DeSantis: Restaurant restrictions to lift soon
TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis said he’ll be lifting capacity restrictions on restaurants soon and prevent any local government from closing restaurants.
“I don’t think that the closure of restaurants has been particularly effective,” DeSantis said Thursday in the Capitol. “They’re not going to be able to be closed by locals anymore, and they’ll be able to operate at the capacity that they’re comfortable with.”
Under current state guidelines issued by an executive order from
DeSantis, restaurants can operate at 50% capacity. As of Thursday evening, though, DeSantis hadn’t issued an official order removing the rules.
DeSantis’ statement came at the end of a video conference discussion with three scientists and doctors critical of measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic favored by most public health experts.
In the two-hour-long discussion, they questioned the efficacy of masks to slow the spread of the virus and suggested policies be tailored to protecting the elderly, who are more at risk of dying from COVID-19, while allowing the younger population to proceed as normal.
“Children and young adults they should be able to live life normally,” said Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a Harvard University Medical School professor.
The experts assembled by DeSantis echoed his theme throughout the pandemic that the lockdowns and other measures used to combat the virus shouldn’t be more harmful than the deaths and negative health outcomes of the disease itself. They cited delayed medical procedures, such as cancer screenings, due to the lockdowns and periods of isolation leading to deteriorating mental health.
“A death is a terrible thing; it’s not as if a COVID-19 death is especially terrible,” said Stanford University Professor of Structural Biology Michael Levitt. “The fact is that [lockdowns] are a treatment that can often kill the patient.”
Since hitting a peak in late summer, new COVID-19 cases in Florida have dwindled during the month of September. The average number of new cases per day over the past two weeks is 2,703, well below the highest daily total of 15,300 on July 12.
Out of the nearly 13,800 coronavirus-related deaths in Florida, 82% were 65 or older, but out of the nearly 685,000 cases, 85% were younger than 65.
But at colleges and universities throughout Florida, administrators have scolded students for holding large parties and not wearing masks, saying they’re endangering the lives of older professors and staffers, even if younger people are at less risk of hospitalization or death from the virus.
At Florida State University, President John Thrasher last week threatened to suspend students who host or attend large parties or who test positive for COVID-19 but refuse to self-isolate for 14 days.
“I think it’s terrible,” Kulldorf said of the suspension threat. “As long as they don’t invite their grandmother to those parties I think it’s fine, but keep grandma away.”
DeSantis agreed, and was skeptical of the effectiveness of testing and isolating students with positive cases.
“Let’s protect the faculty members, let’s focus on the things we can control, but policing them off campus I just don’t think that that’s likely to be effective,” DeSantis said. “In terms of the testing, I think this is a huge problem. If you can get a positive test with no symptoms and the test cannot tell us whether you have live virus, I think it’s a big problem that you’re asked to isolate.”
DeSantis also said he’s looking into a “Bill of Rights” for college students facing penalties related to the pandemic, but didn’t say whether that could be addressed administratively or if it would have to become a bill passed by the Legislature.