COVID-19 surge reduces state to third world status

Florida begins to feel like a backwater province in a third-world nation, a diseased-ridden banana republic shunned by advanced societies.

Other states and other nations that persevered through months of privations to tamp down

COVID-19 do not want the likes of us coming around.

On Wednesday, a cabal of three northeastern states that managed to flatten their respective outbreaks of coronavirus — New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — warned that visitors from states “with high community spread” must endure a 14-day quarantine. That means us. Especially us.

Lately, Florida has become the epitome of community spread. On the very day the travel restrictions were announced, Florida reported 5,511 new infections, a one-day record. In less than a week, the state has recorded

30,000 new COVID-19 cases. (New York state had counted just 3,200 new infections over the previous five days.)

It begins to look as if Gov. Ron DeSantis’ hurried reboot of the state economy was based on wishful thinking. Or no thinking at all.

The tri-state quarantine applies to anyone traveling from a state suffering a rate of 10 or more positive COVID infections among every

100,000 persons tested. Florida’s seven-day infection rate is 14.1% and climbing.

Vector states on the unwelcome list included Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington, Utah, Texas and, of course, Florida, which adds an element of revenge to the travel ban.

Back in March, Gov. Ron DeSantis had rather too gleefully ordered a 14-day quarantine for travelers coming from that same tri-state region. DeSantis spiced up his edit with barbs mocking the virus mitigation policies of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Now comes retribution. “You played politics with this virus and you lost,” Cuomo said Wednesday, addressing governors who had pretended that they had the coronavirus under control.

In early May, Florida, Texas, Arizona and other sunbelt states ignored the CDC warning to wait for a sustained 14-day “downward trajectory” in new cases before rebooting their respective economies. Now, they — make that we — are suffering fearsome consequences. Cuomo dismissed DeSantis’s contention that much of Florida’s accelerating rate of infections can be explained by increased testing. “The numbers aren’t going up because you’re doing more testing. The numbers are going up because more people are getting sick,” Cuomo said, with a touch of acid in his voice. “You see an arrow going up because it was misguided to say we’re going to reopen the economy. What you’re doing is you’re putting people’s lives in jeopardy, and you’re hurting the economy.”

Republican sunbelt governors had embraced the ill-informed, often fanciful, sometimes loony edicts of Donald Trump (even while ignoring the recommendations of his administration’s own epidemiologists) and rushed to restart commerce.

Turned out, public health experts knew more about pandemics than Dr. Trump. His adopted home state of Florida seems to be careening into what might be called a second surge, except we never quite escaped the first.

So, forget about hopping a flight to La Guardia or Newark, your head filled with Sinatra crooning New York, New York. We’re not king of the hill. More like bottom of the heap.

The humiliation doesn’t stop at Broadway. Add international outcast to our new image. Western Europe regards an American traveler as akin to the proverbial grasshopper that condescended all winter while the ants labored.

Reports out of Brussels this week suggest that when the European Union re-opens its borders next week, member nations will continue to bar visitors from countries that have failed to control their infection rates. Countries like ours.

So much for that Parisian holiday. No Rome for Americans. No Amsterdam. No Barcelona. No Dublin. (Who knows where the vacillating Brits stand?)

Europeans endured considerable economic damage and social strain to stanch community spread. Understandably, they don’t want outsiders — us grasshoppers — from less responsible nations setting off another wave of infections.

Unhappily, the U.S. has suffered the leadership (if that’s the word) of a president who dawdled for weeks in denial before finally admitting that we were beset with a pandemic. Then, too soon, he pushed governors to restart their economies, all the while flouting social distancing and disparaging protective masks as totems of Nancy boy liberals. Now he’s determined to resurrect indoor, barefaced, super-spreader political rallies. His anti-science faux leadership has lowered the U.S. into the same ignominious category as Russia, Brazil, Iran and other nations where coronavirus spreads unabated.

But don’t worry. I’m sure plenty of exotic destinations still welcome visitors from Florida. After a few August days in, say, Toad Suck, Arkansas, who needs Manhattan?

Fred Grimm, a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976. Reach him by email at leogrimm@gmail.com or on Twitter at @grimm_fred.