Report: Florida May Have Undercounted Its COVID-19 Deaths by Thousands [View all]

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If you found yourself in Florida at any point in the last 12 months and change, you might have felt like you stepped into a portal to an alternative universe. Last spring, when other parts of the country were already in full-fledged lockdowns, the Sunshine State resisted such measures, not issuing stay-at-home orders until weeks after the World Health Organization had officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. At no point did Florida impose a statewide mask mandate, and in September, Governor Ron DeSantis banned local officials from enforcing their own orders. The state reopened well before most of the nation and, earlier this month, DeSantis “rolled out the red carpet for visitors,” in particular the millions of spring breakers who descended on the area.

All of that might lead one to believe that things are just peachy down South, and that somehow Florida had avoided the virus entirely. Of course, that’s not actually the case at all. After California and Texas, Florida has had the most coronavirus cases since the pandemic began last year, and earlier this month crossed the 2 million mark. In the last week, the number of variant cases doubled to 2,330, while the overall number of new cases has been rising steadily and averaged nearly 5,000 per day. As of March 29, 2021, more than 33,000 people have died in the state. And, according to a new report from Yahoo News, the number may actually be closer to 40,000.

New research published earlier this month in the American Journal of Public Health argues that Florida is undercounting the number of people who died from COVID-19 by thousands of cases, casting new doubt on claims that Gov. Ron DeSantis navigated the coronavirus pandemic successfully…. The impact of the pandemic in Florida “is significantly greater than the official COVID-19 data suggest,” the researchers wrote. They came to that conclusion by comparing the number of estimated deaths for a six-month period in 2020, from March to September, to the actual number of deaths that occurred, a figure known as “excess deaths” because they exceed the estimate.

In the case of Florida, the researchers say, 4,924 excess deaths should have been counted as resulting from COVID-19 but for the most part were ruled as having been caused by something else, thus lowering Florida’s coronavirus fatality count. That’s possible because people who die from COVID-19 often have comorbidities, such as diabetes and asthma. That leaves some discretion for medical examiners, who have sometimes struggled with conflicting science and been subject to political pressures during the pandemic. In Florida, the state’s 25 district medical examiners are directly appointed by the governor. Last spring, the DeSantis administration was accused of trying to keep those medical examiners from releasing complete coronavirus data. (In August, the state said coronavirus deaths no longer required certification from a medical examiner.)

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/03/florida-covid-19-deaths