This will be the distribution of vaccines in Florida 3:05
(CNN) -
Warning signs of a spike in covid-19 contagion have been red in Florida this fall.
Coronavirus hospitalizations have increased since November, the test positivity rate is double what it was in early October, and the daily new case count is approaching the peak the state had in July.
But Floridians who depend on Governor Ron DeSantis and his administration hardly know that the pandemic remains a serious danger.
The Florida Department of Health social media has barely mentioned COVID-19 in months.
Only this week they broke the silence to celebrate the arrival of the first vaccines.
DeSantis has consistently downplayed the severity of the pandemic, following the lead of President Donald Trump in criticizing orders to wear masks and restrictions on businesses.
The governor has prevented local governments from applying their own measures to protect residents from the coronavirus and from following the advice of health experts even as DeSantis promoted questionable science, according to CNN interviews with more than a dozen Florida officials and experts. .
Two Florida Department of Health employees told CNN that the agency's former communications director ordered them in late September not to focus on COVID-19 in their public messages.
They said they believed their jobs would be in jeopardy if they didn't follow the instruction.
Florida police raid the home of former covid-19 state data scientist
Man pays overdue bills for 114 families 0:55
"We are putting politics before lives," said one of the health officials, who asked not to be identified to avoid reprisals.
"They are handcuffing us and preventing us from keeping the public properly informed so that they can make informed decisions to protect their lives and the lives of others."
advertising
Governors have become the key figures in the United States in the response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The decisions of individual leaders shape the politics of their states.
As cases have risen across the country, even some Republican governors who previously opposed mask orders or physical distancing rules have changed course.
And Republican leaders in Iowa, North Dakota, Alabama and elsewhere put in place new restrictions as cases in their states spiked.
DeSantis' response and his handling of the coronavirus
DeSantis has so far refused to change course this fall.
His administration has continued to spread misinformation about the pandemic, as investigations by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and other state outlets have previously discovered.
To the frustration of local mayors on both sides, it continues to prohibit cities and counties from enforcing mask mandates or setting stricter capacity limits on businesses and restaurants.
"I stopped talking to the governor a while ago," said Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez, a registered Republican, who said his calls and letters to DeSantis asking for more flexibility have gone unanswered for months.
"It is a big city here, but I feel like sometimes we have been left alone."
DeSantis's office did not respond to CNN's questions about the state's handling of the pandemic or make the governor available for an interview.
The health department did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
In public statements, DeSantis has argued that the state's response focused on protecting the elderly and vulnerable while keeping businesses open.
Florida police raid the home of former covid-19 state data scientist
Florida reached one million cases of covid-19 3:26
More than 1.1 million Floridians have tested positive for COVID-19 so far, about 5% of the state's population.
Florida is the 26th highest state for confirmed cases per capita, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, putting it in the middle of the pack for the country.
On Thursday, the state reported its highest daily count of new cases since July.
Some parts of the state have been hit harder than others: Miami-Dade County, Florida's largest urban center, has the highest per capita rate of confirmed coronavirus cases of any of the 50 most populous counties in the US. According to a CNN analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.
As a close ally of President Trump, DeSantis appears to have modeled his approach to the pandemic on the president's denial strategy.
And in the key state, some observers see the governor's unwillingness to deliver bad news in the months leading up to the election as a political gift to Trump.
"I think this governor is following absolutely everything the president says and does, and I think he thinks this will help him get elected," said St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman, a Democrat.
"The lack of leadership is really remarkable."
President Donald Trump greets Governor DeSantis at a 2018 rally in Tampa, Florida.
Health officials say they were told to avoid talking about covid
Unlike many states, Florida counties do not have their own independent health agencies.
Instead, county health offices are local state department offices, funded through a combination of state and county revenue.
That means the state Department of Health, and ultimately DeSantis, have even more direct power to shape public health messages and the pandemic response that affect the state.
The two Health Department employees who told CNN they felt compelled to share more information with the public said Alberto Moscoso, the department's former communications director, instructed county health spokespersons not to focus on covid. -19 during a conference call in late September.
