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Almost a year after California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered the nation’s first statewide shutdown due to coronavirus, masks remain mandatory, indoor meals and other activities are severely limited and Disneyland remains closed.
In contrast, Florida has no statewide restrictions. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has banned municipalities from fining people who refuse to wear masks. And Disney World has been open since July.
Despite their different approaches, California and Florida have seen almost identical results in COVID-19 case rates.
How did two states that have taken such divergent turns come to similar points?
“This is going to be an important question that we must ask ourselves: which public health measures have really been the most effective, and which have had a negligible effect or have turned against them through clandestine driving behavior?” said Amesh Adalja, senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Although research has found that obscure the mandates and limitations of group activities such as indoor dining can help slow the spread of the coronavirus, states with tighter government-imposed restrictions have not always fared better than those that do not. do not have any.
California and Florida both have a COVID-19 case rate of around 8,900 per 100,000 population since the start of the pandemic, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the two rank in the middle of the states for COVID-19 death rates – Florida was 27th on Friday; California was 28th.
Connecticut and South Dakota are another example. Both rank among the 10 worst states for COVID-19-related death rates. Yet Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, a Democrat, has imposed numerous statewide restrictions over the past year after an early rise in the number of deaths, while South Dakota Governor Republican Kristi Noem has not issued a warrant as virus deaths soared in the fall.
While Lamont ordered quarantines for some out-of-state visitors, Noem launched a $ 5 million tourism advertising campaign and welcomed people to a huge motorcycle rally, which some health experts say has spread the coronavirus. throughout the Midwest.
Both say their approach is the best.
“Even in the event of a pandemic, public health policy must take into account the economic and social well-being of people,” Noem said at a recent conservative convention.
Lamont recently announced that it is lifting capacity limits at retail stores, restaurants and other facilities effective March 19. But bars that don’t serve food will remain closed and a mask warrant will continue.
“It’s not Texas. It’s not Mississippi. It’s Connecticut, ”Lamont said, referring to other states that recently lifted mask warrants.
“We find what works is the wearing of masks, social distancing and vaccinations,” he said.
As new cases of COVID-19 decline Nationally, governors in more than half of the states have taken action in the past two weeks to end or ease coronavirus restrictions, according to an Associated Press tally. Some capacity limits ended Friday in Maryland and Oklahoma. Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Wyoming are easing restrictions in the coming week.
In almost all cases, governors have praised their approach to the pandemic, while critics accused them of being too strict or too lax.
California’s slow reopening is expected to gain momentum in April. But California Republicans are helping organize a recall effort against Newsom that has drawn nearly 2 million petition signatures from people frustrated with its enduring limits on businesses, church gatherings and people’s activities. It also faces intense pressure on public school closings and the freezing pace of their reopening.
Newson asserted that California is a leader in the fight against the virus while delivering his state-of-the-state address last week from Dodger Stadium, where empty seats roughly equaled the state’s 55,000 COVID-19 deaths.
“From the early days of this pandemic, California trusted science and data, and we have met the present moment,” Newsom said.
He added: “We are not going to change course just because of a few naysayers and fans.”
In his own discourse on the State of the StateDeSantis said Florida is in better shape than others because its businesses and schools are open. Florida’s unemployment rate was below the national average and significantly lower than California’s earlier this year.
“While so many other states have continued to lock people up over those many months, Florida has uplifted people,” DeSantis said.
Determining which approach is best is more complicated than just looking at statewide policies and overall case rates.
Like Florida, Missouri did not have a statewide mask mandate, ended trade restrictions last June, and has a cumulative COVID-19 death rate similar to California. With no statewide orders, many of the larger cities in Florida and Missouri have imposed their own mask requirements and trade restrictions. In Missouri, that meant that about half of the population was still under masked warrants.
Republican Gov. Mike Parson touted “a balanced approach” to the pandemic that has left many public health decisions to local authorities and allowed Missouri’s economy “to become strong again.” New cases of COVID-19 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 heard Parson’s call to voluntarily mask when Missouri coronavirus cases soared last fall to some of the highest levels in the country.
Public health experts said individual choices could help explain similar results in some states with loose or strict orders from the governor.
Some people were intentionally “more vigilant in states with more flexible guidelines,” said Thomas Tsai, assistant professor at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Yet in states with more government mandates, “people generally in public wore masks and followed guidelines, but in private they let their guard down and were less vigilant,” he said.
Imposing strict measures, such as banning families from visiting grandparents and friends to get together, is like taking an abstinence-only approach to tackling drug use and sexually transmitted diseases, Adalja said. , Johns Hopkins University.
Some will comply. But other “people are going to do these activities anyway,” he said.
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David A. Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri. Associated Press editors Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Florida; Stephen Groves in Pierre, South Dakota; Susan Haigh in Norwich, Connecticut; and Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento, Calif., contributed to this story.
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