It’s no mystery what’s happening in Florida right now — or why.
The state is experiencing its worst surge of the pandemic. Last week, it was averaging nearly 25,000 new cases every day. The previous high, in January, was about 18,000. More than 17,000 Floridians are hospitalized with Covid-19, another record; around 230 people are dying every day. Florida leads all states in the number of hospitalizations and deaths per capita.
The city of Orlando has urged residents to limit their water use, because the same liquid oxygen used to treat the water supply is being used to provide air to Covid-19 patients. The Florida health department asked the federal government to send more ventilators as the number of hospitalized patients spiked — a request Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has staked his political reputation on his laissez-faire response to the pandemic, claimed to know nothing about.
In recent days, cases may have started to plateau, increasing “only” 11 percent in the past two weeks. But it’s hard to be sure because testing is inadequate: Nearly 20 percent of tests are coming back positive in the state. Experts say that number should be at 5 percent or lower in order to be confident most cases are being caught.
For most of last year, Florida looked like a success story for the people who advocated for a less restrictive response to Covid-19. Its case and death rates weren’t noticeably worse than other states that were more aggressive about mandating masks or closing businesses.
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So why is Florida is experiencing its worst surge now, 18 months into the pandemic, when the vaccines are widely available?
In some ways, what’s happening in Florida is a microcosm of the current surge across America: A middling vaccination rate has collided with a more contagious version of the virus. And it’s doing so in a state where political leaders continue to insist people should act as though the pandemic is over — even as more people are dying every day than at any point in the past year.
About half of Florida residents, 52 percent, are fully vaccinated, according to the Times’s data. That’s not terrible — Mississippi and Alabama currently rank last, with less than 38 percent — but it’s not great either. The Sunshine State is 25th among states in vaccination rate.
Florida is not a monolith; some communities have much higher levels of protection than others. Case levels trend accordingly, with the less vaccinated areas seeing more spread. In counties with more than 1,000 new cases per 100,000 people, vaccination rates are stuck in the 30s and 40s.
Counties with vaccination rates of 60 percent or above are still seeing a significant amount of spread. But it’s substantially less, sometimes by more than half, than the worst-off areas, according to the state’s data. Less vaccinated counties have been driving the current wave.
“Insufficient vaccine coverage is contributing a lot,” Cindy Prins, a University of Florida epidemiologist, told me.
The piece points out that Florida was considered the big winner last year because its cases were not worse than others even as DeSantis had opened up the state and ridiculed mitigation efforts. But guess what? By doing that he “downplayed” the virus like his mentor Donald Trump so a lot of people didn’t take it seriously. When this latest surge with the much more infectious variant came along, they weren’t vaccinated and they didn’t bother to adapt their behavior. Now it’s killing them.
And yes, it is all Ron DeSantis’ fault.
DeSantis, who has clear presidential aspirations in 2024, has positioned himself and his state’s Covid-19 response against the public health establishment and, more recently, the Biden administration.
Though he, like most governors, closed many businesses last spring, they were allowed to reopen in May of 2020; DeSantis steadfastly refused to consider any new closures during following waves in the summer and winter. He ended the state’s mask mandates on May 4, 2021, before the CDC changed its own masking guidance, and he has resisted calls to reimpose them even as cases surged again.
The governor tried to block local school districts from setting their own mask mandates for the new school year and threatened to withhold the salaries of any officials who implement a masking policy. Some school districts are pushing ahead anyway. He also has opposed businesses requiring vaccines for their employees or customers.
Experts said the state’s policies, which have signaled to the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike that it’s okay to go about their normal lives, are making it easier for the virus to spread.
“There are still a large absolute number of unvaccinated people, relatively few people practicing social distancing or masking, by choice and also due to the absence of policies requiring them,” Joshua Michaud, associate director for global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “Schools and universities going back into session, and lots of delta introductions in the state all happening at the same time.”
The situation has led to a sort of theater of the absurd, with DeSantis fighting local mitigation measures while at the same time promoting new treatments for people who get so sick they need to be hospitalized because of Covid-19.