One Florida-based attorney is taking matters into his own hands after being dissatisfied with beaches reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic.
CNN reported Daniel Uhlfelder is dressing as the Grim Reaper in protest of the beaches reopening in effort to deter beachgoers.
"We have to take this into our own hands, unfortunately, because our leaders aren't doing the right thing," he told USA Today.
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Uhlfelder traveled around beaches in Walton County Friday while in costume.
Northwest Florida Daily News reported that officials in that county voted on Tuesday to reopen the beaches with no time restrictions. Activities are limited to "walking, jogging, fishing, swimming, paddleboarding, surfing and boating."
Uhlfelder told CNN the beaches in Walton County were “very crowded.”
“This is a way in which I can convey the message that this virus is a deadly virus and that we need to think about this and take some time before we jump into these types of things,” he told USA Today of dressing as the symbol of death. “This is a symbol of how serious this situation is.”
But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed back against criticism about the reopening, claiming that there is a Department of Homeland Securtiy study that says heat, humidity and sunlight kills COVID-19.
“The DHS study said that sunlight rapidly killed the virus in aerosols, and it said that outdoor daytime environments are lower risk for transmission of the virus than indoor environments,” DeSantis said. “In terms of surfaces, when a virus may be left on a surface DHS study concluded that sunlight kills the virus quickly and that the virus is less stable overall at higher temperatures and higher humidity.”
Uhlfelder disagrees.
“We aren’t at the point now where we have enough testing, enough data, enough preparation for what's going to be coming to our state from all over the world from this pandemic,” he told CNN.
Florida starts the first phase of reopening many beaches on Monday.
According to data from John Hopkins University, the state has more than 33,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and more than 1,200 deaths.
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