The death rates in most of Florida’s major population centers resemble that of Los Angeles: Miami-Dade, the largest, has a rate of 210 deaths per 100,000, Palm Beach 173, Pinellas County (St. Petersburg) 156.

Let’s take it from the top. It’s arguably true that Florida’s record on the pandemic hasn’t been as bad as was forecast. That’s not the same as saying it’s good. Florida’s COVID death rate is about 155 per 100,000 population, according to data from Johns Hopkins University reported by the Washington Post. California’s is about 141.

The difference isn’t trivial. As my colleagues Soumya Karlamangla and Rong-Gong Lin II observed earlier this month, “If California had Florida’s death rate, roughly 6,000 more Californians would be dead from COVID-19 …. And if Florida had California’s death rate, roughly 3,000 fewer Floridians would be dead from COVID-19.”

As of Friday, Johns Hopkins counts 33,219 COVID deaths in Florida, which has a population of about 21.5 million, compared with 55,795 in California, which has a population of about 40 million. Those figures are a reproach to anyone who tries to assert that the war on COVID-19 has been “won,” in either state.