Has Florida done better than California in fighting COVID-19? Here are the facts

Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stood out for their contrasting responses to the outbreak.

Newsom, a Democrat, quickly moved to shut down economic activity.

DeSantis, a Republican, was among the first to reopen his state.

The contrast has spurred debate among commenters on Newsom’s COVID-19 press conference videos, where some ask why California hospitals are full despite the state’s lockdowns.

Looser restrictions in the Sunshine State mean Floridians can carry on with life more closely resembling pre-pandemic times. They can drink at bars and work out at the gym.

Large swaths of California are still subject to stay-at-home orders. And while all four Walt Disney World parks are open in Florida, California’s Disneyland remains closed.

Here are the facts: Florida’s death rate is higher. California’s unemployment rate is 45th among the states, while Florida’s is 31st.

Experts, however, say those statistics alone don’t tell the whole story.

California versus Florida

On March 19, Newsom became the first U.S. governor to hand down a widespread stay-at-home order. Three months later, he issued a statewide mask mandate. As intensive care units became overwhelmed this winter, Newsom issued new stay-at-home orders for most of the state’s residents in an effort to bring viral transmission rates down.

Newsom promised from the start of the pandemic that his government would treat the virus as a serious threat and not shy from imposing unpopular restrictions his team of public health advisers believed necessary to curb viral spread.

“If we’re to be criticized at this moment, let us be criticized for taking this moment seriously,” Newsom said in March when he announced the state’s first stay-at-home order. “Let us be criticized for going full force and meeting this virus head on.”

In Florida, DeSantis consistently downplayed the threat of the virus and pushed forward with his goal to reopen the state throughout the pandemic: allowing businesses, nursing homes and schools to end restrictions as cases continue to climb.

In September, DeSantis announced the state would allow bars and restaurants to operate at full capacity. The order overrode any local ordinances that might have tried to keep businesses closed due to COVID-19.

Some in November worried that such a strategy could triple the state’s coronavirus deaths, and Florida’s COVID-19 death rate now is significantly higher than California’s.

Deaths and transmission

In California, an average of 78 people out of every 100,000 have died from the disease since the start of 2020 according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Florida, 108 people out of every 100,000 have died.

It’s important to keep in mind, however, that Florida has an older population than California, said Brad Pollock, associate dean for Public Health Sciences at the UC Davis School of Medicine. Because COVID-19 is more deadly for older people, states with older populations can expect to see higher death rates.

Unemployment and economy

With 8.2% unemployment, California ranks 45th in the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Florida has the 31st worst unemployment rate, at 6.2%.

An analysis of the economic toll from COVID-19 by state by the University of New Hampshire found both states are hard-hit, but that California has fared worse in the metrics it tracks. The analysis found that California lost 8% of jobs from February to November last year, while Florida lost 5.3%.

The analysis also found that California’s gross domestic product, a measure of overall economic activity, dropped 3.7%, while Florida’s dropped 2.8%.

Coronavirus transmission

Test positivity rates measure the percentage of tests that come back positive, and are considered to be a good measure of viral spread. The World Health Organization has pointed to a 5% positivity rate as the threshold for when a region can safely allow some reopening of nonessential businesses.

On Jan. 19, California’s seven-day average positivity rate was 10.6%, with 898.5 tests administered per 100,000 people. Florida’s positivity rate was 10.9%, with 541.5 tests per 100,000 people, according to data from Johns Hopkins.

Researchers warn, however, that a comparison of positivity rates between states may not be apples to apples, because there is no national standard for testing and states may conduct it differently.

Florida’s own reporting of positivity rates is often lower, fueling perception that the state is performing better.

Johns Hopkins gets its data from The COVID Tracking Project, and calculates positivity rates on a rolling seven-day average of available data from states. Hopkins’ method divides the number of people who test positive by either unique people, encounters, or tests.

Florida has been criticized for basing public policy decisions on a controversial method of calculating the positivity rate, which excludes repeat positive tests but includes repeat negative tests. The method tends to drive rates lower than other methods, thus giving the appearance of lower spread.

Tourism and high-density housing

Both states are large, and effects of the pandemic vary from region to region within the same state, Pollock said. For example, while the Sacramento region is seeing promising improvement in recent days, Los Angeles has become one of the worst hotspots in the country.

Both states also have factors outside politicians’ control that made them more susceptible to the effects of the pandemic.

Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at Loyola Marymount University, noted that Florida’s economy was likely more susceptible to harm from the pandemic from the start because of its reliance on tourism.

He also noted that the prevalence of high-density housing, where many people share the same space because of California’s housing shortage, has made COVID-19 more likely to spread in the Golden State.

Both Pollock and Sohn said they believe California officials have done a better job responding to the pandemic.

Overall, Pollock said he thinks California officials’ response to the coronavirus is based more on science, while Florida officials’ pandemic decisions are more political.

“I used to live in Florida. I can tell you, I don’t want to be in Florida right now,” he said.

But at some level, political leadership only has so much impact. The outbreak in Los Angeles, for example, is likely exacerbated by dense population and many multi-generational households in the region, factors outside of politicians’ control, Pollock said.

“The epidemic has not been uniform across the country,” he said. “Some of the differences can be attributed to policy-making. Some of them are just bad luck.”

In the end, even if a governor says all the right things and makes all the right rules, the public has to cooperate to successfully bring viral transmission rates down.

That’s part of the reason California, where public officials have done a better job sticking to public health principles in their pandemic response, has still been devastated by the pandemic, said Dr. John Swartzberg, a public health professor emeritus at UC Berkeley.

“What the governor says, and what science tells us, has to be carried out by the individual and by the public. California, because its such a diverse state in so many ways, it has a population of people who refuse to follow public health mandates,” Swartzberg said. “It is important to have good governance, but it’s important to have a population that follows the good governance.”