Darn it, is Ron DeSantis right again?

Ron DeSantis. Image via Colin Hackley.

It’s no wonder Gov. Ron DeSantis frequently takes victory laps, parsed with disdain dripping from his digs on the ever-critical media.

No matter how controversial the stance DeSantis takes, he seems to come out on the right side. Opening schools turned out to not be the super-spreader move critics anticipated. Opening businesses fully and swiftly might have increased COVID-19 numbers, but not to the point of catapulting Florida beyond states that didn’t, and the economy is showing favor regardless.

And now, could DeSantis have done it again?

We’re (hopefully) entering the final stage of the pandemic. We might continue to debate whether to let Florida cruise ships sail and whether there should be vaccine passports (DeSantis says absolutely not). And DeSantis will no doubt continue to position himself opposite the feds, media and, even, health experts, sometimes bombastically so.

But darn it, it looks like he’s rounding up another win or two, much to the chagrin of his haters.

Early on in the vaccination distribution push, DeSantis began scooping up partnerships with retail pharmacies, beginning first with Publix and then later expanding to retailers CVS, Walgreens and Walmart, as well as Winn Dixie.

After President Joe Biden took office, DeSantis sternly rejected the notion of “FEMA camps” to administer vaccines at federally run sites. He was immediately blasted for dismissing help before he even knew what that help entailed. Fast forward to now and, by golly, he was right anyway.

The federal government has spent $4 billion on a system set up to help with vaccine efforts, including mass vaccination hubs, including four in Florida. Yet those sites are administering a fraction of the vaccine doses retail pharmacies are managing, according to a story today in POLITICO.

The bottom line, according to that report, Americans would rather walk to their local pharmacy for a shot than travel to a federal site.

Sure, partnering first with a major donor isn’t a good look, but the general idea was, it seems, the right one.

On top of that, DeSantis faced blowback for saying, again early in the vaccine push, that one dose of a two-dose vaccine was better than nothing. At the time, it seemed like he was being cavalier. But it turns out, one shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine is indeed, not too shabby.

In December, DeSantis cited an article in The Wall Street Journal — it was an opinion piece written by neuroscientist Michael Segal — about the efficacy of the one-dose approach. DeSantis referred to the second dose as a “booster” shot, echoing Segal’s choice of words. The media said DeSantis was “bucking” the science.

One dose of those two-dose regimens was found to be 80% effective in preventing COVID-19, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of health care workers.

Maybe DeSantis doesn’t deserve a cookie for getting it right in hindsight. After all, a broken clock is right twice a day. But his clock, whether broken or not, has been right more than twice, and the hate continues to pile on.

We’re not sure if anyone is going to line up for an apology, in fact, we’re pretty certain they won’t, but at the very least DeSantis should get some acknowledgement that his frustration with critics is warranted.