All that said, it appears unlikely DeSantis will make a full recovery. He has, after all, long suffered from a serious case of hyper-partisanship compounded by sycophancy, conditions that dull perception and cognitive abilities and leave the stricken wandering about in dazed and witless fashion.

Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has awakened from a worrisome coma . He’s sitting up and seems semi-alert, though that’s admittedly hard to tell.

That is certainly how DeSantis has behaved during the coronavirus contagion. Instead of taking fast action, he largely let spring break happen. Although he closed beaches and sizable commercial gathering spots in Broward and Palm Beach counties, until this week he had stubbornly resisted statewide action.


FILE - People crowd a beach in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., March 11. A group of about 70 students from the University of Texas at Austin celebrated spring break in Mexico, but returned to find that 28 had tested positive. SAUL MARTINEZ/NYT

Only on Wednesday, almost two weeks after other big-state governors had begun imposing stay-at-home orders, did DeSantis finally issue such a statewide order. And even while doing so, he signed another order negating stricter local ordinances, such as one designed to keep megachurches from meeting.

By that time, Florida had some 7,000 COVID-19 cases and 86 deaths. To forestall further foot-dragging by governors who still haven’t taken that action, President Trump needs to issue a national stay-at-home directive.

Political observers may recall that last year, in an obvious attempt to racially polarize the Florida gubernatorial contest, DeSantis urged Floridians not to “monkey this up” by electing Andrew Gillum, the Black mayor of Tallahassee. DeSantis has bungled this up to a fare-thee-well. Significantly more Floridians and Sunshine State visitors will suffer because of his failure to lead in a timely way.

Several other dilatory gubernatorial dunderheads also finally took action this week. Among them were Democratic Governor Tom Wolf, who extended his stay-at-home order to all of Pennsylvania on Wednesday, and Republican Governor Greg Abbott of Texas who on Tuesday issued a stay-put order that dared not quite speak its name, and then clarified it a day later. And then there was Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who, in imposing such a statewide order on Wednesday, revealed that he had just (!) become aware that asymptomatic people can transmit COVID-19.


DeSantis’s belated action came after a conversation with, and possibly a nudge from, President Trump. If so, it’s an example of the purblind leading the purblind, given that it took Trump himself weeks too long to acknowledge the seriousness of this public-health crisis — a calamity that will now, according to the White House, probably mean 100,000 to 240,000 American deaths.

Meanwhile, it’s as though every excuse factory in the land has been nationalized to produce rationalization for Trump’s foot-dragging. Ever ready to plant his flag in unmapped regions of ridiculosity, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell says impeachment distracted the federal government. When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer queried Vice President Mike Pence about Trump’s previous comments portraying the coronavirus challenge as a minor matter, Pence said Trump hadn’t downplayed things but was merely being optimistic.

Now that even DeSantis realizes strong action is required, it’s time to supersede the other denser-than-a-dwarf-star governors out there endangering their citizens through inaction.

As of midday Thursday, we still had 11 states without statewide stay-at-home orders. All are led by Republican governors. All are Southern, Western, or farm states.


Yet as Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York said on Wednesday, some rural states have the attitude that this is a New York thing and won’t come to their states

Oh yes it will, he warned — and from what we’ve seen so far, he’s absolutely right.

That’s why we need a national stay-at-home directive from the president. As everyone should now realize, no state is an island when it comes to the coronavirus. One person’s behavior can affect — and infect — another. A lack of action in one region can have serious consequences in another.

This president is reluctant to go that route. It would mean actually taking charge of this crisis, something Trump is reluctant to do. And there could be constitutional issues, though it’s hard to see a legal challenge arising over the short term, which is the critical period. Not given the seriousness of this situation. It’s more likely that such a high-profile presidential proclamation would prod laggardly governors in the right direction.

It should have happened at least a week-and-a-half ago — but better late than never.

Scot Lehigh is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at scot.lehigh@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeScotLehigh