Florida Goes Super-Viral

Florida is now heading directly for a NYC March/April scenario where tens of thousands of daily infections lead to thousands of deaths, and several other states will soon follow.

Florida on Sunday reported a record 15,300 new coronavirus cases, the most by any state in a single day since the pandemic reached the United States.

The staggering number was the result of both increased testing and widespread community transmission that has affected the state’s population centers as well as its rural areas. It shattered the previous highs of 11,694 reported by California last week and 11,571 reported by New York on April 15.

Florida is set to hold the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville next month and has ordered schools to reopen five days a week.

Here are some significant developments:

President Trump on Saturday wore a mask in public for the first time, while visiting wounded service members and health-care workers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Trump has previously shown disdain toward face coverings amid the coronavirus pandemic and refused to wear them. 

Louisiana’s Democratic governor announced a new requirement that most people wear a mask in public. The state’s Republican lawmakers have opposed coronavirus restrictions. 

Walt Disney World in Orlando reopened after having been shuttered for nearly four months, even as Florida continued to report record infections. Testing supplies in the state are running low, and some big labs are taking several days to return results, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said at a news conference. He partly attributed the backlog to testing many asymptomatic people.
Shortly before Florida announced the new cases, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made the rounds on Sunday news talk shows, where she continued to press schools to reopen even as fresh evidence emerged that the United States was failing to control new waves of infection and death.

In an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” DeVos said she would like to see closed schools be the “exception” rather than the norm. “The goal needs to be that kids are learning, full-time, this fall,” she said. “Kids need to get back in the classroom.”

DeVos added on “Fox News Sunday” that the Trump administration was looking at “all the options” for pulling federal funding from schools that don’t open in the fall. “American investment in education is a promise to students and their families,” she said. “If schools aren’t going to reopen … they shouldn’t get the funds.”

So we're right back to where we were around Easter: not enough testing supplies, no political appetite for a lockdown until  it's too late, and a Trump regime actively encouraging more infections and deaths so that the economic numbers don't get worse heading into the election.

Nearly 140,000 Americans have already died from this pandemic, and we could easily see another 140,000 more before the end of the year, and most likely a lot more.

I expect the death toll in Florida will eclipse that of New York by December 31.

Oh, and Texas isn't far behind, either.