Instead, they said, he urged them to practice "blue sky" messaging, a public relations tactic that prioritizes good news to distract attention from crises.
The Health Department's Twitter account was an example of how that messaging strategy works.
In the first months of the pandemic, the Department of Health had a prolific presence on social media: between March and August, the department's account sent an average of 139 tweets per month that included the words "coronavirus," "covid," or "Pandemic": more than four a day.
But that changed dramatically after DeSantis signed the order that kicked off Florida's final phase of reopening on Sept. 25.
As of that day, the state Health Department stopped sending tweets mentioning the virus almost entirely.
Instead, he shared messages on topics such as the dangers of flood infections, the importance of detecting hearing loss in newborns, and tips on how to safely thaw a turkey.
The Twitter account did not mention how daily counts of recently confirmed coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths were increasing, although it did retweet a handful of tweets from DeSantis promoting the upcoming vaccines, and also posted an image and link to a sheet of covid-19 safety tips.
* Until December 14, 2020.
Tweets and retweets of covid-19 include those that contain “Covid-19”, “covid”, “coronavirus” or “pandemic” in the text of the tweet.
Source: CNN analysis of @HealthyFla tweets
Graphic: Curt Merrill and Casey Tolan, CNN.
The covid message drought lasted until the state's triumphant announcement this week that the first doses of the covid-19 vaccine were being administered.
The department's Facebook page saw a similar shortage of covid messages in recent months.
And on the home page of the department's website, the ads promoted diabetes awareness month and flu shots, while a message about covid was relegated to a small banner at the top of the page, according to Recent snapshots captured by the Wayback Machine from the Internet Archive.
Caught between instructions from central office and providing accurate information during the biggest public health crisis in a generation, the two health officials told CNN they felt they were walking a tightrope.
"It's difficult, but it's doable," said one of the health department employees.
"Sometimes, I ask my partner organizations to use my messages or publish them through interviews with experts… we all just discover different ways to get around the rules."
The other health official said it was frustrating to see misinformation about the pandemic go viral and they couldn't respond with facts.
"We could have saved many more lives if we had been allowed to do our job," the official said.
Still, other employees working at county health offices insisted they had not experienced any kind of state directive preventing them from talking about covid, or said it made sense for state officials to establish standardized messages.
A healthcare worker prepares to perform a nasal swab sample at a rapid Covid-19 testing site in Barnett Park in Orlando
.
"I never felt asked or pressured about what information we could share with the public about covid," said Melissa Watts, public information officer for the Pasco County branch of the state Department of Health.
“There was no interaction about what we could or could not tweet.
I shared whatever information I considered appropriate to do my job.
State and county governments continued to release information and data on covid in recent months.
The state Department of Health published a daily press release on the latest virus figures and updated an online panel with a variety of statistics and maps on the pandemic.
Moscoso, the communications director whom the two employees said had issued the order to remain silent on covid, left the department on November 6 and did not respond to requests for comment.
The Sun-Sentinel has also reported allegations by health officials that they were gagged by the former communications director.
DeSantis and the health department did not respond to questions from CNN about the officials' claims.
Fred Piccolo, the governor's spokesman, told the Sun-Sentinel that "messages on prevention and covid-19 have reached saturation," arguing that Floridians are already doing everything they can to stop the spread of the virus.
But experts said they were surprised by the department's lack of covid messages.
Dr. Marissa Levine, a professor of public health at the University of South Florida and a former Virginia state health commissioner, called it "very worrying."
"Denial can be our biggest challenge," Levine said.
"This is a really important time to post messages across all media that are consistent and consistent."
Managing information on deaths from covid-19 in Florida
The delays in the timing of Florida reporting coronavirus deaths have also raised questions about the state's transparency about the severity of the pandemic in the lead up to Election Day.
There is often a delay between someone's death from COVID-19 and their death that appears in Florida's public statistics.
But from late October to mid-November, the state saw a significant decline in reports of deaths that had taken place more than a month earlier, according to estimates compiled by USF health professor Jason Salemi, a trend that reported for the first time The Sun-Sentinel.
Florida approaches 1 million infections 2:50
For most of the fall, the state reported dozens or hundreds of these cumulative deaths each week.
