After a live press conference Wednesday night, Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, announced his plans for a state reopening that he and his experts deem safe and methodical in their reasoning.
Monday, May 4, will be the hallmark for his start of reopening that state and lifting his stay at home order, which will first focus on the reopening of retail spaces and restaurants at about 25% capacity. They will also need to continue to adhere to social distancing guidelines such as maintaining a six feet distance, encouraging the use of face masks and gloves and the washing of hands after every interaction.
Thus far movie theaters, gyms, bars, hair salons and other facilities will remain closed up to an undetermined date. Along with this, counties that have high populations such as Dade, Palm Beach and Broward will remain with the stay at home orders until further notice.
His announcement followed a discussion based upon the use of media and it’s perpetuation upon the fear that it inflicted on citizens: “A lot has been done to promote fear,” DeSantis said. “We haven’t seen an explosion of new cases.”
He continued to discuss how predicted outcomes of the virus’ tolls were incorrect for Florida.
“Everyone in the media was saying Florida was going to be like New York or Italy, and that has not happened,” he said. “We had a tailored and measured approach that not only helped our numbers be way below what anybody predicted but also did less damage to our state going forward.”
DeSantis credits the lack of infection numbers within Florida to the quick action that his office took.
NBC News reported that the day before, Tuesday, Florida had seen a death toll spike of 83 and it was the “biggest spike in daily deaths since the pandemic started.” They also went on to report that the same day that DeSantis gave his conference that there were “350 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed Wednesday,” along with, “47 new deaths.”
Meanwhile, during his press conference, Gov. DeSantis discussed how Florida hospitals were not overrun, that 36.5 percent of ICU beds were empty and reported that 6,300 ventilators were sitting unused.
The Tampa Bay Times reported that “state officials have stopped releasing the list of coronavirus deaths being compiled by Florida’s medical examiners, which has at times shown a higher death toll than the state’s published count”. CNN also made sure to point out that a lack of available testing for citizens to get is also a large issue and concern for those who are opposed to the reopening of in-dining for restaurants and retail stores.
Meanwhile, Gov. DeSantis did lay out a plan for a partial reopening that had a slow pace and determined that there were no certain dates that he could give for the total reopening.
He also pointed out issues for health concerns for those who had issues beyond COVID-19, saying that “As the coronavirus has become the all-encompassing issue, you’re not seeing as many people come to the hospital with stroke symptoms or heart symptoms,’’ DeSantis said, “Now, maybe magically, people just aren’t having heart attacks or any more strokes, but I think part of that is people don’t feel comfortable coming in.”
The most important thing that the Governor left citizens with was that the process for reopening would be slow as he and his team would pay attention to the reports of health professionals. Keep in mind the manners of social distancing, be precautious and try to have the patience for the future.
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