White House COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt appeared not to be able to explain why some states that don’t have strict responses to the pandemic, such as Florida, seemingly fare no worse than largely locked-down states like California.

“There’s so much of this virus that we think we understand, and we think we can predict, that’s just a little beyond our explanation,” Slavitt said when asked by MSNBC why Florida and California have similar COVID-19 numbers despite differences in policy responses. “What we do know is the more careful people are, the more they mask and social distance, and the quicker we vaccinate, the quicker it goes away and the less it spreads.”