Florida is lagging behind the national average in coronavirus test rates. The caseloads are increasing exponentially day by day. And experts are predicting that the state is on the cusp of a crippling contagion.

It recently became too overwhelming for Governor Ron DeSantis to ignore on Wednesday. He finally announced a state-wide ‘shelter-in-place’ order to stop the spread of the disease. This was a reversal from his previous “targeted” approach that local governments should be autonomous to make their own decisions.

DeSantis fancies himself a leader in what he called ‘the conservative experiment to resist top-down government sheltering mandates that could cripple the economy.’ He was determined to avoid following the lead of other states. This put him in lockstep with President Trump, a recent Florida export who requires the swing state in his bid to win re-election.

But the president’s hopeful predictions of a swift end to the pandemic soured recently, leaving DeSantis alone and looking towards the White House for policy cues and media cover.

Additional pressure from an internal contradiction of his desire to fight the coronavirus by targeting hot spots, testing for the virus has been so dismally inadequate in Florida that the governor was essentially aiming in the dark as the outbreak spread.

As of April 1st, Florida has tested fewer than 65,000 people, approximately 0.29 percent of its total population. That is less than the national per-capita testing average of 0.33 percent, according to data from the Census Bureau and the COVID Tracking Project.

The state’s total number of confirmed cases on Tuesday rapidly surged past 6,955, with reported 87 deaths and 890 people hospitalized.

“You can only do targeting if you know what the heck you’re doing,” said Dr. Aileen Marty, a leading pandemic and infectious disease expert at Florida International University. “We’re blinding ourselves.”

Florida, with its population of free-minded youths and at-risk seniors citizens, remains a prime location for an outbreak quagmire as Covid-19 caseload grows exponentially.