Gov. Ron DeSantis likely won’t win many awards, from Hollywood or otherwise, for his handling of COVID-19 despite the fact that his state has arguably weathered the pandemic far better than nearly any other in the country.
Despite the best efforts from Democratic politicians, activists, like one who donned a Grim Reaper outfit and patrolled the state’s beaches, and many in the media, Florida has emerged as an indisputable leader in balancing public safety with economic security during an unprecedented health crisis.
The facts speak for themselves: Florida’s coronavirus death rate sits at 136 per 100,000 people, the 27th lowest in the country and substantially lower than states such as New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. That rate has recently spiked due to a surge of cases in January and February. From August until the end of December, Florida was witnessing a seven-day death rate as low 12 per 100,000 in some instances.
Unlike other states, however, Florida was uniquely challenged by COVID-19 due to over a fifth of its population being over the age of 65. No other state, save Maine, which has a 0.1% greater senior population, houses such a large elderly population.
Elderly COVID-19-related deaths per 100,000 are also higher in California and New York than in Florida. Under Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s leadership, 1,066 per 100,000 seniors have died from COVID-19 related illnesses, compared to the national average of 666.
Florida’s senior death rate is nearly 100 lower than California’s at 474, and 38 other states rank higher for senior COVID-19 mortality.
Florida’s per capita mortality increase of 14.8% from 2019 to 2020 remains well below the national average of 16.9% as well. Both California and New York remain above that national average as of Feb. 10, with New York’s at 30.1%.
In total, 34 states had a higher rate of all-cause mortality from 2019 to 2020. Officials in Florida attribute these to “lockdown deaths” and point to their state’s policies of keeping schools and businesses open.
And as 99.8% of all Florida students have access to in-person learning, Florida has seen fewer pediatric COVID-19 cases than states such as Illinois and California, where students can only access virtual instructors.
Keeping schools open has remained a point of personal pride for Republican DeSantis, and he has committed to keeping all public education facilities open as more studies are published demonstrating the damage to mental health millions of school children are suffering from due to virtual learning.
“What the CDC put out, 5:00 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, I wonder why they would do it then, was quite frankly a disgrace. It would require, if you actually follow that, closing 90% of schools in the United States,” DeSantis said Tuesday in reaction to new federal guidelines on school openings. “We are open, we remain open, and we are not turning back.”
Along with its schools, the state’s economy remains healthier than the rest of the country. With an unemployment rate of 6.1% as of the end of December, compared to 6.7% nationwide, Florida has seen significantly fewer residents thrown out of work compared to the four other largest states in the country.
California, in contrast, suffered one of the worst blows to its unemployment rate in the country, with 9% of its working-age population still out of the labor force. Even GOP-led Texas has a higher unemployment rate at 7.2%. New York’s sits at 8.2%.
Florida’s relatively strong unemployment rate has transferred to real economic growth, despite the hit the state took with various resorts temporarily closing down due to a lack of tourism. Average price of homes have steadily risen since January 2020. In December of last year, the average price of a home sold in Florida sat at over $300,000, compared to $250,000 in 2019.
Much of that rise in home prices can be attributed to a great migration of sorts taking place from the north, with Florida placing third in the country for the number of one-way U-Haul rentals to the state. California placed in dead last, with New York ranked the 42nd lowest.
DeSantis’s results have caught the eyes of several vocal members of the GOP, including Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who, in a recent interview, blasted Cuomo for not following his state’s lead.
“[It’s a] tale of two governors,” Gaetz said in an interview on Monday, extolling DeSantis’s policies of mandating in-person school instruction and keeping COVID-19-positive nursing home residents in separate facilities. “Whereas in New York, they’ve destroyed small businesses, they’ve destroyed education. And then, the folks they were supposed to be taking care of the most, they put in the most peril.”
The Florida governor’s office points to a number of crucial steps state leadership took at the beginning of the pandemic to explain their success.
In order to avert the kind of catastrophes seen in New York and New Jersey, DeSantis created 23 COVID-19 specific nursing homes throughout the state early on in the pandemic. These facilities house seniors and needing long-term care who tested positive, helping contain the virus to specific hot zones.
“The mainstream media was so desperate to vilify the Trump Administration and Governor DeSantis that they emboldened lockdown states like California and New York,” a statement from the governor’s office reads. “Turns out, Governor DeSantis was ahead of the curve with his actions early on during the pandemic to protect the state’s most vulnerable and his actions saved lives.”
The establishment of these nursing homes also helped put less strain on the state’s hospital system, which rarely ever ran the risk of reaching full capacity.
Even when presented with these data points, many on the Left seem incapable of handing DeSantis any credit. During an interview on MSNBC, a COVID-19 adviser for President Biden deflected when asked why California’s infection numbers “aren’t that different” than Florida’s, despite the two states’ radically different policies.
“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,” Andy Slavitt said Tuesday. “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.”
