Editorials
Has DeSantis muzzled Florida’s top doc? Rivkees, a pediatrician, silent as kids get COVID | Editorial
Where in the world is Florida’s surgeon general — a pediatrician, no less — as COVID numbers spike for kids in Florida?
We may have trouble summoning up his face, but Dr. Scott Rivkees was named to the top medical job in the state by Gov. Ron DeSantis in April 2019. The doctor’s official biography on the state’s website is overflowing with pediatrics (though not public health) credentials: He was “professor and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Florida College of Medicine and physician-in-chief of UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital.” He served as “academic chair of pediatrics at Orlando Health and pediatric chair at Studer Family Children’s Hospital at Sacred Heart in Pensacola.”
And yet he’s been pretty much missing from the public eye as the state continues to face its worst health crisis ever, with children being hospitalized for COVID in greater numbers. Unfortunately, masks in schools have become a ridiculously contested issue, as thousands of students in districts across the state are being exposed to COVID and sent home to isolate or quarantine.
What is Rivkees’ job, if not to lead at this critical moment?
Went off-script
It wasn’t always this way. Rivkees used to make at least some public appearances. But in April 2020, during a press conference, he apparently went off script, warning that Floridians might have to social distance for up to a year (a comment that not only was correct but actually underestimated the pandemic’s tightening hold on us).
Minutes later, Helen Aguirre Ferré, DeSantis communications director at the time, whisked him from the briefing, later blaming a scheduling conflict. Public records didn’t support that claim, Politico later reported. Ferré — now the executive director of the Florida GOP — then insisted that it was an unplanned meeting that suddenly required Rivkees’ presence. Uh-huh.
That was more than a year ago. More than 40,000 people have now died in Florida from COVID. A second pandemic-era school year is beginning. And although the delta variant has fueled a huge increase in all cases, a Miami Herald story on Aug. 9 detailed a rapid rise in serious COVID illness among Florida children especially.
We asked the state Department of Health by email on Tuesday if the surgeon general had anything to say about kids in Florida getting sick from COVID. We got no response. Rivkees did surface publicly Aug. 6 — but only to adopt a Health Department rule that essentially puts in place DeSantis’ executive order on masks in schools. The order allows parents to opt out of masks, even though children under 12 still can’t be vaccinated, and school districts that defy it risk financial penalties, such as salary cuts to school officials. In fact, on Friday, state Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran put Broward County and Alachua County school board members on notice the that they could start losing their monthly pay starting next week unless they reverse the mask mandates they approved.
Antibody treatment
Basically, DeSantis is the one in the virtual white coat these days, anyway. In the months since that interrupted press conference, the governor — who is running for reelection and possibly for president in 2024 — has fully embraced his informal role as medical chief of the state.
His support for vaccines has been tepid. He pushed hard for vaccines among the elderly early on, but we don’t see the same coordinated efforts to get the people who are flooding hospitals or the young and healthy vaccinated, too. Recently, though, he’s found a new focus: monoclonal antibody treatment, the kind used on former President Trump. (You’ll remember Trump’s support helped get DeSantis elected.)
DeSantis is pitching the treatment, made by Regeneron, as a way to reduce the severity of the disease and cut hospitalizations. He’s been zipping around the state to promote it in places like Tampa and Orlando, brushing off the fact that he’s touting a treatment in which a top donor’s company has invested millions.
We’re thrilled that there actually is a treatment. We fervently hope it keeps people out of hospitals. But treatment after you’re sick is not a free get-out-of-getting-vaccinated pass, despite the governor’s enthusiasm. And this treatment is only effective if administered within a few days of testing positive for COVID. Vaccines are still the best way to prevent illness, something the governor has not emphasized anywhere near enough for our liking.
If all of that sounds like you need a medical degree to understand it, well, that’s our point. We have a state surgeon general. He has a specialty in pediatrics. He also has a responsibility to correct medical misinformation. And to prevent harm, to kids and all of us.
Now would be a very good time to hear from him.
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