But from October 24 to November 7, the state reported a total of just four deaths that had taken place more than a month earlier.
The reported decrease in deaths was not because the state had caught up with its delays;
it again reported on dozens of months' deaths in the week after Election Day and in the weeks that followed.
The temporary decline painted a more optimistic picture of the pandemic in Florida as voters went to the polls.
It is unclear if there was any political motivation behind the change and the health department did not respond to questions about the data.
On October 21, a few days before the drop in backlogs began, the department said it would take a closer look at reported covid deaths to make sure they were caused by the virus.
That change in procedures could have caused a drop in data, Salemi said.
"It could be that they are taking more time with certain deaths," Salemi told CNN.
"This for me is a kind of black box."
DeSantis prevents mayors from setting stricter rules
During the course of the pandemic, DeSantis has followed in Trump's footsteps by criticizing policies designed to slow the spread of the virus, such as mandates to wear masks and restrictions on restaurants and bars.
And as cases have risen this fall, he has refused to allow cities to set stricter rules than the state's, leaving local mayors feeling helpless.
A CNN review of DeSantis' public statements about covid over the past nine months found that he has been quick to comment on vaccines or therapies, but slow to talk about rising case rates or methods to curb the disease. spread.
Almost from the beginning of the crisis, DeSantis denounced what he called "draconian and arbitrary restrictions that have nothing to do with public health" in other states of the country.
In a Fox News interview in mid-May, he argued that "some of these things ... have turned into social control" and "absolutely got out of control."
He almost declared victory over the virus at a press conference on May 20, comparing Florida to New York and boasting that "we have a lower death rate than in the Acela corridor, DC, all of us up there ... We've done it and I think people just don't want to acknowledge it.
However, the following month, the cases began to increase.
While DeSantis urged Floridians to follow physical distancing guidelines, he still found ways to minimize the virus, arguing that the pandemic was primarily affecting younger Floridians who faced much lower death rates than their parents and grandparents.
And he repeated Trump's approach of blaming increasing cases on increased testing and touting unproven drugs like hydroxychloroquine.
In mid-July, daily COVID cases reached a record high of 15,300 and hospitalizations skyrocketed.
Hospitals in Miami-Dade County, the epicenter of the crisis, had to convert normal beds into ICU beds.
And DeSantis had to face reality: He sent nurses and healthcare workers to Miami-Dade and other counties to care for the sick.
After the cases declined in August and September, DeSantis announced on September 25 that it would move the state into reopening "phase three": lifting all state restrictions on businesses, prohibiting local governments from enforcing the mandates of masks with fines and limiting the capacity to limit the capacity of the restaurant and bar.
"Every company has the right to operate," he said at a press conference.
"You can't just say 'no' after six months and just have people squirming in the wind."
Now, two and a half months after the reopening order, cases and hospitalizations are on the rise again, with the average daily cases topping 10,000 this week, not far from the seven-day average in mid-July.
This time, however, DeSantis has been adamant about avoiding new state mandates and preventing local governments from going further.
There will be no "closures, no fines, no school closings" in Florida, DeSantis declared Nov. 30, just days before the state recorded its highest number of new daily cases in more than four months.
"No one is going to lose their job due to a government mandate," he said.
“No one is losing their livelihood or their business.
That is totally off the table.
Local mayors told CNN that the lack of autonomy to set their own policies on issues from masks to bar restrictions had hampered their ability to respond effectively to the pandemic.
Hernandez, the mayor of Hialeah, said that while he also wants to keep businesses open, the best way to do that is with common sense regulations.
Under DeSantis' executive order, the city can fine businesses, but not people who break the rules.
During the summer, "people in public places wore masks because they knew they could be fined," Hernández said.
But now, he said, some people walk in public without covering their faces because they know the government cannot force them to wear a mask.
"I think that's why you see these numbers increasing," Hernández said.
Florida registers an increase in covid-19 infections in young people 2:11
The mayors also said they were puzzled by the lack of communication from the governor and his office, who said they had not even responded to their requests to discuss new policies.
