Go ahead and Google “Florida Man.” You’ll get a thousand headlines about the world’s worst superhero — a meme built on the idea that the Sunshine State is uniquely weird. What Florida is, is uniquely visible. The Miami New Times figured this out years ago: Florida’s open-government laws make arrest records easier to get than in almost any other state, so Florida’s oddities end up in print while everybody else’s stay buried. CNN said the same thing — public-records access, a big population, and reporters who can actually see the paperwork. Florida looks strange because you’re allowed to look. That’s not a punchline. That’s a policy.
And here’s why that matters to me. Right now, Florida is carrying three foodborne outbreaks at once, and in every one of them the state is doing the work out loud while the federal government does it quietly or not at all.
Start with the blueberries. On July 1, the Florida Department of Health flagged a cluster of E. coli O145:H28 illnesses, interviewed sick people, pointed at frozen GreenWise organic blueberries sold at Publix, and pushed Publix into a stop-sale. Twelve people sick, four hospitalized, eleven of them Floridians. O145:H28 is a Shiga toxin–producing strain with a body count — a 2024 UK outbreak tied to lettuce grew to nearly 300 cases and killed two people. And yet the “twelve cases” number the public got came from the grower’s recall notice, not a CDC outbreak announcement. Florida found it. The feds mostly watched.
Then this week, the China Buffet on East Fowler Avenue in Tampa. Five people with Listeria, four of whom ate at the same buffet, and the State of Florida swabbed the place and found the outbreak strain on the restaurant’s own surfaces. Epidemiology plus a matching environmental isolate is about as clean a causation picture as these cases ever get. And the inspection file? A Dirty Dining regular — closed, fined, cited, reopened, and cited again. That’s foreseeability with a public paper trail, and it exists because Florida lets you read it.
Now the one that ought to embarrass Atlanta. Cyclospora. Florida is up to 50 confirmed cases and posting them county by county. Michigan is near a thousand. Ohio has cleared 500 in its northwest corner alone. And for weeks the CDC sat frozen at 145 cases across 17 states while the states screamed past it — the federal page has only just crawled up to 843. No food vehicle named. No single outbreak declared. Just clusters and a traceback that hasn’t said a word out loud. The states are counting. The feds are catching up.
Here’s the thing about “Florida Man.” The states you don’t hear about aren’t safer. They’re quieter. Same E. coli, same Listeria, same parasite — they just don’t hand you the report. Florida gets mocked for what it discloses, and the reward for transparency is being the butt of the joke. I’ll take that trade every day of the week. Give me a state that tells families how many of them got sick over a state that keeps a straight face and a closed file. I’ve watched outbreaks resolve on the strength of somebody being willing to say what happened, on the record, before the lawyers even show up. Sunshine isn’t Florida’s weakness. It’s the only reason any of us can see the outbreak coming — and it’s exactly what the CDC and FDA keep switching off.
Want to put me out of business. Start by counting out loud, like Florida does.