On 14 February, Dr. Anthony Fauci, now President Biden’s chief medical advisor, stated on ABC’s “This Week” that schools in the U.S. shouldn’t reopen until Congress passes additional safety features. Fauci said, “I think that schools need more resources and that’s the reason the national relief act we’re talking about getting passed… We need that. The schools need more resources.”
But, as the media source Blaze.com reported, Florida, with its children back in school since September and with no significant statewide lockdown restrictions compared to most other states, has one of the lowest per capita death rates from COVID-19.
Blaze.com also noted that Florida’s relatively low per-capita death rate comes despite the fact it has the second-highest percentage rate of senior citizens who are the most vulnerable to the virus.
According to data from CDC, “Florida has the nation’s third-largest population, but the 16th lowest increase in “all-cause deaths.” The only states with fewer “excess deaths” last year were mostly those with much smaller populations.
The fact remains that Florida, a popular winter vacation destination, particularly among seniors, and with one of the country’s most relaxed attitudes regarding lockdowns and masks, has a better track record against COVID than most other states.
And, as the data proves, seniors are the most susceptible to dying from the coronavirus.
The article compares Florida’s success with California where Governor Gavin Newsom imposed the first lockdown in America, which was one of the nation’s strictest lockdowns and mandatory mask, social distancing, and other COVID War orders.
Indeed, last June, Microsoft News reported that Newsom’s order:
“Applies to all Californians in indoor spaces, healthcare settings, on public transportation and rideshare vehicles, and at workplaces that are visited by the public or where food is prepared for sale or distribution. Masks will also be required outdoors where people cannot maintain a distance of six feet from each other.”
It was only in late January that Newsom rescinded his “stay at home” order, insisting that the timing had nothing to do with the recent push by citizen groups to recall him.
Yet, while children in Florida are back in school, avoiding the massive mental health afflictions suffered by those in states where they are being forced to learn remotely, California has only 5 percent of its children back in school.
Numbers Don’t Lie
A further comparison of the percentage of seniors who are dying shows that in 2020, while Florida had 474 COVID deaths per 100,000, California seniors suffered 573 per 100,000.
According to the COVID Tracking Project, as of 19 February, “California has the most COVID-19 patients hospitalized in the U.S.,” which they report is about twice as many as Florida.
The severe damage caused by prolonged lockdowns of schools in states such as California was revealed in a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on 12 November. The study stated,
“United States primary school closures during the 2020 pandemic affected millions of children, with little understanding of the potential health outcomes associated with educational disruption.”
The report also found that “these consequences are especially dire for young children. There is little reason to believe that virtual learning environments can be effective for primary school–aged children.”
As the Blaze.com article noted, the JAMA study “estimated a cumulative loss of 5.53 million life-years from this generation of children due to lost educational attainment.”
Still, most schools remain closed despite data now known showing, according to the JAMA report, “Young children (<10 years) appear less likely to serve as vectors for COVID-19 transmission.”
In addition to the data showing seniors and schoolchildren faring much better in Florida than California, which was locked down for most of 2020, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in 2020, California’s unemployment rate was 30 percent higher than Florida’s.
