During the covid pandemic Republican Governor Ron DeSantis gained national coverage keeping the state open. I am interested in different perspectives on handling the pandemic, so the Florida approach was to open earlier than the other states even though there was increased rates of infection and death to certain groups within the community.

What annoyed me was when DeSantis told the students at the press conference at the University of South Florida to take their masks off and stop with theatre as masks don’t do anything anyway. The students under pressure removed their masks, but this leads me to this question, what is US freedom? If the students were free, why would they need to be told to remove their masks in a pandemic? Freedom is making your own choices, DeSantis just removed the very freedoms the Americans bang on about.

Florida was a state that opened early, so I am very interested in looking at the performance of that state from a perspective of were Florida’s death rates higher than other states? A major US study found that masks and social distancing drove down infection rates. However, masks and social distancing did not affect death rates as much as expected. Instead, factors such as population age, general health and wellbeing, race, poverty, health care access and vaccination were the decisive factors in reducing death rates.

So Florida’s older less healthy population was harder hit than other states, that would make sense based on the general population trends as Florida has the reputation as the retirement state. Interestingly, education rates were listed in the report as affecting death rates, I would like to know why. Regardless, people should not be pressured to remove masks for a political television moment, respect these people’s freedom to choose and wear masks if they want to even if it doesn’t look good on your press conference.