Flo-riding high on success versus lockdown states!

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis came in for a thorough bashing in the media and from other government officials when he ended all Covid restrictions in his state towards the end of September last year. All businesses were allowed to reopen, the mask mandate was lifted and any outstanding penalties against individuals who had been fined for violating restrictions were suspended.

Was he mad? Was he recklessly endangering lives for some personal political motive? Remember, at the same time, California and New York were tightening the bolts on their lockdown hatches.

Well, here's what happened between the end of September and the end of January in those three states:

Screenshots from The Highwire, 4.3.21

In both cases per million and hospitalisations per million, Florida did demonstrably better. Why? Maybe lower levels of stress and higher doses of clean oxygen and joyful, free interaction with other human beings boosted everyone's immune system - I don't know, but the predicted disaster DeSantis was accused of inviting certainly never materialised.

And in a state with more than its fair share of older people, while you might expect Covid to have a particularly deep impact, look at what happened over the 5 months to mid-February:

Let's stop this lockdown and masking nonsense. Yes, there's clearly something killing and injuring some people, but with well over 90% of the UK population untouched by this 'highly contagious, life-threatening' virus after a year of it circulating the globe, it's surely time to stop running and hiding and remember that we all have an immune system. One that's been dealing perfectly well with coronaviruses all our lives.