Sixth Annual Freedom to Breathe Day in Florida

by philg

Today is the sixth anniversary of Ron DeSantis’s executive order 20-244 that prevented local governments from collecting fines from peasants who violated local Covidcrats’ orders, thus effectively rendering those orders toothless. Excerpts:

Ron DeSantis will be gone soon, due to term limits, and I will miss him despite his recent foray into what seems like madness (exempting a lot of homeowners from paying property tax while still allowing them to vote to increase county services and spending; I thought we’d tried that experiment at the federal level!; I would welcome a law that limits growth in per-capita spending by county/local governments, but not one that mints voters who have no skin in the game).

Related…

Also, “A Western Mass. lesbian bar required KN-95 masks. When it changed the rules, all hell broke loose.” (Boston Globe, 9/22/2026), regarding the question of whether, towards the end of Year 7 of coronapanic, it is safe to shed one’s N95 mask one evening per week (short answer: no).

19 thoughts on “Sixth Annual Freedom to Breathe Day in Florida”

  1. Lots of good online commentary about the bar. But one of the most puzzling questions is how do you drink at a bar with a mask on?

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    • What about Kombucha? Google AI: “Kombucha aligns perfectly with the stereotype of the outdoorsy, eco-conscious, or vegan lesbian who loves hiking, thrift shopping, and sustainable living.” Surely it is worth temporarily de-masking to sip one’s Kombucha.

    • Anon: Only the Righteous pay for a Boston Globe subscription! (I am currently righteous enough to pay for the NYT, but they’re about to raise the rates so I think I’ll cancel and just read it through the MIT library connection.)

  3. Very sad to see young people not interacting at all. Rhetoric amongst young men and women between and within each other is horrendous, and I don’t think they like each other. Then again, I can see why…

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    • Lesbian Bar Patron, for the love of god and Science, be less concerned about social interaction and more concerned with showing solidarity with your fellow citizens who are dutifully bending the curve on a silent and deadly pandemic by isolating and masking.

  4. Why would you need to go to clown school when you already have a PhD in being a clown? This is as if Philip decided to attend the local junior college to learn Excel. The person mentioned in that article doing a fade as a bar owner to become a clown already has the credentials to be the dean of the clown school.

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    • Anon, relative to infants and children, I can attest from experience that these vaccines are worthless. I gave my three children zero vaccines of any kind for years and they never got sick…didn’t do the trick, so I had to use brute-force strangulation instead.

      36% efficacy in 2025-2026. Save your money and buy a wheelchair.

    • The Health Paradise (TM) with socialized medicine is, of course, the United Kingdom. The MD/PhDs there say to get your first adult flu shot at age 65. https://www.nhs.uk/vaccinations/flu-vaccine/

      So if you’re 65 or over, why not?

      Keep in mind that “50 percent effective” according to the CDC relates to particles in your blood. It doesn’t mean that your chance of being hospitalized or dying from flu is reduced by 50 percent. How much does the flu shot reduce these bad outcomes? See https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M19-3075 “The Effect of Influenza Vaccination for the Elderly on Hospitalization and Mortality” (2020). “Turning 65 [the age at which people in the UK become eligible for flu vaccines from the NHS] was associated with a statistically and clinically significant increase in rate of seasonal influenza vaccination. However, no evidence indicated that vaccination reduced hospitalizations or mortality among elderly persons”

      (The paper took advantage of the fact that the UK runs a natural experiment where 64-year-olds don’t have the shot and 65-year-olds do. So they could look at “170 million episodes of care and 7.6 million deaths” over a 14-year period.)

      Another fun fact from the 1979 NYT. “[the CDC director] also defended the program against criticism by Dr. Albert B. Sabin, who developed the oral vaccine for polio. Dr. Sabin, who is associated with the Medical University of South Carolina, said that he did not believe that the influenza vaccine would help many people because new virus strains kept cropping up. and required changes in immunization formulas. He said that vaccines containing major new strains became available only after the new strains already had their major impact.” — https://www.nytimes.com/1979/02/10/archives/carters-flushot-plan-for-the-ill-and-elderly-termed-short-of-goal.html

      There isn’t a huge downside to getting the flu shot, but be aware that some papers found that repeated immunizations when young reduced a person’s response to the vaccine when they actually needed it (i.e., when they grew old).

    • Mean IQ Commenter: Regarding the X post you cite. It says “First, the RSV vaccine is great for preventing hospitalization!”. See https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2025/01/27/a-stroke-12-hours-after-the-rsv-vaccine/ for how a friend suffered the known side effect of stroke from the RSV vaccine and was forced to retire from his cardiology career. The CDC previously told everyone to get this miracle vaccine at 60. Now they’re saying 75, which is also what the Brits say. (There is still a huge discrepancy in COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, I think. The Brits say get one shot between age 0 and 75. The American experts say to get 78 shots between age 0 and 75. See https://www.nhs.uk/vaccinations/covid-19-vaccine/ and https://www.cdc.gov/covid/vaccines/stay-up-to-date.html )

      Maybe the reason that the RSV vaccine is universally recommended is that public health numbers nerds consider clinging to life, no matter how compromised, a success. It’s better if someone lives from age 70-100 as a vegetable than if someone lives from 70-80 in good health and then drops dead.

    • Anon, such a great question. Yes, for sure get a flu shot, COVID, and all the others for the following reasons: 1) they prevent you from becoming infected; 2) they prevent you from transmitting the virus to others. And, of course wear 1, 2, or 3 masks just in case and to show you believe in #Science. I hope that helps. Any other questions?

    • Lindsay-

      I recently mailed your Planned Parenthood Lifetime Achievement award. I hope it arrives quickly. Display it proudly!

      Yours,
      Margaret

    • My 88-y/o father got the updated covid shot yesterday. After 5 inoculations (’20 – ’22), I’m done. We both got the flu shot a couple of weeks ago. CVS advised that his pneumonia shot from ’23 is good for life, but they do want to give him the RSV shot.

  6. Depends on what they called in-person contact. Is it jawboning other drivers? Is it grocery shopping? Is it commenting on the greenspun blog?

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  7. “exempting a lot of homeowners from paying property tax”

    I think most (all?) counties (and cities) exempt veterans who are classified as disabled as fully exempt from property taxes. Not sure if the amount of the exemption is tied to the disability percentage. But in my county and in my experience and at my job, every veteran, regardless of years of service, is collecting a VA disability check, as much as 100% of military final salary, and also easily functioning in society and holding down a full-time (make work/pretend to work from home) job; usually a well-paying overpaid/underworked government or government defense contractor make position.
    And, I’m sure, plenty of this going on…
    https://youtu.be/CXoU_ptqc_w

    Reply
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