For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones’ newsletters. In the middle of March, as millions of people across the country started to practice social distancing measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus, Florida’s Spring Breakers did the opposite. Thousands of people, seemingly unfazed by the pandemic, took to the state’s coastline […]

It was a tale of two beaches. On Florida’s Atlantic coast, at the height of spring break season, the sand was deserted in the cities of Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale, where Democratic mayors had imposed closures to fight the spread of coronavirus. Across the narrow neck of the state, the Gulf coast beaches in Clearwater were […]

Updated March 30, 2020: This story has been changed to reflect the first known positive coronavirus test of a Liberty University student. LYNCHBURG, Va. — As Liberty University’s spring break was drawing to a close this month, Jerry Falwell Jr., its president, spoke with the physician who runs Liberty’s student health service about the rampaging coronavirus. […]