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Florida now has America's lowest COVID rate. Does Ron DeSantis deserve credit?
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... the state with the fewest daily COVID cases per capita is the same one that recently had more than any other: Florida.
It’s been quite the reversal. In mid-August, Florida was averaging about 25,000 new cases a day, or about 116 for every 100,000 residents. That was the worst rate in the U.S. — and one of the worst in the world. Awash in the hypercontagious Delta variant, the Sunshine State became one of the epicenters of the global pandemic.
During the past two months, however, Florida’s daily average has plummeted by more than 90 percent, to about 1,700 cases, or eight for every 100,000 residents. That’s roughly half of California’s current COVID rate and less than a quarter of Vermont’s. Hawaii (with nine cases for every 100,000 residents) is the only other state in single digits.
But don’t congratulate Florida just yet. ...
Did DeSantis “do” anything to improve Florida’s COVID numbers? And does the state’s 180-degree turn somehow prove that more cautious policies “provide no benefits”?
The answer is no.
It’s doubtful even DeSantis himself would claim he’s the reason Florida is recording so many fewer COVID cases today than in August. The virus, we’ve known for some time, comes in waves — waves that ascend, peak and ultimately recede on a remarkably consistent timeline.
According to the New York Times’s David Leonhardt, “Covid has often followed a regular — if mysterious — cycle. In one country after another, the number of new cases has often surged for roughly two months before starting to fall.” And “the Delta variant, despite its intense contagiousness, has followed this pattern.”
Florida is no exception: Cases started rising there in late June and started falling in late August — right on schedule. Likewise, all the states where COVID cases have fallen the most during the past two weeks — Tennessee, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Kentucky, North Carolina — are states that endured huge peaks in mid-September. And the higher the peak — the more people recently infected — the sharper the descent. ...
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