Left-wing commentator Mehdi Hasan is once again using Florida’s tragic COVID death toll as a political weapon against conservatives and Governor Ron DeSantis.
Story Snapshot
- Mehdi Hasan is touting about 90,000 Florida COVID deaths to attack DeSantis and GOP leadership.
- Florida did suffer a heavy COVID toll, but that was part of a nationwide crisis and complex factors.
- Researchers show excess deaths were higher than official counts, raising questions about federal and state reporting.
- DeSantis and experts later argued that harsh lockdowns carried their own costs and did not clearly save more lives.
Hasan’s Attack and Florida’s COVID Numbers
British-American pundit Mehdi Hasan built his brand by attacking conservatives and supporters of President Trump, and he is now using Florida’s COVID record to go after Governor Ron DeSantis. Hasan and allied outlets point to roughly 90,000 reported COVID deaths in Florida and frame them as proof that conservative, pro-freedom policy “failed.” Public data shows that by March 2023, Florida had logged about 87,141 deaths, and later analyses put the total near or above 90,000 as the pandemic wore on.
Those numbers sound shocking on their own, and that is exactly why partisan commentators focus on them in isolation. They rarely mention that Florida is a large, older state, with millions of retirees and people with chronic health issues, which means its baseline risk was higher before any governor made a single decision. National reviews have noted that more than 1.1 million Americans died of COVID nationwide, and over 93,000 of those deaths were in Florida, placing the state in the middle-to-upper range but not as a wild outlier.
What the Research Shows About Excess Deaths
Serious researchers, not cable hosts, dug into how many people died above normal trends during the crisis. One peer-reviewed study of excess deaths in Florida found that from March to September 2020 the state had 19,241 more deaths than usual, including 14,317 labeled as COVID and about 4,924 additional deaths from other causes. The authors reported that deaths in July 2020 were far above predictions and that official COVID numbers probably missed hundreds or thousands of virus-related deaths in that period.
Those findings matter for honest accountability. They show the COVID hit was real and painful for Florida families, and they also show weaknesses in public health reporting at the time. But they do not say that DeSantis or any single policy directly “caused” a specific number of deaths, which is the leap activists like Hasan often make on air. The study points to undercounting and broader strain on the health system, the kind of system-wide issues that were seen under both Democrat and Republican governors across the country.
Debate Over Lockdowns, Data, and Responsibility
Ron DeSantis and many conservatives pushed back early against one-sided death dashboards and panic-driven lockdowns. He questioned death-counting when cases like a motorcycle crash in Orlando were reportedly listed as COVID deaths, arguing that some accounting blurred the line between dying with the virus and dying from it. Fact-checkers and federal guidance pushed back on that specific example, but they did not settle the larger issue of how many deaths were misclassified nationwide.
Later, Florida faced a legal fight over how the state published COVID data, with critics claiming the health department “manipulated” numbers when it shifted to reporting deaths by the actual date of death instead of the date they were logged. That change did make it look, for a short time, like deaths were falling during a surge, because older deaths were being backfilled on earlier days. The state ultimately settled and agreed to keep sharing data, while still denying wrongdoing. For constitutional conservatives, this episode is a reminder that transparency in government reporting matters as much as the policies themselves.
How Florida Compared to Other States
When you adjust for age and health, Florida’s record looks more mixed than Hasan’s talking points claim. At one point in March 2021, Florida’s deaths per person were reported as about eight percent lower than the national average, which undercut the idea that the state was always performing worse than everyone else. Later analyses ranked Florida roughly in the top third for per-capita deaths, serious but similar to many blue states that kept harsh lockdowns and school closures in place far longer.
Mehdi Hasan Reminds Ron DeSantis That 90,000 Floridians Died During the COVID Crisis https://t.co/7CXXdXmcKy
— Carol RN *Miss Rush & the Gipper* 👩⚕️🇺🇸 🇮🇱🦈 (@pasqueflower19) August 5, 2026
In 2024, a Florida grand jury report discussed by DeSantis and medical experts argued that areas with strict lockdowns often had higher excess death rates overall, once you counted overdose, suicide, and missed medical care along with COVID cases. That panel also questioned the strong benefit claims around mask mandates, saying the data did not support the sweeping promises many officials made. Hasan and other progressive commentators dismiss these concerns, but for conservatives, they go to the heart of the issue: government must balance virus risk with liberty, economic survival, and mental health, not treat citizens like children.
What Conservatives Should Take From This Fight
The key lesson in Hasan’s latest attack is not that COVID was harmless in Florida; it clearly was not. It is that the left continues to use raw death totals to score points against any leader who resisted endless mandates and lockdowns, while giving a pass to Democrat-run states with similar or worse records. Florida’s heavy toll came from a global pandemic that hit seniors hardest, from reporting flaws shared with many jurisdictions, and from choices made at all levels of government, including federal agencies that pushed one-size-fits-all rules.
For Trump supporters and constitutional conservatives, the answer is not to ignore the 90,000 Floridians who died. It is to demand honest, full-context discussions instead of sound bite blame games. That means backing leaders who insist on transparent data, opposing permanent emergency powers, and remembering that protecting families and freedom must go hand in hand. Hasan’s rhetoric may fire up his base, but it should also remind our side why media accountability and limited government remain core conservative values.
Sources:
wusf.org, bmj.com, congress.gov, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, newsweek.com, truthout.org, cnn.com, politico.com, foxnews.com, medpagetoday.com, floridapolitics.com
