Florida’s coronavirus epidemic is the current worst in the US. Here’s what went wrong.
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Florida now has the worst ongoing coronavirus outbreak in the country.
Since the beginning of July, Covid-19 cases in the state have gone up nearly 60 percent, with hospitalizations and deaths rapidly rising as well. Florida now has 20 percent more daily new Covid-19 cases than Arizona, 70 percent more than Texas, and more than double California. Florida drew headlines on Sunday for surpassing the record for the highest number of new cases reported in one day, previously held by New York (though that was driven largely by Florida having much more testing than New York did at the peak of its outbreak).
The percentage of positive tests is now nearly 19 percent, which is almost four times the recommended maximum of 5 percent. The high rate — an indicator of how widespread infection is, as well as whether an area is conducting enough testing — suggests Florida still doesn’t have enough testing to match its Covid-19 outbreak. As bad as things are in Florida, the state is likely undercounting the number of cases.
It wasn’t always going this way. Just weeks ago, Gov. Ron DeSantis made media rounds boasting about Florida’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, rebuking those who had criticized the state’s actions, and bragging that his state had managed to keep Covid-19 cases low despite a slower, less-aggressive lockdown and a quicker reopening than other places.
In a May article from the conservative National Review — titled “Where Does Ron DeSantis Go to Get His Apology?” — DeSantis said he “was doing a good job,” spending much of the article arguing that his critics were wrong and that he’d been purportedly driven by the data and science in his response.
DeSantis bragged about how quickly the state was able to reopen due to his great response to the pandemic, saying that “what we did in March and April is the equivalent of what New York will be or California, when they go to phase three” — in reference to California’s slower-moving phased plan for reopening.
Now, though, experts say it’s that rapid reopening — mixed with public complacency that the virus had been defeated and lackluster action in the previous months — that led Florida to its current crisis.
Florida “defiantly reopened in the name of rejuvenating their economy relatively early,” C. Brandon Ogbunu, a computational biologist at Yale, told me. “The prediction was quite clear that they would have a bad wave at some point.”
Florida was relatively late in closing down statewide, but it was also among the first to reopen. The state also reopened very quickly — letting restaurants, bars, and other businesses reopen, sometimes at high or full capacity, within weeks of ending its lockdown. That fast pace of reopening not only made it easier for people to infect each other with the coronavirus, but also made it much harder to evaluate, due to lags in coronavirus case reporting, if each phase of reopening was leading to uncontrollable growth in infections.
At the same time, the public didn’t follow precautions. Fueled by politics and complacency, Floridians are, anecdotally, very inconsistent in physical distancing and wearing masks, experts said. Data also suggests that people in the state were much quicker to go out, once the lockdown ended, than most other states.
“I feel like we came out of the stay-at-home [order] and just thought, ‘Oh, it’s not a big deal anymore,’” Cindy Prins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida, told me. People “went back to what they were doing before — those activities they were doing before — without modifying this time.”
Recognizing the surge in cases, the state suspended alcohol consumption at bars on June 26. But the state has resisted further action, with DeSantis declaring the state is “not going back” on reopening and moving ahead with reopening schools.
Even if Florida’s government and residents were to act now, though, the effects of the state’s quick reopening will likely linger for weeks as Covid-19 takes time to show symptoms and spread to others. That’s why, experts say, Florida should take more action sooner rather than later — as it’s now stuck with rising cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the days or weeks to come. More targeted measures now, the thinking goes, could help the state avoid the worst and, potentially, another full stay-at-home order.
DeSantis’s office didn’t return requests for comment.
Like the surge in Arizona and California, Florida’s rising Covid-19 outbreak demonstrates the need for constant vigilance in the fight against the coronavirus. It’s now clear that as the governor and public grew complacent in their efforts, the virus slowly spread across the population. We’re now seeing the consequences — and the important lesson behind them.
“Don’t get comfortable,” Prins said. “Don’t think that just because you controlled it you can continue to control it.”
DeSantis initially saw it as a bragging point, but Florida’s quick reopening is one of the big reasons, experts said, that the state is now experiencing a huge outbreak.
Florida was slow to close in the beginning of the pandemic. While California, for example, closed on March 19 and New York on March 22, Florida took until April to issue a stay-at-home order. Those few weeks can really matter with Covid-19: When the number of cases can double within just 24 to 72 hours, days and weeks matter.
But at least in Florida, cases did stay relatively low through March and April — with the caveat that low testing capacity back then meant many cases were very likely missed.
Then, Florida was one of the first states to reopen. Its stay-at-home order expired on May 4, a little more than a month after it went into effect.
Unlike other states that have seen a surge in cases, like Arizona, Florida actually did see its reported Covid-19 cases drop during its full lockdown before it moved to reopen. That put it in line with what experts and the White House recommended: a two-week decline in cases before reopening. The drop happened as Florida’s Covid-19 testing numbers increased and the positive rate fell, indicating the decline in cases was genuine.
But after the state reopened, cases began to surge in June.
Where Florida went wrong, experts say, is it let its guard down. The state reopened very quickly.
