Paul Waldron the commissioner for St. Johns County in Florida is in the hospital in critical condition after contracting the coronavirus. Waldron previously voted against an order requiring all residents of the county to wear a mask in public.
In a Facebook post last week, Waldron’s daughter said he is in the “most critical condition” after he went into septic shock due to complications from the coronavirus. She added that many of his organs were struggling.
‘The hospital is working hard to keep him comfortable and continuously monitoring him. His blood gas levels have improved today and his numbers are holding,’ she wrote in a follow-up on Friday evening.
Waldron is one of three commissioners who voted against a county-wide mask mandate for the county last week.
Coronavirus is deadly
Waldron’s story is nothing new— leader downplays the severity of the virus only to be infected and severely affected by it. Let’s look past the irony of situations like these and focus on the main takeaway—the coronavirus is deadly and there is a price to pay for not listening to public health experts.
Florida is paying that price. Cases are surging with no indication of when things will calm down again, hospitalizations are up and ICUs are running out of beds. On Sunday the state broke the national record for the highest single-day increase in new coronavirus cases, 15,300. Despite this, there’s still no statewide mask mandate and Gov. DeSantis is still not taking things seriously, dismissing the surge in cases as a “blip.”
On Tuesday the state reported 9,100 new coronavirus cases, taking the total number of cases statewide to 291,629. While the number of new cases decrease, the state reported 132 deaths, a single-day record bringing the coronavirus related death toll to 4,409.
Photo: Peter Willott/The Record
