May: “We succeeded.”
June: “The virus doesn’t just disappear.”
Ron DeSantis vs. Ron DeSantis before and after Florida coronavirus cases surge at new records.
June: “The virus doesn’t just disappear.”
Ron DeSantis vs. Ron DeSantis before and after Florida coronavirus cases surge at new records.
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00:00We've succeeded, and I think that people just don't want to recognize it because it challenges
00:05their narrative, it challenges their assumption.
00:08It seemed like that as we got into kind of the end of May, beginning of June, COVID fell
00:14out of the news.
00:15People were focusing on a lot of the demonstrations, all these other things.
00:18And I think folks just assumed, hey, maybe this is gone.
00:21It's not gone.
00:22We knew that from the beginning.
00:24It's not the way these things work.
00:25You got a lot of people in your profession who waxed poetically for weeks and weeks
00:30about how Florida was going to be just like New York.
00:33Wait two weeks, Florida's going to be next.
00:35Just like Italy, wait two weeks.
00:36Well, hell, we're eight weeks away from that, and it hasn't happened.
00:40If I honestly thought it would end tomorrow, I would do cartwheels and I would tell people
00:45that.
00:46But I said from the beginning, even as we got through that first peak, we moved into
00:50the end of April and May, that the virus doesn't just disappear.
00:55Even when it's down, to the extent people thought maybe it comes back in the fall, there's
01:00still prevalence, I think, throughout the whole year.
01:03And that's just the reality.
01:04So we're going to have to live with that.
01:07I think Northeast Florida has really done well.
01:10A lot of people were saying, what is that now, over a month ago, month and a half ago,
01:14how everything was going to be so bad here.
01:16Never happened.
01:17And no one talks about it anymore.
01:19It's like you come through, you do a drive-by smear from out of state, and then you just
01:23move on.
01:24Well, I don't forget that.
01:26Now, obviously, as we got into May and we had a very low caseload, low positivity, got
01:33into June, COVID kind of fell off the headlines.
01:37I think people were naturally just wanting to more get back into a normal swing of things.
01:41Well, now you still want to be vigilant, particularly with a lot of younger carriers out there.
01:47People are going back to restaurants and stores right now.
01:50Would you personally feel safe taking your wife to a restaurant or a coffee shop?
01:54Absolutely.
01:55And here's the thing.
01:56Throughout this whole time, people have been going to Costco.
02:00They've been going to the grocery store.
02:01They've been doing, it's not like people have not been doing anything.
02:04So I think sitting, particularly, we really want to promote outdoor, because I think the
02:10data is very clear about the transmission being more significant in indoor and closed
02:16environments.
02:17I would absolutely go, and I'd have no problem doing it.
02:21Now, I have not been, I have not done a lot of shopping during this time period, and my
02:25wife has not, just because we obviously have had our hands full.
02:28But I'd have no problem whatsoever doing that right now.
02:32You're seeing cases across the entire Sunbelt, and I'm not exactly sure why you're seeing
02:38it there as opposed to other places.
02:40But one of the things that I think is a factor is as it gets warmer in Florida, people want
02:45to beat the heat.
02:46They want to go inside.
02:47They want to do air conditioning.
02:48So if they're having a party or getting together, they're much more likely to be doing that
02:52indoors, in the AC, in a closed space.
02:57That is going to increase the risk of transmission of the coronavirus.
03:02We did not go the way of Italy.
03:04We did not go the way of New York City.
03:07In fact, we've done much, much better than either of those places.
03:11When you flatten the curve, you will have the infections spread out longer.
03:17If you don't flatten the curve, it goes up, and then it kind of crashes down.
03:20So flatter curve means you're still going to have cases.
03:23We said that from the beginning, that the virus isn't gone.