To the editor:

Noting that it was unpopular, George Washington in 1777 ordered the inoculation of the armed forces: “Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measure, for should the disorder infect the Army . . . we should have more to dread from it, than from the Sword of the Enemy.”

Unlike Presidents Biden and Washington, Lee Sheriff Carmine Marceno lacks the political courage to protect the public with a mandate to his deputies to protect themselves by getting the jab on the job. Following the foolish Gov. DeSantis down the poor hygiene rabbit hole, Marceno risks a duplicate public safety crisis as his staff continues to die. As the pandemic of the unvaccinated continues the partisan hostility to public health becomes indefensible. By putting public health at risk through the complicity of Trump’s Kool-Aid kids; we are losing courageous public servants more from COVID than other causes. We are also losing people who might otherwise have survived a heart attack or car crash because they can not quickly get into the crowded Emergency Room. We are losing more poor choice making American residents daily now to the pandemic than Americans and residents were lost on Sept. 11th by terrorist attack. Seriously, y’all.

There is no doubt that DeSantis’ zeal to open the state up to danger landed the first American case of Delta in Florida. You who need no facts can argue in favor of the benevolence of bat viruses all you like. But there is no doubt that had travel restrictions been held in place, the Delta virus would have missed Florida, as it has missed New Zealand. Today the origin of the virus is less vital than the barrier to infection in a pandemic. Masks work, N-95s work best; quarantining, hand washing, social distancing, closed businesses are alternatives to shots.

Waving your hands in the air like you just don’t care is not an effective deterrent to infection. DeSantis is wrong, choices made by the unvaccinated have an effect on community transmission of an airborne virus. His poor hygiene demands are the opposite of good leadership. Letting people die is a bad plan. Suing to prevent others from implementing helpful interventions is an abrogation of the public trust in an elected official. Even the Nixon or Trump judges in court have not ruled in his favor. Someone should remind our Governor that he is not a very competent lawyer. As military parade songs are to music, military law is to justice. DeSantis’ slender legal experience as JAG lawyer arguing for torturing prisoners, has not necessarily given him a grasp on the tenets of constitutional law. Suing the travel industry, or bullying the local school boards because they employ good hygiene practices makes him just an embarrassment.

The fact that only Republican governors are still peddling the right-to-die narrative to obstruct safety measures underscores how much more partisanship matters to them than children’s lives. The courts were right to toss DeSantis’ vicious attack on school children, ruling in favor of common sense, hygiene and decency.

Florida should jettison him at the next election along with Marceno. No one who lets children or fellow cops die on his watch deserves re-election.

Ellen Starbird

Cape Coral