There was no statistical difference between the outcome in FL opposed to the outcome in CA. FL had schools open Fall 2020, CA had schools closed through the 20-21 school year. Yes, schools are great incubators, but all my kids got it at one point or another, and they were not in school. Heck, the worst case we got was in 12/19 before they knew what it was, and we highly suspect we got it from my kids who got it from school. We kept getting fed the "you're going to kill Grandma" line, but the one time I got it was from my Uncle who is in his 80's. We are both fine to this day.
The COVID times were full of these, doing something to be doing something decisions that did more harm than good. The problem is the things we were doing were theater - closing schools, closing businesses, masking, hand santizing, distancing. We by-and-large all got sick anyway. We should have been focusing on the co-morbidities, the largest of which continues to be obesity. People ran out and bought Pelotons but almost nobody used them. Why not? Because that's hard. putting on a mask, well fitting or not, easy. Shame on those who don't. Fact is those in good shape had good outcomes regardless of anything else.
More food for thought; the pandemic ended because the disease mutated and we'd all been exposed and had some immunity (vaccine or not). It stands to reason that lives would have been saved if the disease had mutated sooner - perhaps by exposing those who were not having the worst ill effects early on? Could be, but we'll never know, because we didn't do that, and nobody seems all that interested in finding out.