Over the weekend Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried called for a statewide shutdown of Florida. This comes after New York and California decided to issue orders of their own in the midst of the Corona virus pandemic.
Unfortunately for Commissioner Fried, her opinion is more political than pragmatic at this point. And Governor Ron DeSantis should carefully monitor the situation before moving forward on such a drastic measure.
There are still 20 counties that don’t have a case in their area. It’s simply unfair to those that are struggling in those communities to hinder their efforts to provide for themselves and their families. That’s what a shutdown would do.
It’s also important to note that a large majority of the United States have also not implemented shut down orders. Do you know how many at the time you’re reading this? 15.
Would you still be in favor of locking down a struggling family with that data?
Let’s also look at the local trend. We don’t even have a consensus in the tri county area over what the state of living should during this crisis.
The curfews don’t match. We have the City of Orlando telling people it’s still okay to go to Lake Eola.
#COVID19 𝐔𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 3/23/20 1pm
To continue to fight the spread of COVID-19 in our community, we'll be closing all of our playgrounds & swan boats at @LakeEolaPark at 5pm today until further notice.
We encourage you to still go out & be active at our parks staying 6 ft apart. pic.twitter.com/sUhKNR1CMC
— City of Orlando (@citybeautiful) March 23, 2020
What we do have is an agreement that everyone is suffering financially and that alone is going to be an anchor everyone in Central Florida will have to lug around for an indefinite amount of time after this crisis has ended.
We should wait. If the time comes to shut it down, then the Governor will do just that.
Let’s stop playing politics and saying spotlight grabbing things when our neighbors need genuine leadership.