Miami invested 5 million dollars on an ad campaign to convince people to come to South Florida during the pandemic for spring break. Tourism in Florida generated over $91 billion in 2018, but due to COVID-19 lock down measures Miami lost billions of dollars in 2020.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has no mask mandate in place for the state. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that spring breakers will take no safety precautions when they come on mass to Miami beach to party hard and spread the virus.
A new variant of the virus imported from Great Britain called B117 now accounts for more that 40% 0f new cases of COVID-19 in Florida. Florida has more cases of the variant than any other state. B117 is more contagious and more deadly. We are at a tipping point as the slow roll out of vaccines is racing against the exponential growth of this new variant. Global health expert Dr. Peter Hotez has warned that these spring breakers could “spell disaster” for the country. “It’s the perfect storm,” he said. When all the drinking and partying is over the college students will return home to seed the virus all over the country. I am amazed that Florida Governors are happy to repeat the same mistakes they made exactly one year ago.
More than 1 million Americans traveled domestically and internationally over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day which likely seeded the B117 variant in the USA. The B117 SARS-CoV-2 variant, identified in 33 states thus far, will dominate other strains in the coming weeks, triggering major COVID-19 surges such as those seen in Portugal and the United Kingdom—unless the United States immediately scales up surveillance and mitigation efforts. However in Florida, bars, restaurants, and clubs will remain open because Miami is unable to keep them closed due to a state executive order from Governor Ron DeSantis. He chose never to implement statewide mask mandates. Last year, Florida became of the biggest states to loosen COVID-19 restrictions when DeSantis reopened all restaurants, hotels, and bars at full capacity. Let the parties begin as the new variant spreads like wildfire.