Florida’s (justified) reopening
Bottom Line: On Friday Governor DeSantis followed through on what he’d hinted around earlier in the week. A near full reopening of our state’s economy. While Florida remains under a state of emergency as declared by the Governor – at least for the moment – there's now as much freedom to proceed with life as usual as at any time since the state of emergency was originally declared. Key to the governor’s moves to end most restrictions under his reopening plan is the use of the state’s regulatory agencies to prevent local governments to impose restrictions beyond curfews at this point. This clears hurdles for restaurants to operate at higher capacity indoors and for bars and for many entertainment venues to reopen as well.
While a cynical news media generally did what it’s been known to do – calling Governor DeSantis a Trump-clone and the like, in the real world outside of evident media bias, it makes perfect sense. And for several reasons. Starting with these...
- Florida’s weekly/daily average case count at the end of Saturday was the lowest since June 18th – over 14 weeks ago.
- Over 50% of Florida’s K-12 students are attending in-person classroom education with over 40% attending for over a month. Fewer than 50 COVID-19 cases have been attributed to attending school.
- Thousands of fans have attended sports events without any attributed cases.
You’d think those facts would be relevant to this discussion, but instead we’re left with a headline like this from the Tampa Bay Times: Florida coronavirus cases tick up in September, stalling progress. That headline is quite literally fake news as is the narrative in it. Or this from Politico: DeSantis flings open Florida in Trump’s campaign for normalcy. Both stories, and numerous others, omit all the facts I just shared with you which illustrate the ability for Floridians to reengage life responsibility while reducing the spread of the virus. Again, look at how much of Florida was open on June 18th compared to today. It’s beyond dispute. And then there’s this little nugget which transcends the data of the day. We’re still Americans born into a country where we are free born. We embraced a false narrative of shutdowns from the onset and now those who are more inclined to error on the side of heavy government intervention are fighting to keep dictatorial policies in place. In this country we should always error on the side of personal liberty and personal responsibility. That means we should be smart and respectful of others during the pandemic to stop the spread. It doesn’t mean we should ignore facts, the truth and the principal founding of this country.