Corpses ‘Stacked To The Ceiling’ In Florida As Delta Variant Explodes

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

An NBC poll out on Tuesday tells you what Civiqs has been saying for months: Trump voters are five times less likely to get vaccinated than Biden voters. In fact, with the exception of children under 12 who have no choice, the terms "unvaccinated" and "Trump supporter" might as well be synonyms. In the latest Civiqs data, 40 percent of Republicans still say no to vaccine in spite of the Delta variant wave, and in spite of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announcing full approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The numbers from NBC's new poll match those from Civiqs almost exactly, with 91 percent of Biden voters saying they've already been vaccinated but just 50 percent of Trump voters saying the same.

Just as the unreasoning vaccine hostility of Trump supporters shouldn't be a surprise at this point, neither should this: According to WFLA in Tampa Bay, the bodies of COVID-19 victims are "stacked to the ceiling" at area funeral homes and crematories. Even though the overall fatality rate from this wave of COVID-19 has been much lower so far than in previous disease surges, Florida is something of a special case. The large population and relatively low rate of vaccination when compared to states like California or New York has left Florida once again dealing with not just a spike in cases, but a staggering amount of death. Funeral directors are having to delay burials to accommodate an overloaded schedule, and stunned families who are losing ever-younger members are finding it impossible to get assistance or secure arrangements.

As the station reports, Florida is seeing a "death care industry struggling to meet demands at a level they've never seen before, and families struggling to cope with grief at a level a community has ever seen before."

Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is still working to punish schools and fighting against federal efforts to protect students. And, as CNN notes, he's doing it because imperiling children "helps him with a narrow but politically powerful segment of the Republican Party, boosting his national prominence ahead of a 2022 reelection campaign and a widely expected 2024 presidential bid."

DeSantis is far from the only Republican courting the kill-kids-for-votes caucus. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, whose state came in second to Florida for new cases of COVID-19 again on Tuesday, is certainly in the race for the people who Hillary Clinton very accurately named "deplorables." South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has to be relieved that the unmasked, unvaxxed, unhinged Sturgis motorcycle rally has given her state a massive boost—after all, it's hard to participate in the extremist Olympics if you don't have some children to dangle over the flames.