Florida newspaper investigation finds state government misled public on Covid as cases rose

Florida this week became the third US state to record a million coronavirus cases and yet the public there has been misled by state leadership about the extent and dangers of the pandemic, especially in the run-up to the presidential election, an investigation has concluded.

Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration has been engaged in a pattern of spin and concealment about Covid-19 amid the gravest health threat the state has ever faced, according to a South Florida Sun Sentinel investigation.

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According to the newspaper, Republican DeSantis influenced a state administration that “suppressed unfavorable facts, dispensed dangerous misinformation, dismissed public health professionals, and promoted the views of scientific dissenters” who supported the governor’s ambivalent approach to the disease.

DeSantis declined to be interviewed, the Sun Sentinel said, but it noted he told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight earlier this week that the media’s criticism of his approach was “all political”.

The investigation found that the Florida department of health’s county-level spokespeople stopped issuing public statements about Covid-19 between September and the 3 November election.

And earlier on in the pandemic state leaders did not release details about the earliest cases in Florida and denied the virus was spreading person to person, despite the fact that coronavirus is highly contagious.

The attitude struck by state leadership, mimicking the kind of dismissive approach of Donald Trump, the US president to whom DeSantis is a loyalist, has helped foster a public culture in which many defiantly shun face masks and readily gather in crowded bars and parties, the newspaper said, contrary to federal public health guidelines.

The Sun Sentinel said its extensive reporting is based on interviews with scientists, doctors, politicians and officials, and reviewing thousands of pages of documents.

Misinformation has included the governor’s spokesman claiming on Twitter that coronavirus was less deadly than the flu, while also citing statistics in a way that played down the toll of the virus.

As Florida’s case total approached 900,000 before the election, Dan Gelber, mayor of Miami Beach, said at a press event, while calling for a statewide mask mandate: “It’s become pretty clear that what Florida is doing right now isn’t working. It’s unmistakably clear that Florida’s approach to managing this pandemic is failing pretty horribly.”

He said that lines to get tested were stretching around the block in his community. “The state has rolled back its testing facilities … the state needs to take control of this,” he said.

Gelber added that since DeSantis “opened up the economy totally in late September and simultaneously prevented local governments from enforcing individual mask mandates we have seen an enormous surge”.

Fred Piccolo Jr, the governor’s spokesman, told the Sun Sentinel that DeSantis has not been spinning facts and had stuck with a facts-based message that would accomplish the most in saving lives.

“The governor has been consistent since the beginning of the pandemic,” he said. “Wash hands, maintain social distance, wear a mask, etc. But he’s also adapted to the data as it becomes available.”

The investigation alleged that DeSantis had shut leading scientists out of the public dialogue on coronavirus.

In late August DeSantis invited academic Scott Atlas to tour Florida with him and they appeared at events where they talked up the advantages of avoiding imposing social restrictions.

Atlas became the controversial leading coronavirus adviser to Trump as the president edged away from the most senior public health officials such as Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx. Atlas resigned from his White House post earlier this week.

And as the election neared, the Florida department of health cut back on public information about coronavirus and stopped its regular posts on Facebook and Twitter about Covid-19 safety measures.

Florida’s leading university-affiliated experts on infectious diseases have been largely sidelined and bypassed.

“We have over 200 affiliated faculty within this institute,” Glenn Morris, director of the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, told the Sun Sentinel.

“This is what we do for a living. Yet the state has not taken full advantage of that expertise.”