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As Florida Governor Ron DeSantis travels the state to promote his performance in the fight against the coronavirus, he often points to a relatively low infection rate among children – even after his administration forced school districts to offer in-person learning.
But this week, NBC 6 investigators found that he has twice misled the public about how Florida stacks up with other states when it comes to infection rates among children of school age.
In Monday’s comments lambasting Democrats for, he said, putting teachers’ unions “ahead of the well-being of our children,” he touted how Florida is protecting school children from the virus, for example. compared to other states.
“We learned in person as much as anyone in the country. And yet, we are 34th out of 50 states and DCs for COVID-19 cases per capita for children, ”he said.
That is not true, unless – as the governor did – you ignore more than 50,000 children over the age of 14 who have contracted the virus.
Using a statistic for children under 15, he effectively removed high school students from the data he cited twice this week to validate his decision to offer in-person lessons to all public school students. .
The states DeSantis compared to Florida to actually include these older students.
When states reporting cases in children under 18 are compared to Florida’s rate for the same age group, Florida ranks ninth – not 34th – according to NBC 6 analysis of State Department data of Health and the US Census Bureau.
The governor compounded his data inaccuracy Tuesday in a tweet to his more than 717,000 subscribers.
“Our kids belong to school and Florida’s decision to keep schools open was the right thing to do,” he said in the tweet, which by Wednesday night had been liked or retweeted over 12 000 times. “Compared to other states of similar size, Florida has fewer pediatric cases per 100,000 people.”
To emphasize this point, he attached a graph purporting to show Florida’s “pediatric case rate” to those of Ohio, Illinois, and California, which has nearly twice the population of Florida.
But his rate for Florida – 3,794 cases per 100,000 – excluded anyone over the age of 14. Figures for Ohio and Illinois included those under 20 and Californians under 18.
The governor’s office confirmed on Wednesday that it had extracted the data from a Feb. 4 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association – a report that does not specifically rank states and clearly notes that the data only for the Florida and Utah have been cut. over 14 years old.
In a statement to NBC 6, the governor’s office said, “While there may be subtle differences in case rates for the different age groups used by states (0-14, 0-17, 0-18, etc.), these differences do not preclude a general side-by-side comparison. “
If the differences were “subtle,” as his office suggested, it might be true.
But our investigation reveals that the differences are not subtle.
These differences contradicted DeSantis’ argument when he compared Florida rates for children under 15 to rates in other states that also included older children.
Remember: DeSantis said Florida ranked 34th in pediatric case rates (when it actually ranked ninth among states reporting cases for all under-18s).
And, when the latest comparable data available for the states in the DeSantis chart was analyzed by NBC 6, comparing the same age groups, consider the not-so-subtle differences we found:
- Illinois’ rate was not 42% higher than Florida’s; it was pretty much the same;
- Ohio’s rate was not 4% higher than Florida’s; it was 25% lower; and,
- California’s rate was not 25% higher than Florida’s; it was less than a third of that, about 7% more.
None of this refutes DeSantis’ claim that it “did the right thing” by opening more schools than other states.
And his office said he is not claiming that his decision has made children do better than those elsewhere.
“The graph is not meant to discuss causation,” communications staff in his office said in an email. “Rather, it seeks to illustrate, through publicly available and standardized data, that there is no demonstrated difference in cases in states where schools are open versus states where schools are closed.”
Still, DeSantis rhetorically tied his decision to open schools to what he claimed was his state’s place in the bottom third of states when it came to pediatric infection rates; he is more in the top 10.
In his comments Monday, DeSantis continued to criticize the CDC and Democrats for not taking the lead in Florida when it came to recommending the opening of schools.
“It’s a shame,” he said. “It’s not science. It puts politics ahead of what’s right for children. It puts politics and special interests ahead of what the evidence says and observed experience.”
The next day, he sent his tweet.
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