Florida, Florida, Florida.

Known for it's sunshine, old folks,

and those Florida man stories.

You know Florida's one of several states

trying to open its economy,

and for coastal cities that means their life blood.

The beaches.

But, I've been living

with my Florida parents,

and I couldn't imagine going out to the beach right now.

It felt too soon.

But when my coworkers heard the beaches were reopening,

there was some disagreement.

- I've lived in Florida for four years.

There's a hundred percent chance that

people will be there crowded,

especially in that part

it's Tampa area,

- Yeah.

- They like to party.

They are going out, I will put all my money on it.

- It's also gonna be a Monday.

Like what are people--

- Monday's are beach days,

everyday is a beach day in Florida.

- I did look up the weather it looks nice.

- Say it's not gonna be crowded,

I have faith in Floridians.

(bouncy music)

- I got up at the crack of dawn,

and biked to the grand reopening of the beach,

expecting to see crowds of people eager to come back.

But...

I'm really tired,

and no one's here but these...

goddamn seagulls.

And they definitely weren't social distancing.

I thought I saw a share of patrolling.

And when I went closer,

it was actually Turtle Patrol.

The turtle cops.

Honestly this isn't what I expected

and I am really impressed with the Floridians here,

for not being here, I guess.

But when I got back, my mom wasn't convinced.

Here's my mom.

I just got back from the--

- Sorry. - Thanks for opening that.

- Sorry.

- [Sarah] Would you be surprised to hear that there was like

nobody at the beach?

- Well not really 'cause it's like 7 a.m. right?

Go back in a couple hours

I bet it will be totally different.

- [Sarah] Okay.

I'll go back in a couple hours

but I think people will still be pretty good.

I thought there would be throwings of people just then.

- I hope people will be staying apart from each other.

We'll see.

- We would see.

But first, I had to interview someone official.

Luckily, my mom had some surprising connections.

Wait, mom can you say what you just said again?

- You know the former mayor lives right down the street.

- I did not know that.

Do you think she would let me interview her?

- She's a really nice person, I do.

- Okay.

Since I'm not really allowed to interview anyone

in the traditional method,

I'm gonna try this oar,

see if I can turn it into something.

I rigged up a paddle mic.

Would you look at that?

Pretty cool.

Tested it on the dogs,

Hey don't bite it.

Don't bite it.

(dog barking)

Okay so I'm bringing my mom to be my

assistant camera op,

and we are going to interview

the former mayor of St. Pete

to see what she thinks about the beaches.

She said go in through the back gate.

This feels like we're doing something illegal again.

Deborah are you up there?

Unfortunately the Romeo and Juliet set up...

Lift it up higher.

Didn't really work.

We're gonna have to do the phone call.

So, I interviewed her via cell phone.

- I've been a resident in Florida since 1985.

And I was interim mayor

of the city of St. Pete Beach, Florida.

- So what kind of decisions

does the local government have to make

in this pandemic?

- Their responsibility is surely to keep the public safe.

They're encouraging people to wear masks.

In this instance since the governor opened the beaches,

they had to decide how they were going to do that.

- Do you feel like they waited

long enough to reopen the beaches?

- I'm not sure opening the beaches this early

is good only because I don't want people to think

that the pandemic is still ongoing.

We really need to be concerned about that

and concerned about people's health.

I, like everybody else,

just want to be cautious about crowds and crowd control.

The other side of the coin is people need to

get out of their apartments,

their condos, their homes.

I think it was a tough decision.

I think maybe a different type of opening,

a more controlled opening, would have been a better choice.

- If I'm gonna go to the beach today,

do you have any advice?

- If you really want to go to the beach

and not have to be in a crowded,

difficult situation, go to the county beaches.

Practice social distance.

I hope the police and sheriff's department

are enforcing that because it's probably

the most important thing.

- [Sarah] Thank you.

After talking to Deb,

I realized I had to go back to the beach

to see what was really going on.

So my mom and I left to scope it out.

And two hours later,

it was packed.

Mom pull it down I can't hear you.

- For eleven o'clock on a Monday,

it's kind of shockingly busy to me.

