Less panic, warm weather among some of the reasons why Canadians are travelling to Florida

It’s only been about six months since Nolan and Aislinn Cairns, along with their four children, moved from Calgary to Florida.

“It's like COVID doesn't exist [in Florida],” said Aislinn in a video interview with CTVNews.ca on Sunday. “You see the signs around encouraging masks and whatnot, and…they encourage vaccinations, but we're not living in fear.

“I can just go about living my normal life.”

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Even with the pandemic raging on, the day-to-day operations of stores, restaurants and other services remain largely uninterrupted in Florida. Local COVID-19 restrictions and mandates were suspended in May of last year, a month after Gov. Ron DeSantis banned the use of vaccine passports.

While face masks are recommended by the state, wearing one out in public is not required, and local governments are still able to pass their own mask ordinances. Businesses including restaurants, gyms and salons are able to operate at full capacity, and there are currently no travel restrictions in place.

But recent data shows that the number of COVID-19 cases in the state continues to rise. Florida has one of the highest seven-day COVID-19 case rates per 100,000 people in the United States at 1,772.8, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By contrast, the rate of COVID-19 cases in Canada over the last seven days was 678 per 100,000 people as of Jan. 3. For comparison, Florida has a population of about 21.7 million, while 38.5 million people currently live in Canada.

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So far, Florida has recorded more than 4.3 million cases of coronavirus and 62,541 related deaths. Canada, by comparison, so far has a total of about 2.3 million cases of COVID-19 and 30,456 deaths, based on data compiled by CTVNews.ca.

Nolan and Aislinn said they had been wanting to move to the United States for years before finally deciding to do so in July of last year. The COVID-19 restrictions imposed in Alberta throughout the spring and early summer were a stark contrast to the approach taken by DeSantis in Florida, which was appealing enough for the couple to pack up and move there.

“[There] is an emphasis on personal accountability and responsibility rather than being restricted by a central government somewhere,” he said. “We decided we'd be more comfortable in a place like that, where we were responsible now for our own health and safety as opposed to turning over our freedoms and our decision-making to somebody else that didn't know us.”

What matters to the couple is the ability to make their own choices, Nolan said. According to him, both government officials and the public in Florida are being smart about assessing risks while being responsible for their own health.

“People are making calculated decisions as opposed to reactionary emotional decisions,” Nolan said. “What I mean by that is, certain people simply choose to avoid that large crowd or they don't want to go to the waterpark, and that's absolutely their decision.”

SOME STILL STICKING TO PUBLIC HEALTH GUIDELINES

While some Canadians may have travelled to Florida for the lack of COVID-19 restrictions, CTVNews.ca heard from several others who cited good weather and improvements to mental health as their reasons for visiting the state, either for weeks or months at a time. Despite the lax restrictions around capacity limits and mask usage, many say they continue to follow public health guidelines such as masking up when physical distancing is not an option, and staying away from large crowds.

Deborah Puckett said she travelled to Florida on Nov. 27, and will be there until the beginning of March. Due to painful arthritis, she said, she visits her condo in Florida every year for the warmth. She made note of how few people actually wear masks where she resides.

“I was [one] of nearly 20 people waiting in a store for coffee who was wearing a mask,” she wrote in an email to CTVNews.ca. “The store signs ask them to wear one, few people were.”

Even with this relaxed attitude towards the pandemic, Puckett said she is still taking every precaution to stay safe, and has already received her booster shot.

“We’re doing everything here that we would do at home, so why suffer in cold weather?” she said.

Barry Wolfe said he and his wife booked a rental home in Florida years ago before it was postponed to December of 2021. While he said his wife was not excited about travelling to the American state, for him, the decision was simple.

“Live a somewhat restricted, ‘regulated’ lifestyle in the cold of Ontario and probably end up shovelling snow, or bask in the mid to high 70s [degrees Fahrenheit] with [the] mostly clear blue skies of Florida?” he wrote in an email to CTVNews.ca.