"From the beginning, the communication from the governor's office has been egregious," said Kriseman, the mayor of St. Petersburg.
He said DeSantis's order to reopen the state, and his comments denouncing restrictions, had led to a widespread impression among the public that "masks were no longer required, social distancing was no longer required."
DeSantis's approach "has led to additional cases," he argued.
Still, political observers in the state say DeSantis is unlikely to pay any political price for his handling of the coronavirus.
If anything, Trump's recent Sunshine State victory suggests DeSantis's message was effective, said Steve Vancore, a Florida pollster and political consultant who has worked with candidates and groups from both parties.
"Any negativity about his handling of the coronavirus did not translate to Election Day," Vancore said, adding that the president's three percentage point victory was "as much a victory for DeSantis as it was for Trump."
Experts felt "cheated" by DeSantis
During the pandemic, DeSantis followed the president's lead on another topic: the experts he's listening to.
DeSantis has surrounded himself with commentators who have denied or downplayed the severity of the pandemic, even as his administration has sidelined experts both inside and outside the state government.
In August, DeSantis held a series of events with Dr. Scott Atlas, a California radiologist who served as Trump's adviser, at which Atlas touted the governor's laissez-faire approach to the pandemic, the Sun-Sentinel reported. .
Atlas, who had pioneered a herd immunity strategy widely criticized by most health experts, has been condemned by his own colleagues at Stanford University and resigned from the White House earlier this month.
And in an especially questionable hiring decision, the DeSantis management hired a former Ohio sports blogger and Uber driver who had relayed conspiracy theories about the virus to be a data analyst with a portfolio that included covid-19 work. .
In tweets and sports blog posts, Kyle Lamb had previously claimed that closed masks and zippers don't work, that Covid-19 is no deadlier than the flu, and that the pandemic could be part of a Chinese 'biological war' .
He joined the state's Budget and Policy Office last month, a quote first reported by the Tampa Bay Times.
Lamb declined to comment on this story.
A DeSantis spokesman told the Times that he would not work "exclusively" on issues related to the pandemic and that his work would be reviewed by other staff members.
Meanwhile, the most prominent voices in the state government that had issued early warnings about the pandemic seemed to disappear from public view.
Florida Health Services CEO Dr. Scott Rivkees has largely avoided public messages after he suggested at a press conference in April that physical distancing practices might be necessary for another year.
Rivkees did not respond to an interview request.
And the department has also been reluctant to share its abundant data on how covid is spreading in the state.
At the start of the pandemic, the Miami Herald and other state news organizations had to threaten to sue the state before it released figures on cases in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
Most recently, the Orlando Sentinel sued the governor this month after his office failed to provide reports from the White House coronavirus task force on Florida.
Top scientists at the University of Florida School of Medicine told CNN that deans of public and private medical schools asked the health department to share other data earlier this year, so schools could provide the state government free advanced statistical models and help officials better understand the spread of covid-19.
During an initial conference call, health department officials were receptive to the idea, said Thomas Unnasch, an infectious disease expert at USF.
But the effort was soon hit by red tape: The Health Department told the group that they couldn't access the data unless they submitted a separate application for each modeling project the scientists wanted to do, Unnasch said.
The department's response was "basically walk slow through everything," Unnasch said.
"It was, 'Well, thanks, but we're really not interested in collaborating with you."
"It was like they disappeared after a date," he said.
Plans to make a partnership were soon unraveled.
If the health department had opened their data to experts, the professors said they could have determined whether Floridians were being diagnosed consistently across the state, identified any gaps in the data and helped fix them, and performed sophisticated mapping. the situation of virus spread.
Dr. Jay Wolfson, senior associate dean for health policy and practice at USF, told CNN that he hoped the agency would enjoy getting help calculating the numbers.
He said he did not understand why the department was reluctant to partner with the experts.
The pandemic was "like a tidal wave coming towards us," Wolfson said, and instead of rushing to higher ground, "they told us to swim."
- CNN's Scott Glover, Ashley Fantz, Benjamin Naughton and Yahya Abou-Ghazala contributed to this report.
Covid-19 Florida Ron DeSantis