Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, having acted like concerns about the coronavirus were all political, is now having to walk back his claims as the public health crisis rages on in his home state. DeSantis, a close Trump ally, declared victory over the virus in May while standing beside Vice President Mike Pence, crowing about Florida’s success and stating anything otherwise to be “typical partisan narrative trying to be spun” by the media. “You’ve got a lot of people in your profession who wax poetically for weeks and weeks about how Florida was going to be just like New York,” he told a reporter last month. “Well, hell, we’re eight weeks away from that and it hasn’t happened,” he said, adding that “people just don’t want to recognize [our success] because it challenges their narrative, it challenges their assumption.”
Yet with numbers spiking, the governor has had to backtrack, at least in terms of policy. On Friday, the Washington Post reported DeSantis to make a “surprise announcement” that reversed course on reopening plans, ordering bars to close immediately due to “widespread noncompliance” with social distancing and capacity-related rules. The move, the Post notes, came as the state saw a record 8,942 confirmed cases on Friday, with average cases up nearly 77 percent from the week before. All Miami-Dade beaches will be closed for July 4th weekend, County Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez announced Friday, an emergency order that also came in light of surging cases and increased hospitalizations. “I have decided that the only prudent thing to do to tamp down this recent uptick is to crack down on recreational activities that put our overall community at higher risk,” Gimenez wrote in a statement.
Other states are worsening, too, the Post notes. Florida is one of 13 states—such as Arizona, California, Georgia, and Texas—that reported record seven-day case averages. Texas Governor Greg Abbott—who, like DeSantis, previously echoed Trump’s insistence on increased cases simply being the result of increased testing—also took measures to curb the outbreak on Friday in light of spiking cases and rising hospitalizations. Abbott ordered bars to close, restaurants to reduce occupancy, and gave local governments authority to ban large-size outdoor gatherings, putting a pause on the reopening efforts that earned him the praise of the president last month. Hospitals in Texas’ Harris County—where Houston is located—are reaching maximum capacity, with the state’s largest hospital already reporting 100 percent of its ICU beds to be occupied on Friday.
When asked what he would say to DeSantis, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told CNN, “I say to them all, look at the numbers. You played politics with this virus and you lost.”
Friday was the third day in a row that the number of nationwide cases reached another record, nearly 45,000, according to Post data. Yet the message put forth by the White House yesterday was one of progress, a “rosy picture” that CNN’s Daniel Dale remarked to be “at odds with reality.” Pence, trying to spin his way out of worsening numbers, claimed that “to one extent or another, the volume of new cases coming in is a reflection of a great success in expanding testing across the country.” The vice president wrongly claimed that “all 50 states” are “opening up safely and responsibly” despite the rising rate of new cases causing several states to roll back reopening plans—not to mention, Dale adds, those that “reopened without having met the administration’s recommended safety milestones.”