Carl Hiaasen: With DeSantis calling the shots, Florida will never get a true picture of coronavirus’ damage
DeSantis #DeSantis
Two months into the pandemic, the state of Florida last week finally agreed to release a list of fatalities attributed to the coronavirus pandemic.
The information was carefully compiled by medical examiners — actual forensic doctors — and then massively gutted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
As a result, the list is full of gaps that leave many questions about how and why more than 1,300 victims have died.
Among the crucial data blacked out are the names of those who’ve died with COVID-19, the circumstances of their deaths, the types of illness triggered by their coronavirus infection and the probable cause of their deaths (often there are multiple factors).
What remains in the spreadsheet are the barest of basic facts, most of which are already known:
Date of death, county of death and the age, gender and race of the deceased. Also noted is the “probable manner of death,” which is usually listed as “natural” when it’s not a car accident, suicide or homicide.
Florida has 21 medical examiners, and normally they would have released all the information that the FDLE redacted. But ever since COVID-19 swept into the state, the DeSantis administration has tried to block the public from learning significant details about the spread of the virus.
So far, the governor has allowed various agencies to do that dirty work, but it’s hard to believe he isn’t calling the plays. The cover-up effort hasn’t been subtle, and Floridians can’t be blamed for wondering if the motive is to make the human toll of COVID-19 appear lower than it really is.
Early on, state officials refused to identify the nursing homes and assisted-living facilities hit hardest by the virus, or provide the number of deaths at each of those locations. Only the threat of lawsuits pried the data loose.
A similar battle took place over documenting COVID-19 cases in the prison system. It was weeks before the Department of Corrections caved in and revealed which facilities are reporting infections among the guards, staff members and inmates.
It’s no mystery why the state doesn’t want to go to court over the coronavirus records. Their lawyers know they’ll get stomped, because the information clearly belongs to the public.
Yet the blurring and stalling continues, the blacked-out spreadsheet being the latest example.
Last month, the Tampa Bay Times reported that the coronavirus death totals compiled by the Florida Medical Examiner’s Commission were roughly 10 percent higher than the figures published by the Department of Health.
Instead of working to resolve the discrepancy, the Department of Health responded by trying to gag the medical examiners, warning them not to give out certain data about coronavirus fatalities.
The hastily made-up excuse was that the information was confidential and “exempt from public record disclosure.”
Most offices complied with the suspicious order, but others — like the Miami-Dade medical examiner — released the death records as it always had.
Ever since 1992, after Hurricane Andrew struck, the Medical Examiners Commission has been in charge of keeping the official statewide death count from natural disasters, including pandemics.
Dr. Stephen J. Nelson, the chairman of the commission, is the chief medical examiner for Polk, Hardee and Highland counties. He has consistently asserted that the case-by-case death data for COVID-19 should be fully disclosed.
In a curious move, the Department of Health ordered that the data first be reviewed by the FDLE, a police agency not widely known for its expertise in infectious diseases.
For some reason, the FDLE needed almost two weeks to run a big black Magic Marker down the middle of the coronavirus spread sheet. The result was a sweeping concealment of valuable details that might have helped Floridians better understand why COVID-19 is more deadly for certain individuals, and how they contracted it.
The broad redaction was alarming to Nelson and other medical examiners who’ve been charting the fatalities since March.
“Everything we do is a public record paid for by taxpayers and they are entitled to know what is being done with their money,” he said. “This is no different from what we’ve kept since Hurricane Andrew.”
Ironically, the death statistics ultimately provided by the FDLE were actually higher than those posted on the health department’s COVID-19 online “dashboard.”
“Our two lists will never match,” Dr. Nelson said. “They’re not counting snowbirds, tourists. … How is their case number higher than ours?”
The last thing the state should be doing right now is burying the facts about this awful virus, or editing them in a way that sows more confusion. Gov. DeSantis owes those who have died — and those still at risk — an honest, uncensored accounting.
(Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may write to him at: The Miami Herald, 3511 NW 91st Ave., Miami, Fla., 33172.)