Wolfe and his wife both received their booster shots in Florida after arriving, he said, and continue to wear masks around others, practice physical distancing when possible, and frequently wash their hands. Other than that, Wolfe said their days are spent riding bikes, walking along the boardwalk, playing pickleball, and visiting the beach.

“Life’s risky,” he said. “We chose to escape the cold.”

Marilyn Butcher said that, while she’s in Florida for the sun over the next few months, she’s still avoiding what she called “Florida freedoms.” With facilities such as restaurants and gyms not requiring proof of vaccination for entry, she said she avoids those spaces. Activities such as dancing, bingo, and card games are all continuing without the required use of masks, she said.

While Butcher anticipates these conditions will lead to a rise in cases, access to booster shots and participating in outdoor activities beats spending time in her home of Sudbury, Ont.

“Being able to bike, kayak, go to the beach and swim are great alternatives to walking on the ice of last winter,” she said in an email to CTVNews.ca.

LIFE IN FLORIDA HAS A ‘SENSE OF NORMALCY’

As Nolan and Aislinn explain, living with fewer public health restrictions has contributed to an increase in their quality of life. The couple pointed to their youngest child, a four-year-old boy who has spent most of the past two years stuck inside due to the pandemic, unable to socialize with other children.

“You can watch the difference, in his life, between becoming kind of cold and calculated with the way that he played, to much more social and open,” Nolan said. “I would say that's probably the biggest personification of the differences between the two jurisdictions.

“That sense of normalcy, that we're more in control of our own destiny, that our kids get to go be kids, we've got that back,” he said.

Aislinn, and many others who shared their stories with CTVNews.ca, also noted positive impacts on their mental health as a result of travelling south. Tammy Arbour and her husband drove to Florida in November of last year, where the couple plans to stay until April, she said.

“Our mental health has improved since we have arrived and so has our fitness level,” she wrote in an email to CTVNews.ca, pointing to the “beautiful weather” as helpful in allowing them to spend more time outdoors instead of being confined inside.

Shelly Ricker, originally from New Brunswick, was also in Florida for some time in November, she said, and intends on revisiting this winter. In an email to CTVNews.ca, she described life in Florida as “refreshing” and “the best form of ‘normal’ you can find.

“There is so much fear and anxiety in [New Brunswick],” she said. “A fear and anxiety that doesn’t exist in Florida.”

Originally from Toronto, Hanna Chernitsky, her husband and their two children travelled to Fort Lauderdale in December, and plan to stay there until mid-March, she said. When she and her family arrived for a planned short vacation in November, Chernitsky said they were impressed at how the state remained open for business, as well as how residents didn’t seem panicked by COVID-19 case numbers or the pandemic in general.

“It's just been so stressful for the last almost two years since the pandemic started for working parents, like myself and my husband,” she told CTVNews.ca on Sunday in a phone interview. “We feel like we're putting a pause on the stressful life and moving to a place where the stress doesn't exist.”

Before arriving in Florida, Chernitsky said she was able to enroll her six-year-old daughter at a school close to where she and her family would be staying in Fort Lauderdale. Along with relaxed state laws regarding the use of masks and getting vaccinated, Chernitsky is also seeing more lenient school protocols for dealing with COVID-19 cases.

The private school her daughter is enrolled in, she said, won’t dismiss classes if a child tests positive for COVID-19; the child is just expected to quarantine at home until they’re well enough to return to school. Beyond this, Chernitsky said she wasn’t told about any additional protocols or requirements.

“In Toronto, I [was] terrified to get a call from the school or the daycare to tell me that [they’re] closing,” she said. “We understand there's a virus, but it's just so stressful to count all those quarantine days and all the cases and everyone is just talking about COVID. Here it's not the case, no one talks about COVID here.”

Brett Tanner explained that he has a home in Florida where he will often travel to for a week at a time. There now, he said he generally feels safe, mostly keeping to himself while he spends his time golfing and walking along the beach. He said he has also noticed that those around him in Florida don’t talk about the pandemic very much.

“They are pretty much business as usual, it’s kind of interesting that they are so blind to what’s happening,” he wrote in an email to CTVNews.ca. “That said, maybe they have it right [--] be sensible, stay safe but keep living life.”