus across 
the country.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden blamed the surge of the Delta variant of Covid-19 
among those in the US who remain unvaccinated for disappointing August job 
creation figures.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children’s Hospital 
Association reported that more than a fifth of new coronavirus cases are 
occurring in children.

As of 26 August, nearly 4.8 million children had tested positive for 
Covid-19 since the onset of the pandemic, the AAP reported.

About 204,000 cases were added the past week, marking the second week with 
child cases at the level of the winter surge of 2020-21, the academy 
noted.

“After declining in early summer, child cases have increased 
exponentially, with over a fivefold increase the past month, rising from 
about 38,000 cases the week ending July 22 to nearly 204,000 the past 
week,” the AAP said.

It also noted that since the pandemic began, children represented 14.8% of 
total cumulated cases but for the week ending 26 August, children were 
22.4% of reported weekly Covid-19 cases, while pointing out that “at this 
time, it appears that severe illness due to Covid-19 is uncommon among 
children”.

The surge comes as many children are heading back to school in person.

Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said on Thursday that new research 
due to be made public on Friday showed hospitalizations in children were 
four times higher in states with low vaccination rates in the month of 
August, USA Today reported.

Also, Walensky and Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the Food and 
Drug Administration, are understood to be recommending the White House 
pull back its stated policy of offering booster vaccinations to the public 
later this month, the New York Times reported, saying that regulators need 
more time to gather and examine necessary data, according to unnamed 
sources.