Christmas omicron threat and the Grinches of Tallahassee

As omicron doubles every two to three days, it’s perfectly timed to join Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch as threats to Christmas. In Florida, where the caseload rose 157% in the week ended Sunday, we can add state lawmakers to the cast of holiday spoilers.

Think about it: in November, just as most of the US saw covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths all drop and we all looked forward to a far better holiday season, two things were occurring simultaneously:

■The omicron variant was being identified in South Africa and Botswana.

■Steps available to lessen this variant’s impact in Florida were being outlawed by the Florida Legislature in laws hailed and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

As a result of a know-nothing state effort, Florida will have a harder time controlling omicron, although otherwise we would have been far better positioned to do so.

In November, as you may recall, new laws that the governor hailed prevented private employers from demanding that their workers be vaccinated against Covid-19 and set up fines for employers who sought to keep their team safe by forcing all to be vaccinated.

The state also barred schools from demanding that students be vaccinated or even wear face masks. School districts were also barred from quarantining students who had been exposed to covid but didn’t show symptoms. The law allowed students and parents to sue schools for keeping out children who might infect others. 

Throughout covid’s spread, the governor also used every weapon he had to keep cities and counties from protecting the public with curfews and public health requirements.

Those steps combined have given omicron far more room to take hold and range freely through Florida than would have been the case had sensible health measures been possible.

Omicron will be most virulent among an estimated 50 million US adults who have yet to be vaccinated, a group that in Florida would have been smaller had employers been able to require vaccinations. 

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease specialist, said Sunday that because we have so many unvaccinated people, the nation will face a difficult few weeks or months. 

Further, only about 30% of those who are vaccinated have had a booster, and experts soon are likely to consider only those with a booster to be fully vaccinated, because it takes a booster to best ward off omicron infection.

Tools remain in the fight. Businesses have learned over 21 months how to work with as few people in workplaces as possible. For example, CNN on Saturday night told all employees who are at all able to work remotely not to come back into its offices at all. They aren’t going to be alone. Miami businesses that were planning to recall all remote workers early in 2022 will probably rethink that.

Likewise, health organizations know better how to maneuver in a pandemic – don’t forget, there hadn’t been one in more than a century before 21 months ago. Schools too know how to deal with children in covid, although the November state laws robbed them of their most effective tools.

For a new Legislature session that starts Jan. 11, bills already have been filed to limit local autonomy and ability to deal with a pandemic. Some of them relate to further blocking required vaccinations or social isolation in a pandemic. 

We can pray that, as a Christmas gift to the public, legislators will face the facts of omicron and variants we might battle later and allow rational public health measures as needed rather than voting to make it harder and harder to control a pandemic. 

They could also reverse November’s ill-conceived measures by a wide enough margin that even a governor who relishes the so-called right to infect others can’t cancel them with a veto.  

Or perhaps, wonder of wonders,  Gov. DeSantis may see the light and decide that he doesn’t want to go down in history as the public health Grinch of Florida.