Nearly a year after the California government, Gavin Newsom, ordered the country’s first strike of the country due to the coronavirus, masks remain mandatory, dining indoors and other activities are significantly restricted and Disneyland remains closed.
In contrast, Florida has no restrictions throughout the country. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has banned municipalities from fining people who refuse to wear masks. And Disney World has been open since July.
Despite their different approaches, California and Florida have almost the same results in COVID-19 cases.
How did two states that adopt such divergent lines come to similar points?
“This is going to be an important question we need to ask ourselves: Which social health measures had the most consequences, and which one had an insignificant effect or suppressed it?” says Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety.
Although research has been found that mandates and restrictions on group activities such as indoor eateries could help slow the spread of the coronavirus, states with greater restrictions imposed by the government have not always fared better than those without them.
According to the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both California and Florida have a COVID-19 rate of about 8,900 per 100,000 inhabitants since the pandemic. And both are in the middle of the states for COVID-19 mortality rates – Florida was 27th on Friday; California was 28th.
Connecticut and South Dakota are another example. Both are among the ten worst states for COVID-19 mortality rates. Yet the Democratic government, Ned Lamont, a Democrat, has imposed numerous nationwide restrictions over the past year on an early increase in deaths, while the South Dakota government, Kristi Noem, a Republican, has not issued any mandates, as virus deaths increase in the fall.
While Lamont ordered quarantines for certain visitors outside the country, Noem launched a $ 5 million tourism advertising campaign and welcomed people to a massive motorcycle rally, which some health experts say is spreading the coronavirus. throughout the Midwest.
Both claim their approach is the best.
“Even in a pandemic, public health policy must take into account the economic and social well – being of the people,” Noem said during a recent Conservative convention.
Lamont recently announced that on March 19, it lifted the capacity limit at retail stores, restaurants and other facilities. But pubs that do not serve food will remain closed and a mask mandate will continue.
“It’s not Texas. This is not Mississippi. This is Connecticut, ‘Lamont said, referring to other states that had recently lifted mask mandates.
“We find what the mask wears, social distance and vaccinations,” he said.
As new cases of COVID-19 decrease nationwide, governors in more than half of the states have taken steps to end or alleviate coronavirus restrictions in the past two weeks, according to a report by the Associated Press. Some capacity constraints ended Friday in Maryland and Oklahoma. Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Wyoming will relax restrictions in the coming week.
In almost all cases, governors have praised their approach to the pandemic, while critics have accused them of being too strict or too lax.
The slow reopening of California is expected to get steam in April. But Republicans in California are helping organize a recall effort against Newsom that drew nearly 2 million signatures from petitions from people who were frustrated by its protracted limits on businesses, church meetings and people’s activities. He is also confronted under tremendous pressure about the closure of public schools and the icy pace of reopening it.
Newson claims California was a leader in fighting the virus while delivering his state of the nation address last week from Dodger Stadium, where the empty seats were roughly equal to the state’s 55,000 COVID-19 deaths.
“From the earliest days of this pandemic, California has relied on science and data, and we have met the moment,” Newsom said.
He added: “We are not going to change course, just because of some naysayers and doomsayers.”
In his own state of the nation address, DeSantis claimed that Florida was in a better condition than others because of its businesses and schools being open. Florida’s unemployment rate was lower than the national average at the beginning of this year and significantly lower than that of California.
“While so many other states have kept people locked up over these many months, Florida has uplifted people,” DeSantis said.
Determining which approach is best is more complicated than simply looking at policies across the country and overall business rates.
As in Florida, Missouri had no nationwide mandate, ended its operating restrictions last June, and has a cumulative COVID-19 mortality rate similar to that of California. In the absence of statewide orders, many of the largest cities in Florida and Missouri have imposed their own mask requirements and business restrictions. In Missouri, this meant that about half of the population was still subject to mask mandates.
Republican Gov. Mike Parson is proposing a “balanced approach” to the pandemic that left many public health decisions to local officials and “could make Missouri’s economy ‘come back strong’. “New COVID-19 cases and unemployment are both low, and consumer spending has returned to pre-pandemic levels,” Parson said last week.
State Health Director Randall Williams believes residents have heeded Parson’s call to hide himself voluntarily when cases of Missouri’s coronavirus cases rose last fall to some of the highest levels nationally.
Public health experts said individual choices could help explain similar outcomes in some states with loose or strict instructions from the governor.
Some people have voluntarily been ‘vigilant in states where the guidelines are relaxed,’ said Thomas Tsai, an assistant professor at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. “In states with more government mandates, people in public usually wore masks and followed the guidelines, but privately they kept their guard down and were less vigilant,” he said.
Taking strict measures, such as banning families from visiting grandparents and friends, is like using a single abstinence approach to combat drug use and sexually transmitted diseases, said Adalja of Johns Hopkins University.
Some will comply. But other ‘people are going to do those activities anyway’, he said.
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David A. Lieb reports from Jefferson City, Missouri. Associated Press writers Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Florida; Stephen Groves in Pierre, South Dakota; Susan Haigh in Norwich, Connecticut; and Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento, California, contributed to this story.