Going it alone isn’t a Covid strategy, just ask Florida

Mary Ellen Klas, Tribune News Service

As we mark the fourth anniversary of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s past time the federal government require uniform public health data and transparency standards at the state level — both to reestablish public trust and to avoid the dangerous spread of misinformation during the next deadly outbreak.  One of the enduring lessons of the pandemic is that politics reigned over public health. Rather than asserting leadership at the federal level, former President Donald Trump left most of the decisions to the states.

The absence of a coherent federal response meant state public health strategies varied widely. Some state and local officials manipulated data to fit their own narratives and the resulting mish-mash of policies and advice given to residents — including misinformation — created mistrust among the public and allowed conspiracy theories to thrive.

No state better demonstrates the damage that can come when leaders put politics ahead of public health than Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis was so determined to boost Trump’s reelection campaign in the spring of 2020 that he kept residents in the dark about evidence that the virus was spreading because it contradicted the president’s claims that things were getting better.  While many states released information to the public on the number of COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the early days of the pandemic, Florida only provided data that presented its outbreak in the most favorable light. The Florida Department of Health withheld data on nursing home deaths, and infection rates in schools and daycare centers. It ordered medical examiners to block the release of information on COVID-related deaths. News organizations had to file several lawsuits before the state released information on COVID cases and deaths in longterm care facilities and state prisons. Records that were released by the Florida health department were often incomplete or changed without explanation. One public health expert considered the state data so misleading, he built his own Florida COVID-19 Dashboard, using numbers augmented by federal data.

As DeSantis downplayed the surge in coronavirus cases in the summer of 2020, he used the weight of his office to counterprogram the narrative emerging on the ground. He overruled local government shutdown ordinances. He directed the state to spend $1 million on hydroxychloroquine, the discredited treatment advocated by Trump. DeSantis’ communications team leaked data to a local blogger who tried to cast doubt on Florida’s COVID death count by suggesting that some people died with COVID, but not from COVID, a meaningless distinction. Finally, 10 days before the Nov. 3 general election, the state stopped including backlogged deaths in its daily counts, artificially lowering the numbers to match the governor’s upbeat narrative. The repercussions of having no consistent state standards was also demonstrated by the partisan handling of the COVID vaccines. DeSantis hired a state surgeon general who openly questioned the efficacy of the vaccines and recommended against boosters. He pushed legislation to ban mask and vaccine mandates in schools and businesses and penalized those that didn’t comply. By March 2023, Florida had the third highest COVID mortality rate in the nation. DeSantis bragged about his handling of the crisis during his failed presidential campaign, claiming it was an example for the rest of the country, but he conveniently avoided any mention of the state’s higher than average death rate.  The explosion of misinformation and conspiracy theories also had a direct impact on public health. Some states made policy decisions based on data patterns that emerged from the disease, while far too often decisions were based on politics and the polarized tribalism that has come to represent America today.

Researchers found many Republican governors downplayed the impact of the virus and were more likely to be against mask and vaccine mandates. They found a strong correlation between political parties and COVID death rates, including one study where mortality was 43 percent higher for Republican voters, once vaccines were available. And a 2021 analysis by NPR found that people in counties that voted heavily for Trump in 2020 had much lower vaccination rates and were “nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19” than those in pro-Biden counties. To be sure, there were Democratic governors who also manipulated data. Then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo faced intense scrutiny and criticism after his administration was accused of downplaying the number of COVID deaths in the state’s nursing homes. If the public is to comply with government guidelines, it must trust that the information it’s being given is accurate. A government that is transparent in releasing information and data allows the public to hold it accountable. That builds more trust in government and more citizen involvement. It’s common sense.