Florida reopens with ‘deliberate and methodical’ plan, experts are wary, and Broward sheriff reveals secret

It’s Monday, May 4, and ready or not, here we go!

But “we will take a very slow and methodical approach.” That was the message from Gov. Ron DeSantis last week as he issued a new executive order allowing for the reopening of most businesses in Florida starting today.

Phase 1 will be “slow, deliberate, methodical” and “for the time-being excludes Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach,’’ DeSantis said, a day after visiting the White House where he gave the president what he wanted to hear: a promise to get Florida back to business by today.

The governor’s reopening news conference began with a prepared speech and a robust expression of empathy for Floridians who are suffering — something that has not been a regular feature of his public appearances — and a personal reference.

“Working parents have had to juggle the new reality of distance learning, all the while trying to put food on the table,’’ he said. “It’s something that my wife Casey and I know too well as our beautiful [newborn] daughter, Mamie, has yet to be held by any of her grandparents.”

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING

Walk and chew gum: In his defense of his Phase 1 plan, the governor avoided any mention of the guidelines used by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that advise a state demonstrate it has the testing, tracing and isolating infrastructure in place to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus before it lifts restrictions. Instead, the governor outlined an approach in which the state will keep working on building its capacity to contain the virus at the same time it is reopening for business.

Lack of systems: So what do public health experts say about all this? Five of the seven experts interviewed by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times said that while growth of the spread of the novel coronavirus has slowed, without a vaccine, it takes just one asymptomatic person to reignite an outbreak and Florida does not have the systems in place to catch it

“It’s not a public health plan. It’s not a medically based plan,’’ said Gregg Gonsalves, epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health “… It’s largely a political document.”

Leslie Beitsch, chair of behavioral sciences and social medicine at Florida State University and former deputy secretary of the Florida Department of Health, said that if the public thinks the state is opening up too soon, they’ll just stay home and “police themselves beyond whatever lifting of government restraints” takes place.

Drivers stayed home: One sign that Floridians have already been policing themselves was the drop in toll road revenue in March. From Feb. 29 to March 27, Florida’s Turnpike saw a nearly 20% drop in traffic volume from the same time last year, another sign that even before DeSantis issued his stay-home order on April 1 people were already doing it.

Little industry guidance: One feature of the governor’s executive order was its lack of detailed, industry-specific guidance, leaving much open to interpretation by individual businesses. That’s not exactly what many of the business executives assembled to advise him on the reopening plan had hoped and it could complicate efforts to seek immunity from liability.

A plan being advanced by St. Petersburg Republican Sen. Jeff Brandes would protect companies that operate within the framework of the governor’s executive order. If someone on the premises gets sick and the business was operating properly, it shouldn’t be hit with a lawsuit.

Testing gaps: Critical to containing the virus is testing, and among the claims the governor touted at the White House was that Florida has enough testing capacity to meet the need to keep people safe. But several public health experts told the Herald those claims are misleading because the state is actually testing at rates below the national average. And also hospitals said they continue to be constrained by supply shortages for testing components such as kits and chemical reagents needed to run the tests.

Less than 2% tested: So how many people in your community have been tested? The Miami Herald analyzed the Department of Health data to see the per capita share of testing in each county and found only 1..8% of Floridians had been tested. Percentages were much lower in rural areas, including counties where nursing homes and prisons have become hot spots for the virus.

WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

Who we’ve lost: In one short month, COVID-19 had killed 1,379 people in Florida as of Sunday, including 400 in Miami-Dade, Broward, Monroe and Palm Beach counties. nurses and sheriff’s deputies, construction workers and chefs, retirees and grandparents. Its youngest victim so far was 27, an Indonesian man off to see the world and provide for his family aboard a cruise ship. The oldest was a 101-year-old woman who loved God and fishing and wasn’t afraid to tell it like it was. The Miami Herald has begun to tell some of their stories. You won’t regret the read.

Broward blockbuster: Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony said Sunday that he kept secret the fact that he killed a man with his father’s revolver at his home in Philadelphia when he was 14 because he was exonerated in juvenile court. The killing has come back to haunt Tony, in a fierce re-election fight with his predecessor Scott Israel, after the Florida Bulldog published a story Saturday detailing the May 1993 shooting and raising questions about what happened.

New rays of sunlight: Florida’s government is learning the world does not stop when it releases data it is collecting about the coronavirus so, slowly, we’re getting more access to many public records we have sought for months.

On Monday, the Department of Health finally released information on the number of residents and staff at nursing homes and assisted living facilities who were infected with COVID-19. The disclosures came the same day the Herald, joined by a coalition of other news outlets, filed suit in Leon County Circuit Court asking a judge to order DeSantis to release the information.

Then, after the governor’s reopening announcement, the dashboard maintained by the Florida Department of Health started disclosing more of the detail it is collecting from local public health units. We now have county detail on emergency department visits for influenza-like illness and emergency department visits for COVID-19-like illness.

Some deaths disclosed: And on Friday, the Florida Department of Health released coronavirus fatalities at long-term care facilities after more than a month of refusing to release the public records. Nursing homes and assisted living facilities have accounted for one in three coronavirus deaths in the state. But, as has been the case throughout the pandemic, the data released Friday didn’t add up. The Miami Herald and other news organizations were forced to demand clarifications and explanations.

When it comes to the dashboard data, it is worth nothing that the state withheld the information until it could show that the trend lines were decreasing. However, the number of cases and the rate of positive cases the state reports are inaccurate at best and under-counted at worst. At least 90% of the tests conducted in Florida are done in private labs which do not report their data daily.

More deaths hidden: The administration continues to shield some important information, however. Last week, 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 has shown a higher death toll than the state’s published count.

The list of coronavirus-related deaths had previously been released in real time by the state Medical Examiners Commission. But earlier this month, after the Times reported that the medical examiners’ death count was 10% higher than the number released by the Florida Department of Health, state officials said the list needed to be reviewed and possibly redacted. Why? They offered no reason. Medical examiners told the paper the goal was to remove cause of death and case descriptions. Without that information, however, the list is meaningless.

As the governor said at a press conference last week when he spoke about the coronavirus: sunlight disinfects.

1 million jobless: Florida has now reported over 1 million unemployed workers, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity said Sunday. And less than one-third have received any payments after weeks of attempts at filing unemployment claims.

The promise of financial relief is such a mess that lawyers have filed at least one class-action lawsuit asking a Tallahassee judge to order the state to immediately pay the unemployment benefits. They’re asking in part to have the suit extended to hundreds of thousands who have waited over a month for their checks.

Political trouble for Trump: Several recent polls have found Trump falling behind former Vice President Joe Biden and struggling to win the trust of voters in his adopted home state. What’s more, the surveys also suggest Trump is losing ground with senior citizens — a conservative-leaning demographic that is most vulnerable to the severest symptoms of COVID-19.

Missed opportunity? The president’s vulnerability may prove to be a missed opportunity for Democrats, some political analysts now say. The party failed to field a candidate to challenge Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a nine-term Cuban-American congressman, and some suggest he could have been vulnerable if a blue wave rises.

GOP keeps ballot advantage: The 1951 law that gives top billing on the Florida ballot to candidates from the current governor’s political party has given GOP candidates an advantage for 20 years. A federal judge overturned the law in November, but the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals last week rejected the ruling.

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