On Friday, the Special Olympics announced that it had lifted its vaccine mandate after Florida’s Department of Health threatened to impose a $27.5 million fine for having it in place. By doing so, the Special Olympics shamefully capitulated to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the most effective extortionist in the Republican Party, and in doing so put the very people whose well-being the Special Olympics are supposed to promote at risk of getting Covid-19. The games began Sunday and are scheduled to run through June 12.
The Special Olympics shamefully capitulated to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and put the people whose well-being the Special Olympics are supposed to promote at risk.
DeSantis has positioned himself as the leading opponent of any kind of collective action to mitigate Covid-19: He’s frequently boasted that he kept Florida open while other states imposed stay-at-home orders at the start of the coronavirus pandemic (even though he briefly closed the state), opposed mask mandates and signed legislation that allows workers to opt out of private employers’ vaccine requirements. He’s tried to make his state a magnet for anti-vaxxers by offering a $5,000 bonus for police who refuse vaccines, argued that “clearly the vax has not stopped people from being infected with omicron” and refused to say whether he is boosted, making him further to the right than Donald Trump on vaccines. To borrow from his 2018 challenger Andrew Gillum, who was speaking of his opponent’s attraction to racists, I’m not saying DeSantis is an anti-vaxxer; I’m simply saying that the anti-vaxxers believe he’s an anti-vaxxer.
In his effort to seize the mantle of white Christian Republican grievance from Trump, DeSantis has shown an unchecked willingness to bully organizations that do not subscribe to his brand of right-wing politics. On Friday, he used his line-item veto powers to block state funding for a $35 million training facility for the Tampa Bay Rays after the team spoke out on gun violence in response to the shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York. Using public money to pay for private sports teams is a massive waste of taxpayer dollars, but DeSantis blocked the Rays’ funding to show he can “own the libs” harder than anyone else. He signed a bill stripping Disney’s special tax status after its chief executive said the company would pause all political donations in the state after DeSantis signed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which in and of itself was another example of his bullying, in this case, the bullying of LGBTQ+ people.
Rather than let itself be bullied, too, the Special Olympics should have stood up against DeSantis, especially considering that it specifically serves athletes with intellectual disabilities, who are especially vulnerable to Covid-19. When DeSantis gloated in a press conference about the Special Olympics caving, he played coy with why a vaccine mandate matters.
“What connection that has to competing, I don’t understand,” he said. “We’ve never seen something wielded like this vaccine to try to marginalize disfavored people.”
DeSantis’ utter temerity in couching his opposition to vaccine mandates in the language of protecting marginalized people — particularly when he is using the full force of his state’s government to torment LGBTQ+ people, people seeking abortions and people who care about racial justice — shows another failure by Special Olympics; the committee missed an opportunity to teach him and others opposed to vaccine mandates that Covid-19 is especially deadly for people with disabilities.
A study last year that surveyed almost 65 million patients across 547 health care organizations revealed that having an intellectual disability “was the strongest independent risk factor for presenting with a Covid-19 diagnosis and the strongest independent risk factor other than age for Covid-19 mortality.”
Another study in the United Kingdom found that, if infected, people with Down Syndrome are five times more likely to be hospitalized and 10 times more likely to die of Covid-19 than the general population. In fact, Covid-19 threatens to erase increased life expectancy for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities after that life expectancy grew between 2008 and 2017. A vaccine mandate, therefore, is a way of keeping the athletes the Special Olympics serves alive. But by allowing Florida’s government to hold it hostage, the organization allowed DeSantis to continue to spread misinformation. People with Down Syndrome are ten times more likely to die of Covid-19 than the general population. In response to its change in policy, the Special Olympics said, “We don’t want to fight. We want to play.” This is especially hypocritical considering just this year it rightfully pulled out of having its 2023 world Winter Games in Russia in light of Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine. That withdrawal is fully justified and a recognition that Putin’s actions put Ukrainians with intellectual disabilities at risk, even though it dashes the hopes of athletes who’ve spent years training. But when it came to protecting its own athletes, the Special Olympics folded to Bully DeSantis; and any kid who has spent time on a schoolyard knows that letting a bully get away with it doesn’t allow the other kids on that yard to play in peace. To the contrary, letting a bully get away with it emboldens him.
Eric Garcia is an author and senior correspondent for The Independent. 
