When I landed at Palm Beach International Airport, I was ready to see how the other half lived. That is, the COVID healthy half.
Our family had not left New York since March. We’d read about how Florida was able to maintain a number of things that were on par or below New York’s, while avoiding our crippling lockdowns. Still, we were worried. “Be careful down there, no one wears a mask” was typical of advice I received from well-meaning friends.
Indeed, Florida has a reputation for being one of the looser states. In mid-April, after a brief lockdown, Governor Ron DeSantis gave the green light for the opening of beaches. “Wait two weeks!” the naysayers then urged. But two weeks came and went, and Florida numbers remained relatively stable after peaking in mid-July.
When we got off the plane, we noticed something strange: everyone was in fact masked. And keep your distance. Hand sanitizer was everywhere. The COVID “Mad Max” world was nowhere to be found. Yes, everything was open, but in terms of precautions, South Florida was a lot like New York.
The main difference: masks are not worn in situations without risk. In Gotham it is very common to see people masked even when they are all alone in empty streets. Small children wear masks outside. In Florida we saw maskless children playing together outside. It was like the Before Times.
That’s a good thing: we pretend it’s okay to wear masks, even when there’s no risk. But of course it does matter. In Florida, we saw the smiling faces of strangers for the first time in nine months. It’s hard to overestimate how much that mattered to our well-being and sense of normalcy. There’s also the element of pandemic fatigue: wearing a mask all the time, even when it’s not necessary, will discourage use at some point when it really matters.
However, it is a lie that Floridians do not take the new coronavirus seriously. What they’ve done is throw out the policy that doesn’t work, but keep the one that does.
Gov. Cuomo, on the day he closed dining indoors in New York City, noted that the spread of COVID in restaurants was 1.4 percent of the cases. In Florida, they decided such numbers meant indoor dining remained open. We simply didn’t do that in New York.
In Florida, DeSantis prioritized school openings. In New York, Cuomo blew his chest and said he was in charge of schools, but he washed his hands when it was time to get them open.
And Florida’s policy has paid off. 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 largely closed state like New York proves protracted lockdowns are a failure.
And that inequality has led people like Rich Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, to concoct bizarre conspiracy theories on Twitter that Florida “cooked the book on case numbers.” It’s much harder to admit that his boss has destroyed restaurants and other businesses for no reason.
Even if Florida is hiding numbers in some way, bodies are harder to store. Florida has had 22,000 COVID-19 deaths compared to New York’s 38,000. The virus hit both states at the same time.
Nor can the weather explain the difference. Yes, Floridians are often outdoors thanks to the Sunshine State’s balmy climates. But that doesn’t explain why the virus is getting out of control in tight-locked California.
So Florida shows that moderation may be key to fighting COVID-19. A New Yorker in Florida constantly wonders, “Why doesn’t my own state government trust me the way the government here trusts its people?”
The authorities in New York are not confident that our people are doing the right thing for themselves and their neighbors. Our lives are held hostage by Cuomo’s whims. Floridians know what to expect, and it normalizes their lives to a great extent.
They have common sense. We do not.
Twitter: @ Karol