The Real DeSantis Covid Record

Trump and the left are distorting Florida’s superior pandemic performance on public health and limiting harm from lockdowns 

WSJ editorial.

"Progressives want Donald Trump to win the GOP nomination, which explains why they’re distorting Ron DeSantis’s Covid record. The press knows the Florida Governor’s opposition to lockdowns is a political selling point, so in Trumpian fashion they are rewriting history.

Democrats have never forgiven Mr. DeSantis for defying the lockdown consensus and reopening his state in spring 2020. Americans can recall—though would probably rather forget—how the Trump Administration extended its “15 days to slow the spread” again and again.

Mr. DeSantis and some other GOP Governors, notably Brian Kemp in Georgia and South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, broke ranks in early May by easing virus restrictions. Democrats denounced Mr. DeSantis for “letting it rip,” but he reopened the state in phases and took into account the healthcare system’s capacity to treat sick patients.

On May 4 restaurants and retail stores were allowed to open at 25% of capacity. Two weeks later Mr. DeSantis announced that theme parks, including Disney World, could submit plans to reopen as early as June if they could keep patrons safe. In June Mr. DeSantis gradually eased other restrictions.

That summer Covid swept Florida and southern states that had largely dodged a first wave in the spring. But Mr. DeSantis, having examined the data and consulted scientists such as Stanford University’s Jay Bhattacharya, refused to shut down businesses. Instead he focused on protecting the elderly who faced immensely higher risk.

Seniors over the age of 75 years were hundreds of times more likely to die of Covid than young adults. And lockdowns disproportionately harmed young people who were more likely to die of drug overdoses than Covid. The public-health clerisy focused narrowly on virus risks, ignoring the social, economic and psychological damage from lockdowns.

Not least of these was learning loss from school closures, which may never be made up. Mr. DeSantis was among the few Governors to reopen schools for in-person learning in autumn 2020 despite opposition from the teachers’ unions. His reopening mitigated learning loss and helped parents return to work.

Mr. DeSantis’s strategy of focused protection was articulated in the Great Barrington Declaration, which progressives still revile despite its vindication. In 2020 Florida had the tenth lowest age-adjusted Covid death rate in the country, which was nearly 20% lower than California’s despite the Golden State’s prolonged lockdown.

Progressives are implicitly conceding Mr. DeSantis’s strategy of focused protection succeeded by attacking him now for allegedly equivocating on vaccines. The smear is that the Governor at first backed Covid vaccines for seniors, but then declined to mandate the shots. He also didn’t hector young people to get them.

This ignores that many young people already had natural immunity, which is more protective than vaccines. Vaccines can also cause myocarditis in young men, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was slow to acknowledge. It also became clear by summer 2021 that vaccines provided only transitory protection against infection.

News stories attribute Florida’s higher death rate during the summer 2021 Delta wave to Mr. DeSantis’s refusal to embrace vaccine mandates. But they leave out that Florida also suffered a much smaller Covid wave in the previous winter than most states. As we’ve learned, infections build population-level protection that extends many months.

Florida experienced a lower Covid death rate than most states in late 2021 and early 2022. The press likes to cherry-pick data and focus on discrete periods to present Mr. DeSantis as a grim-reaper. But Florida’s overall age-adjusted Covid death rate during the pandemic is 13% lower than the U.S. average and about the same as California’s.

Florida’s vaccination rate among seniors is 94.4%, similar to most Democratic-run states. About 79.6% of Floridians age 18 and over have received two doses, which is higher than most states, including many with Democratic Governors such as Michigan (71.6%), North Carolina (77.1%), and Wisconsin (77.7%).

Progressives and Mr. Trump also won’t concede that Mr. DeSantis’s Covid strategy proved to be an economic boon. Between April 2020 and July 2022, 622,476 people moved to Florida from other states, including families who wanted children in school. Employment in Florida has grown by 7.4% since January 2020 versus 2.5% in California and a 1.2% decline in New York.

The lockdown damage continues, but progressives can’t admit they were wrong. Nor can Mr. Trump. So they are trying to take down Mr. DeSantis for being right."