Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday that he was removing COVID restrictions and reopening Florida after attending President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Florida.
What We Know:
- During Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Florida, Trump wished for some normalcy back during this pandemic. “Normal life,” Trump said. “Oh, I love normal life. We want to get back to normal life.” And right on queue, Ron DeSantis granted Trump his wish the next day by announcing Friday that he was canceling COVID restrictions and reopening the state of Florida.
- “We’re not closing anything going forward,” DeSantis said. He also insisted that the state is prepared if cases rise again. With his reopening plan, the people are protected from local governments penalizing them for violating social distancing rules or not wearing any face coverings.
- According to the mayor of Miami, Carlos Gimenez, counties are allowed to impose restrictions but would have to allow businesses and bars to open. And the 11 p.m. curfew that Miami-Dade has can stay in effect. The governor allowed bars to limit their capacity to 50%, but he said that he was not going to get in the way of bars opening to full capacity.
- And while Florida’s reopening news sounds great to some people, it is worrisome considering Florida is a COVID-19 hotspot and the number of cases sits around almost 700,000 while the number of deaths is a little over 14,000.
- “We all desperately want things to return back to normal, but that can’t happen when DeSantis and Trump have no plan to get us out of this public health crisis,” Florida Democratic chairwoman Terri Rizzo said.
Before this new reopening plan, DeSantis did take measures in preventing the spread of the virus by closing bars and nightclubs, amusement parks, and restricted restaurants to takeout only. With Florida reopening, there’s a possibility more jobs will be available for those who became unemployed when the virus started, but it also poses serious health risks.
