Where Florida Went Wrong With COVID-19

Gabriela Enamorado/Staff Writer

As Floridians, many of us thought we would be going back to our lives soon. Now, we are back at point one. After months of being on lockdown, we’re right back at the peak. It seems that Florida will be the next New York City. Florida could be the epicenter of Coronavirus in the United States. 

How did Floridians get to this point and where did we go wrong? It’s a mixture of the government failing the people and the people are failing each other. 

The Florida government’s reaction to the virus was almost nonexistent. Ron DeSantis’ initial response to the pandemic was extremely slow. The governor was one of the last to lockdown his state and by the time we did lockdown we already had about 7,000 cases and 80 people were dead. DeSantis resisted putting a statewide lockdown order until it was getting out of control. Health officials had been pleading for two weeks to have a stay-at-home order put in place before he finally went through with it. 

Desantis’ hesitation came at the cost of Floridians health and lives. 

Even with the slow response, we could have bounced back from this. While on lockdown, there hadn’t been any major surges of infections but we were far from ready to open up again. But, DeSantis’ thought we should go ahead and reopen the state early. The reckless reopening is what led us to where we are right now. 

Two weeks ago, Florida hit a record with 9,000 new coronavirus cases in a day. This proves the reopening efforts were not a success. It was reckless to reopen businesses when we hadn’t truly flattened the curve, especially since Floridians are known for their party habits. 

DeSantis found a way to blame everyone else rather than take accountability for his decisions. He even pointed fingers at Hispanic farmworkers. His phrasing caused Latino leaders like Rep. Javier Fernandez and Natascha Otero-Santiago, to demand an apology from the governor. 

However, the government is not entirely at fault. We need to look at the general public’s behavior as well. Like I said, Floridians don’t have a good reputation for following protocols. People flooded the beaches for Memorial Day, which caused COVID-19  cases to spike. I passed by the beach recently and saw a lot of people a little too close for comfort. There is a  disregard for social distancing. 

Bars and restaurants reopened putting workers and the customers in jeopardy. Many Floridians seemed unable to resist the lure of going to bars without masks on. Maybe this will dwindle since there was a ban on alcohol consumption in our bars. Back in May, I wrote about how if we weren’t taking precautions, we would never get out of this mess. Two months later, I was proven right. Because of this recklessness, we are in a deeper hole now. 

We have to hold the people around us accountable. If you see your friends going out without masks and in large crowds of people, call them out. It’s understandable that people are getting restless. If people really must go out, they can at least be considerate of other’s health. So, we have to call out people to push others around us to do better. 

If we are ever going to get out of this mess, we have to recognize the mistakes that put us here in the first place.  Florida is going to have to wait even longer because of government failure and bad decision making. Florida needs to do better. 

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