Let People Go Outside

"If I get corona, I get corona," mused Florida spring breaker Brady Sluder in a now-infamous March interview with CBS. "At the end of the day, I'm not going to let it stop me from partying."

Sluder, with his sun-tinged face and backwards cap, probably didn't realize that he'd become an unwitting mascot for the perils of ignoring social distancing. Policies discouraging nearly every form of public interaction—from widespread restaurant closures to a prohibition on big box retailers selling paint—have popped up across the country in an attempt to curb the coronavirus. Some of those policies still make sense.

Closing outdoor spaces does not. That includes the beaches in Florida, which have slowly begun reopening on a county-by-county basis.

Predictably, the move wasn't without backlash. "The trouble is, Florida's not known for 'good' or 'safe,'" writes Diane Roberts, a professor of English at Florida State University, in a Washington Post op-ed. Citing the derisory "Florida man" stereotype, who is known for his ridiculous antics and disregard for the law, Roberts concludes that Floridians simply cannot be trusted with the privilege of going to the beach in times like this.

But Roberts does not cite any infectious disease specialists, who are trained to analyze the risks of such situations using science, not stereotypes. What do those experts have to say?