“I never did draconian orders here like you see in some of these other states where a dad would get arrested for, or get cited for, taking his daughter to the park. That doesn’t work. We’ve never done that.”

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“You go back six weeks, everybody was saying Florida was going to be worse than New York,” DeSantis said. “Obviously, we have a very elderly population. It was constant, people saying that. If you look at what’s happened, that’s not true. You know, New York, for example, has about 25 times the number of fatalities of Florida, even though we have 2 million more people.”

Beaches in the Sunshine State are starting to reopen as the state begins taking steps to get residents back to work in a sensible fashion. DeSantis said days ago that he will use President Trump’s plan to reopen the economy as a “baseline.”

'That doesn't work': Ron DeSantis says Florida is flattening virus curve without ‘draconian orders'

by Andrew Mark Miller | April 21, 2020 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis touted his state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic by pointing
out that the curve appears to be flattening without “draconian orders” like other states have
implemented.

“Right now, as of last night, we had about 730 people statewide in the ICU,” DeSantis told Fox
News Tuesday. “People said our hospitals were going to be overrun. We’ve actually increased
hospital bed space and ICU bed space during the pandemic. So there were fewer beds
available in Florida in February than there are now. So Florida’s flattened the curve. People
have done a great job.”

DeSantis mentioned that other states, including New York, imposed far stricter measures and
didn’t have the same results.

“You go back six weeks, everybody ... was saying Florida was going to be worse than New York,”
DeSantis said. “Obviously, we have a very elderly population. It was constant, people saying
that. If you look at what’s happened, that’s not true. You know, New York, for example, has
about 25 times the number of fatalities of Florida, even though we have 2 million more
people.”

“I never did draconian orders here like you see in some of these other states where a dad
would get arrested for, or get cited for, taking his daughter to the park. That doesn’t work.
We’ve never done that.”

Just over 27,000 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Florida, and 839 people have died.
This death toll is below other highly populated states such as New York, where almost 20,000
people have died from the virus, and California, which has lost over 1,200.

Beaches in the Sunshine State are starting to reopen as the state begins taking steps to get
residents back to work in a sensible fashion.

DeSantis said days ago that he will use President Trump’s plan to reopen the economy as a
“baseline.”

Protesters across the United States have taken to the streets, most notably in Michigan, to
push back against the government imposed stay-at-home orders, which many feel have been
too strict and have lasted too long.