Florida vs. California State COVID Data Proves Lockdowns Don't Work

Over the past year, we've had an intriguing COVID experiment taking place in two of America's biggest states: what would happen if one state essentially locked down because of COVID and another state essentially kept things open? All the mainstream media experts have told us that if that happened, the state that didn't lock down would experience a massive death rate from COVID compared to the state that did lock down.

Only that hasn't happened at all, and we have the data to prove it.

For the past year, California has effectively been shut down because of COVID. Most students haven't attended school in a year. No kids sports have been played. Restaurants and bars, gyms, amusement parks, most public facing businesses, all of them have shut down in California to protect people from COVID.

Disneyland has been shut down for over a year in the state.

As a result, the California unemployment rate is 9.3%, and the COVID death rate per a million residents is 1,413.

Meanwhile, Florida hasn't shut down at all, at least not since around May of last year when the COVID restrictions were lifted in the state. All kids have attended schools in person since last summer. All schools and youth sports leagues have played full sports schedules. Businesses have all remained open. Even amusement parks in the state, like Disney World, have remained open. (Full disclosure, I took my family to Florida for the month of May last year and also took my family to a fully open Universal Studios in Orlando for a week around Christmas of last year.)

The result?

Florida has an unemployment rate of 5.1%, and a COVID death rate per a million residents of 1,503.

So Florida's COVID death rate is a bit higher than California's, yes, but when you adjust for the average age of the population, Florida, which has a much larger elderly population than California, has actually outperformed California when it comes to dealing with COVID deaths in the state. The more elderly residents a state has, in general, the higher the danger of COVID deaths. The median age of a person in Florida is 42.4, the fifth highest in the United States, while the median age in California is 37, the eighth youngest in the country. California, therefore, with a much younger population, should have an advantage when it comes to dealing with COVID in the state. It's also worth noting that California's death rate has surged throughout the winter, while Florida's has not. In other words, California may end up passing Florida in COVID deaths before the final tally is complete.

Now this comparison between California and Florida would seem like a massively important data point, perhaps the single most important data point in the entire country when it comes to analyzing the impact of lockdowns on limiting the spread of COVID. After all, we have two of the four largest states in the country adopting fundamentally different responses to COVID. It's hard to design a more perfect experiment. (The COVID death rate for Texas, by the way, which has also adopted far less stringent measures than California, is also fairly similar to the death rate in California. New York, as I've discussed before, which has also adopted stringent lockdowns has been a total disaster, posting what would be the highest COVID death rate in the world if New York was a standalone country). Scientists should be rigorously analyzing the data of California and Texas, and all of our "experts" should be utilizing this data to determine what the appropriate national response to COVID should have been. After all, one of the big advantages of federalism existing in the first place is we have fifty different state laboratories to study. We've effectively had two different state laboratories, separated by an entire continent, to compare the COVID outcome. It was essentially impossible for two states to adopt a more divergent approach than Florida and California.

Yet the outcomes, whether lockdowns were adopted or not, are essentially the same when it comes to the COVID death rate. (Florida, as noted above, is actually better than California when you factor in median resident ages. Indeed, considering the massive overlap between New York and Florida residents, the state of Florida has been far more susceptible to east coast COVID spread than the west coast, where cases have been comparatively minimal. So in addition to having older residents, Florida also has a much greater proximity to New York and New Jersey, which have handled COVID worse than anywhere in the world).

Florida, without shutting down schools or the economy, has managed to vastly outperform California in objective COVID virus metrics. And in the process, Florida has also proven that draconian lockdowns like those implemented in California have not done much at all to actually make California residents safer. In fact, there's a strong argument, based on the data, that California shut down its economy, its schools, its sports, and its entire state for virtually no benefit whatsoever.

So why isn't Florida the number one success story in the country then, and why aren't all lockdowns being immediately ended everywhere in the United States? The Sunshine State has proven you can manage COVID and maintain mostly normal life in the process. It's one of the most stunning success stories in the COVID era anywhere.

Far from being a media punching bag, Florida should be a model for every state's COVID response.

But that isn't the case.

In fact, I'd bet a huge percentage of you are just now seeing this data for the first time, even though it's been readily available for all to see for months.

Why is that?

I'll tell you: Because then the "experts" who have told us we had to shut down for the past year to fight COVID would have to acknowledge that most of their COVID safety protocols were cosmetic theater with virtually no tangible impact. And they'd have to suddenly answer to the tens of millions of parents whose children have been out of school for a year and answer to the tens of millions of people who lost their jobs or their businesses, and they'd have to acknowledge that states like California got it completely wrong by following the "expert" advice.

And that states like Florida got it completely right by not listening to these experts and simply following the data and the science instead of the fear porn.

But that would require acknowledging that the experts got it wrong and so did most of the media that trumpeted those experts' arguments as the gospel truth. And it would also require that Florida governor Ron DeSantis, the media's number one COVID target for much of the past year, got it right. Not by taking a wild and uncalculated risk, but by simply following the science and data over the past year. We've known since spring of last year that elderly people were at extreme risk and that people under the age of fifty were under almost no risk. So why did we insist on an absurd policy of locking down everyone?

Lockdowns never made any sense at all.

They don't work.

And a year after California shut down and Florida stayed open, there is no longer any argument in favor of lockdowns at all.

Every state should be open, period.

And leaders like California governor Gavin Newsom should be forced to answer questions about why their policy decisions were complete disasters and why they've continued to lockdown their states, even as the science and the data made it clear that no one was being protected and that their economy was being destroyed. If the media had done its job sooner, maybe Newsome would have needed to answer these questions for months and kids wouldn't have spent a year outside of schools. But ultimately, Americans -- even without the media doing its job -- are finally starting to wake up and look at the facts and data for themselves.

The science and data are why Florida governor Ron DeSantis is a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and why California governor Gavin Newsom may be removed from office in the near future.

Facts matter, and so does data. Florida followed the science for the past year, California didn't.

As a result, Florida has thrived and California has withered.

The fact most of you are just realizing this is a testament to how dishonest most of our media truly is.

The science and data are clear: all lockdowns everywhere should be ended.

Immediately.

Lockdowns don't work, and if you look at the data in Florida and California, there is no longer any "expert" who can argue they make sense at all.

Every state should follow Florida's lead. They got it right, and California got it disastrously wrong.

Open. Everything. Now.