When I landed at Palm Beach International Airport, I was ready to see how the other half was living. The COVID healthy half, that is.
Our family has not left New York since March. We read how Florida was able to maintain a similar or lower case than in New York while avoiding our crippling exclusions. We were scared though. “Be careful down there, no one wears a mask,” was typical of the advice I received from well-meaning friends.
And indeed, Florida has a reputation as one of the looser states. In mid-April, after a brief shutdown, Governor Ron DeSantis gave the green light for opening beaches. “Wait two weeks!” insisted the naysayers at the time. But two weeks came and went, and numbers in Florida remained relatively steady after peaking in mid-July.
When we got off the plane, we noticed something strange: everyone was actually masked. And keep their distance. There was disinfectant everywhere. The COVID “Mad Max” world was nowhere to be found. Yes, everything was open, but in South Florida, the precautions looked a lot like New York.
The main difference: masks are not worn in risk-free situations. In Gotham, it is very common to see people masked, even when they are alone in empty streets. Small children wear masks outside. In Florida, we saw maskless children playing outside. It looked like the Before Times.
This is good: we act as if it is not a big deal to wear masks, even if there is no risk. But it does matter, of course. In Florida, we saw the smiling faces of strangers for the first time in nine months. It is difficult to judge how much it matters to our well-being and sense of normalcy. There is also the element of pandemic fatigue: using a mask, even if it is unnecessary, will discourage it at some point when it really matters.
However, it is a lie that Floridians do not take the novel coronavirus seriously. What they have done is throw away the policies that do not work, but keep them.
Government Cuomo, on the day he closed the indoor dining room in New York City, noted that COVID distribution in restaurants accounts for 1.4 percent of cases. In Florida, they decided that numbers like that mean indoor eateries stay open. In New York we are not fools.
In Florida, DeSantis prioritized school openings. In New York, Cuomo inflated his chest, saying he was at the head of schools, but then washed his hands when it was time to do the hard work to get it open.
And Florida’s policies have borne good fruit. On January 9, New York reported 17,839 new cases. Florida, with about 2 million more people than New York, had 15,445. An open state like Florida with fewer COVID cases than a mostly closed state like New York proves that long-term closures are a failure.
And this inequality has led people like Rich Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, to turn bizarro conspiracy theories on Twitter that Florida ‘boiled the book on the case number’. It’s much harder to admit that his boss destroyed restaurants and other businesses.
Even if Florida hides somehow, it’s harder to keep bodies up. Florida had 22,000 COVID-19 deaths in the 38,000 in New York. The virus hit the two states simultaneously.
The weather also cannot explain the difference. Yes, Floridians are often outdoors thanks to the mild climate in the Sunshine States. But that does not explain why the virus is raging out of control in California, which is tightly closed.
Florida then shows that moderation is actually the key to fighting COVID-19. A New Yorker in Florida constantly wonders, “Why doesn’t my own state government trust me like the government here trusts its people?”
The authorities in New York do not trust our people to do the right thing for themselves and their neighbors. Our lives are being held hostage to Cuomo’s whims. Floridians know what to expect, and this normalizes their lives to a great extent.
They have common sense. We do not.
Twitter: @Karol