Florida’s governor took a victory lap on coronavirus — but it was only halftime – CNN

"One of the things that bothered me throughout this whole time was, I researched the 1918 pandemic, '57, '68, and there were some mitigation efforts done in May 1918, but never just a national-shutdown type deal. There was really no observed experience about what the negative impacts would be on that.

"So I was very concerned about things on that side as well and I think that's why I had a more nuanced and balanced approach than some of the other governors. Because you have some of these health officials saying, 'You've got to do this. This is science,' or whatever. But really, these were unchartered territories."

Which certainly doesn't look like winning.

It's not hard to see what happened here.

There are two political lessons to be learned in DeSantis' struggles.

1) Never declare victory until you know you've won.

2) If circumstances change, you need to change too.

What Florida looked like on May 20 -- when Lowry wrote the column -- and what it looks like today are radically different. DeSantis was quick to take the credit when it looked as though his hands-off approach was working.

He added: "We understood that the outbreak was not uniform throughout the state, and we had a tailored and measured approach that not only helped our numbers be way below what anybody predicted, but also did less damage to our state going forward."

But DeSantis has been resistant to either taking the blame for the current situation or putting in place measures that will slow the raging epidemic in the state.

To put it in Florida terms that DeSantis can understand: The Miami Hurricanes football team doesn't stop playing at halftime just because they are ahead by three touchdowns. Unfortunately for the governor, that's exactly what he did.

The rest is here:

Florida's governor took a victory lap on coronavirus -- but it was only halftime - CNN