Nearly a year after California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered the country’s first nationwide closure due to the coronavirus, masks remain mandatory, indoor dining and other activities have been significantly restricted, and Disneyland remains closed.
Florida, on the other hand, has no statewide restrictions. The Ron DeSantis Republican government has prohibited municipalities from imposing fines on people who refuse to wear masks. And Disney World has been open since July.
Despite their different approaches, California and Florida have experienced nearly identical results in the COVID-19 cases.
How did two states that have made such disparate tacks come to similar points?
“This is going to be an important question to ask ourselves: Which public health measures actually had the most impact, and which ones had a negligible effect or failed due to underground driving?” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Although research has shown masking mandates and restrictions on group activities, such as indoor dining, can help slow the spread of the coronavirus, and states with tougher government-imposed restrictions have not always fared better than those without.
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California and Florida both have a COVID-19 case of about 8,900 per 100,000 residents since the start of the pandemic. And both are in the middle of the states when it comes to COVID-19 death rates – Florida was on Friday 27th; California was ranked 28th.
Connecticut and South Dakota are another example. Both are among the 10 worst states for COVID-19 death rates. Still, Connecticut Governor, a Democrat, Ned Lamont, imposed numerous statewide restrictions over the past year following an early rise in the death toll, while Republican Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota issued no mandates due to the number of virus deaths in the United States. autumn increased enormously.
While Lamont ordered quarantines for certain out-of-state visitors, Noem launched a $ 5 million tourist ad campaign and welcomed people to a massive motorcycle rally, which some health experts said was spreading the coronavirus. throughout the Midwest.
Both claim their approach is the best.
“Even in a pandemic, public health policy must take into account people’s economic and social well-being,” Noem said at a recent conservative convention.
Lamont recently announced that it will lift capacity limits at stores, restaurants and other facilities, effective March 19. But bars that don’t serve food will remain closed and a mask mandate will continue.
This is not Texas. This is not Mississippi. This is Connecticut, ”said Lamont, referring to other states that recently lifted mask mandates.
“We’re discovering what works is wearing the mask, social distancing and vaccinations,” he said.
As new COVID-19 cases decline Governors in more than half of the states have taken steps to end or relax restrictions on the coronavirus in the past two weeks, according to an Associated Press report. Some capacity limits ended in Maryland and Oklahoma on Friday. Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Wyoming will impose restrictions in the coming week.
In nearly all cases, governors have praised their handling of the pandemic, while critics have accused them of being too strict or too lax.
California’s slow reopening is expected to gain momentum in April. But the Republicans in California are helping to organize a recall against Newsom, which has pulled nearly 2 million petition signatures from people frustrated with its long-standing restrictions on businesses, church meetings, and people’s activities. He is also under a lot of pressure due to the closing of public schools and the icy pace of reopening them.
Newson claimed California has been a leader in the fight against the virus while delivering his State of the State address last week from Dodger Stadium, where the empty seats were roughly equivalent to the state’s 55,000 COVID-19 deaths.
“From the very beginning of this pandemic, California relied on science and data, and we met at the time,” Newsom said.
He added, “We’re not going to change course just because of a few naysayers and doomsayers.”
In its own State of the State address, DeSantis claimed that Florida was in better shape than others because the businesses and schools are open. The unemployment rate in Florida was below the national average early this year and significantly lower than California.
“While so many other states continued to incarcerate people over these many months, Florida lifted people up,” DeSantis said.
Determining which approach is best is more complicated than just looking at statewide policies and the overall number of cases.
Like Florida, Missouri did not have a statewide mask mandate, ended corporate restrictions last June, and has a cumulative COVID-19 death rate comparable to California’s. In the absence of statewide orders, many of the largest cities in Florida and Missouri imposed their own mask requirements and business restrictions. In Missouri, that meant about half of the population was still subject to mask mandates.
Republican Governor Mike Parson has praised “a balanced approach” to the pandemic that left many public health decisions to local officials and caused Missouri’s economy to “rebound”. New COVID-19 cases and unemployment are both low, and consumer spending has returned to pre-pandemic levels, Parson said last week.
State health director Randall Williams believes residents have heeded Parson’s call to voluntarily mask when Missouri coronavirus cases spiked to some of the highest national levels last fall.
Public health experts said individual choices could help explain the similar results in some states with loose or strict orders from the governor.
Some people were voluntarily “more vigilant in states where guidelines are more relaxed,” said Thomas Tsai, an assistant professor at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health. But in states with more government mandates, “people generally wore masks in public and followed guidelines, but privately dropped their guard and were less vigilant,” he said.
Imposing strict measures, such as forbidding families to visit grandparents and friends to get together, is like an abstinence-only approach to combat drug use and sexually transmitted diseases, said Adalja of Johns Hopkins University.
Some will suffice. But other “people are going to do those activities anyway,” he said.
David A. Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri. Associated Press Writers Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Florida; Stephen Groves in Pierre, South Dakota; Susan Haigh in Norwich, Connecticut; and Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento, California contributed to this story.