Something we’ve heard time and again in recent days is that we can’t open X in South Florida because of the concerns over bad behavior. That was the first justification for keeping Palm Beach County under lockdown with Broward and Miami-Dade last week. It’s also been the justification for keeping beaches locked down even after reopening's in other public spaces. But has the expressed fear been justified? When Martin County opened up a week before South Florida, it wasn’t overrun with South Floridians heading north. Same with Palm Beach County this week. When Martin County opened the beaches to their residents this week, they weren’t overrun with people trying to crash the beaches from the south. Yes, there have been isolated incidents of select open spaces being temporarily overcrowded once reopened in South Florida, but has that actually been a byproduct of not allowing the use of all public spaces like beaches?
The reason I’m posing these questions is based on data from two different analytics firms I’ve followed this week. Unacast and Safegraph. Tracking the data of Safegraph’s migration data with Unacast’s social distancing measures we know that South Floridians began to dramatically change their behavior prior to government mandates to do so. Also, the peak observance of stay-at-home measures came during the peak week for cases in South Florida. Lastly, South Floridians have remained among the most responsive to social distancing and stay-at-home orders in the state.
All of that points to a level of self-governance that should be considered and trusted by public officials. Additionally, without evidence that opening beaches creates any additional risk of the spread of the virus, but that 84% of the spread of the virus has occurred with people who aren’t essential workers, it’s possible the forced containment of South Floridians could be contributing to new cases. Somewhere along the line, we will have to reopen and trust people, or else we quite literally will no longer have freedom. The narratives suggesting we can’t be trusted don’t entirely fit the data. Be mindful that many of the metrics being used to determine if we’re being responsible have been moving targets as well.
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