Opinion: DeSantis 2024?

[GMDino]

(02-24-2021, 08:57 PM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: Did you just compare an entire state to a city?  (I'm honestly not sure, maybe I'm reading this wrong)

His point was that, while Florida has areas that aren't as densely populated, they do have heavily populated cities that make up the majorty of their population.  In order: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, St. Petersberg, Hialeah.  All in the top 100 in the US in terms of most populated cities.


And I've said this point before, but we keep returning to the same comparison. (Florida vs. New York)  I understand OP has mentioned this but this thread has gone for 5 pages, with many posters having different discussions.  So why are we so hung up on only using New York to show Florida's failures?

How about we tackle one of the other 2 dozen states that have fared worse?  Because you can't continue rolling out population density for each and every one of them.

I'll say it again, if Florida's approach was as bad as people have painted out to be, reckless and irresponsible, to the point of their death totals being solely placed on DeSantis' hands in this thread, then they should be way up on the leaderboard in pretty much every Covid related category there is. 

If he/they have done such a terrible job then the numbers should clearly demonstrat that.  But they really don't, do they?  I'm sorry, they just don't.

Fwiw, I'm not a big DeSantis guy, nor would I describe myself as a Republican.  I just think people are going to extreme lengths to paint this dude as a monster, not at all driven by actual data but by hyperpartisan bs.

I did.  At first I was going to look up the state too but this made my point because NYC is the reason those numbers are so high and why closing things down made sense.

The entire state of New York is:

421 people per square mile


New York State has an overall population density of 421 people per square mile, with an area of 47,126 square miles. When most people think of New York, they immediately think of New York City, the largest city in the US. New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the country.

Citing towns on the coast of Florida doesn't come close...except Miami

31,550 persons per square mile
Liberty County has the state's least densely populated urban cores according to this measure (2,495 persons per square mile), whereas Miami-Dade County still has the highest (31,550 persons per square mile).

I couldn't find results just for Miami though I did find that rates are finally starting to drop in Florida.

https://www.wptv.com/coronavirus/states-death-increase-subsides-to-121-from-218-day-before-cases-7-280-vs-6-683



Add in the bad math used and the argument that "staying open" in Florida was better than closing in NYC is moot.

And, again, I'll add that Florida being even close in deaths is awful since they had lead time to prepare and opted to not do that.

Edit to add since it was probably lost in the thread:  Just because DeSantis was an idiot doesn't mean the citizens were.  An older, more vulnerable population probably followed better stay at home and social distancing rules than the governor would have liked to see.  We had a lot of the opposite of that in PA where the "patriots" went out and restaurants stayed open despite everything.