Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Gov. DeSantis — Shut down state, for at least a few weeks
Florida is not open for business and it shouldn’t be. The sooner Gov. Ron DeSantis realizes that, the safer we’ll all be. He is jeopardizing the lives of thousands of Floridians by refusing to issue a blanket stay-at-home order to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Conceding just a little Tuesday, the governor finally directed Floridians over 65 to stay at home. But while they’re the most vulnerable, everybody is vulnerable.
Patients in their 50s have a death rate three times higher than those in their 40s. People at higher risk include those who are overweight, have diabetes, heart trouble or asthma, or are pregnant.
The Chinese physician who first raised the alarm and died of the virus was 34. China is now reporting cases among infants and children, some critical.
The blunt truth is that the longer DeSantis postpones stay-at-home for everyone, the worse it will be for everyone. The longer he stalls, the longer young people who believe themselves invincible will pick up and spread the disease. Isolating only their grandparents now, will not protect them later.
Every responsible public health physician and epidemiologist is pleading with the public to stay at home and save lives. But it takes a governor to make such an order effective and enforceable. Sixteen governors have done what DeSantis refuses to do.
He refuses because it is disruptive. But the disease is more disruptive than any temporary economic freeze. He should believe Dr. Anthony Fauci on that.
“What we have right now is something that’s very different and very acute and very threatening,” Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, told “This is unprecedented. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
A statistical model that has guided other states and localities warns that Florida has only days remaining to take decisive action. Otherwise, 465,699 people in Florida will need to be hospitalized by April 24. That’s nearly 13 times more than the available beds.
Look around. And look in the mirror. Who wants to be someone the hospitals can’t try to save?
In the best scenarios, according to the model, three months of social distancing — which is less disruptive than a stay-at-home order — would flatten the curve to 185,000 hospitalizations by
May 14. Three months of stay-at-home would by far do the most, with just 18,000 hospitalizations by July 5.
But DeSantis is refusing to order stay-at-home for even a few weeks. To hear him, it sounds as if he’s bought into President Trump’s notion that “we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.”
That begs the question of what the problem is.
If it’s the economy, that can be healed after the coronavirus crisis has passed. America will bounce back.
But dead people can’t be brought back to life. Ever.
“You simply cannot lock down our society indefinitely, with no end in sight,” DeSantis said Monday. “Floridians are willing to do what it takes, (but) I don’t think it’s going to be stay in your house for nine months. That’s just not going to work.”
Indefinitely? Nine months? Where did he get that? DeSantis is inventing reasons to not do what he should.
No one else is talking about nine months. How about people stay home “at least several weeks,” as Dr. Fauci suggests?
In the face of the governor’s refusal to take decisive action, Florida cities and counties are taking matters into their own hands. Gainesville and Alachua County implemented stay-at-home orders Monday. The home of the University of Florida has the highest number of cases per capita of all 67 counties, according to the Gainesville Sun.
But DeSantis offers only the partial remedy of isolating seniors and the defective remedy of ordering visitors from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut who arrive by plane — but not by car — to self-quarantine for two weeks and provide the state with an address of where they are staying.
Who’s going to enforce that? Will it apply to arriving flights from Atlanta, Charlotte and other hubs through which people from the Northeast often travel? It’s a scattershot and unworkable approach that strains our limited law enforcement personnel. Already, because DeSantis refuses to close beaches statewide, law enforcement must patrol the waterfront to ensure people don’t gather in groups larger than 10.
The governor says he doesn’t want to tell people to stay home because,
“you’re going to have a lot of non-compliance.” Yes, there will be people who break the rules, there always are. But most people would likely comply, and wouldn’t that be better than nothing?
The greater danger to Floridians isn’t from newly arriving visitors. You’re more likely to catch coronavirus from someone in your house or community. About half of Florida’s confirmed cases — 587 of 1,227 — report they hadn’t traveled anywhere and weren’t exposed to a known carrier. They don’t know how they might have caught it.
The virus is already firmly planted in Florida. So far, 47 of Florida’s 67 counties count cases, more than two-thirds. Only rural areas have been spared, perhaps because of a shortage of testing. People are spreading the contagion before they know they have it.
Plus, the state’s own data prove community spread is more dangerous than the three northern states that DeSantis is scapegoating.
Surprisingly, almost half of Florida’s “travel-related” cases involve domestic travel, not hotspot nations. And as of Friday, the number one state in which those 237 people had traveled was Florida, with 76 cases. After that came New York, with 60.
Visitors to Georgia (13), Colorado (12), California (9) and Illinois (6) accounted for more infections than Connecticut
(3) or New Jersey 6).
Kinsa, a company that has sold more than a million digital smart thermometers nationwide, uses the data they transmit to identify hot spots of abovenormal temperatures around the nation. It has already been successful in spotting flu outbreaks before any agency does. Its data suggest Florida is in worse shape than COVID-19 tests indicate.
“Related to other states, Florida is a class of its own,” the company’s chief scientist told the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times.
A new virus to which no humans are naturally immune does not respect state borders or city or county lines.
This is why states as large as California,
New York and Illinois — and as thinly populated as New Mexico, West Virginia and Delaware — are under stay-at-home orders. Counting 14 counties and eight cities that have acted on their own, at least 163 million Americans are being told to stay home to protect their lives and the lives of others.
It’s time for Gov. DeSantis to stand strong and stop grasping at shallow excuses.
Properly structured, and fairly but firmly applied, stay-at-home is a burden that will pass in a relatively short time. The conditions can be eased gradually. Those most vulnerable — the elderly and those with compromised immunity — may need to shelter longer. People will look back with pride on their collective sacrifice for the greater good, as well as for their own.
The alternative is a legacy of suffering and grief, followed by righteous anger at those who preferred political cowardice to political courage.
Granted, stay at home is an economic hardship for people who aren’t working and earning, and for business owners with bills to pay. Congress appears ready to provide substantial relief.
But with or without stay-at-home orders, the economy will suffer so long as the disease remains unchecked. Allowing it to go unchecked will only make matters worse.
Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried made that point in an appeal Friday to DeSantis to do what he should. The only Democratic statewide official apparently is the only one with common sense.
“The time is now for the Governor to take bold action with a statewide stayat-home order. The only choice left to make is not if, but when, to act — before it’s too late for action at all,” she said Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Stacy Ritter, Broward County’s top tourism executive, reported devastating statistics on hotel vacancies and business closures.
“We are simply prolonging our pain if we don’t do what’s necessary,” she said.
Stay-at-home still allows shopping for groceries and medicines. It still permits outdoor exercise — walking, jogging, bicycling — and walking the dog, provided people don’t congregate.
The alternative is death.
What “cure” could be worse than that?