On the surface, tweets about #FloridaMorons and viral photos of packed beaches paint a bad picture.

But when looking at the data, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s approach to this virus has been surprisingly sensible https://trib.al/DyRRAm1 

Florida, DeSantis says, is being guided by “facts, data and science.”

If you take even a cursory look at Florida’s numbers, they tend to bear him out. People 65+ account for 26% of all cases but 83% of the deaths http://trib.al/DyRRAm1 

Florida’s population is about 22 million. That is 9 million more than Pennsylvania and Illinois, and 15 million more than Massachusetts.

Yet those smaller states have 57,000, 78,000 and 78,000 positive cases, respectively. Florida is nearing 40,000 http://trib.al/DyRRAm1 

The most important number, deaths, is even more surprising.

Pennsylvania: 3,700 people have died of Covid-19
Massachusetts: almost 5,000
Illinois: around 3,400
Florida: fewer than 1,800 http://trib.al/DyRRAm1 

The question is why?

One reason it’s hard to understand what’s happening in Florida is that we simply don’t understand enough about the virus and how it works.

Another is that DeSantis’s response to the crisis has been so thoroughly politicized http://trib.al/DyRRAm1 

DeSantis’s critics, who tend to lump him together with Trump, say the governor doesn’t deserve any credit at all.

They credit Florida’s big-city mayors, who imposed relatively strict sheltering-in-place rules, and compliant Floridians http://trib.al/DyRRAm1 

But citizens of Boston, Detroit and New York have been just as compliant if not more so.

Yet each of those cities has suffered more deaths than Miami. Some 20,000 NYC residents have died of Covid-19; the number in Miami-Dade County is fewer than 500 http://trib.al/DyRRAm1 

“When you look at our demographics, we should have been the most devastated state of all,” said scientist Charles Lockwood.

The median age nationally is 38; it’s 42 in Florida. The sunshine state has three times the national average of people over 65 http://trib.al/DyRRAm1 

As Florida gradually reopens over the next several weeks, everyone is going to be watching to see whether cases and deaths surge there.

To be blunt, the partisans in this polarized country will be hoping to be vindicated by the numbers http://trib.al/DyRRAm1 

But that’s such a mindless way of looking at this. If Florida’s death toll continues to fall, it doesn’t necessarily mean that DeSantis took the right approach; it might mean that he was more lucky than good.

It’s a medical mystery, not a political one http://trib.al/DyRRAm1 

And if the numbers start to rise? That doesn’t necessarily mean that DeSantis’s approach was wrong.

With the state’s economy at stake, he would be foolish not to reopen with such a low death toll. Higher numbers will mean that he has to reimpose lockdowns http://trib.al/DyRRAm1 

The notion that there is a blue-state and a red-state way of attacking the virus is absurd.

We should all be rooting for states – from New York to Florida – to recover on their own timeline. Is that really so hard? http://trib.al/DyRRAm1