This is the time of year where the weekends are busy

but the weekdays are usually a bit calmer,

so people are obviously rushing to the beaches.

- [Sarah] Do you think people are following

the six feet rule right now?

- It does not look like it to me,

does it look like it to you?

- [Sarah] No. - No.

- [Sarah] Yeah I think I need to walk through it.

- That's about six feet.

- [Sarah] I wanted to see if people were staying

six feet away,

so I brought my six foot paddle,

but it honestly seemed to busy for that.

Really felt like a normal beach day

and that's what made me nervous.

- I do worry that the people coming here

the beaches will make people more relaxed

about their safety in all areas of life,

not just coming to the beach.

Like that they won't be taking big precautions

as they should be at the grocery stores

and things like that.

I hope that we don't see what happens during spring week.

I hope that people really wear masks,

and stay six feet apart.

- So after I got back,

I called Dr. Mark Keim.

CEO of DisasterDoc,

and a former CDC Disaster Scientist.

- I was the incident manager there for anthrax,

and as well as the Indian Ocean tsunami.

- So Florida beaches are reopening.

Are you concerned?

- Yes, I think that many people are concerned actually.

- Do you think it's too soon?

- Yeah, absolutely.

And what our best science is telling us

is that it is indeed to soon to reopen,

especially when we're talking about the beaches in Florida.

Cases are increasing,

they're not decreasing as they should be,

and that's really our defining criteria for reopening is

the symptoms, the cases, and the status of the hospitals.

So those are the three different things that we look for,

and that needs to show a 14 day decrease.

It tells us what we need to do

in order to cross these gates,

and each phase has a gate.

So here we are standing in the first phase,

and we need to earn our way to that next gate.

- Okay, so you're saying Florida just kind of

jumped over the gates instead of opening the gates?

- That's it.

Yeah, you know I mean they must be in good shape

to jump the gate right?

- That doesn't make sense to me because

Florida has a much older population on average.

- That's a good point.

Perhaps there are ways that the beach

may be safe,

but it's very problematic and difficult to do so

when you go from absolutely closed to absolutely open.

Mike Tyson said, "Everyone has a plan

"until you get punched in the face."

And you know,

science has a familiar, similar way of

waking us up with a punch in the face.

- As a fellow Floridian to help them,

do I have to punch them in the face

to get them to know?

Or is there another way I can help get the word out?

- Right.

You know, I'm not as successful as Mike was

with punching people in the face,

I find the information is actually the great--

- So punch them with information.

- Maybe that's it, right?

- [Sarah] I tried to symbolically punch

my fellow Floridians in the face with facts.

I boated out toward the beaches

and attempted to inform the public of what I learned.

Continue to wear your masks!

Coronavirus can still spread outside!

Nobody seemed to be listening.

That, or my font was too small.

- Is the issue of reopening beaches

could potentially cause a spike in these Corona cases.

It's just difficult to maintain and control

a social distancing of six feet.

And our breaths actually carry a cloud of this virus.

And when two people stand within six feet of each other,

actually that cloud collects between the two,

and we share that cloud in our inhale.

When we pass by people that may pass us on the beach,

their cloud actually passes through our cloud

and we can breath in those things as well.

Requiring people to stay apart from each other

and enforcing that,

could help people to reopen the beach

and maintain it safely, but once again,

I'm not the expert on enforcing that

on a 35 mile beach. - Right.

My mom texted me in the middle of the interview,

to tell me the police had actually shut down the beach

to everyone but locals because it had reached

over a hundred percent capacity.

- Down at Pass-A-Grille,

the city commission decided to

open 700 of the 1000 parking spots

that they have down there,

that means 300 are closed.

It quickly reached capacity,

and we had to shut off Pass-A-Grille this morning

to only residents down there.

- [Sarah] Showing just how difficult it is

to keep beach goers from going to the beach.

And that certainly creeped me out.

So if you really wanna go to the beach,

I mean what can you do?

- You should social distance.

Not the kind that's sneaky,

maybe it's six feet maybe it's not.

Scientists have done studies where these viruses