TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – Florida residents are among the most defiant citizens in the United States when it comes to wearing face coverings to slow the spread of COVID-19, a new study found.
Survival at Home, a website dedicated to survival and disaster preparedness, used geotagging data on Twitter to track several mask-related hashtags over the last 30 days. The hashtags, tracked in each state, included #nomask, #burnyourmask, #nomasks, #antimask and #iwillnotcomply. More than 150,000 tweets were analyzed.

Florida had the third-highest amount of anti-mask tweets, behind just Arizona and Nevada.
Tweets in favor of wearing masks, however, far outweighed the anti-mask sentiment in each state, the study said.
The data lends itself to what many believe has been a problematic response to the coronavirus by Florida’s leadership.
Stay-at-home orders in the Sunshine State lagged behind other states by about a month. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has not issued a statewide mask mandate but said he wouldn’t stop local mask mandates.
Florida surpassed more than 300,000 cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday. Hillsborough County has the 24th-highest number of confirmed cases in the entire country, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
LATEST ON THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC:
- Hillsborough County seniors concerned about securing second dose of COVID-19 vaccine
- Third stimulus checks: Democratic critic of larger direct payments softens stance
- Florida coronavirus: State reports 9,816 new cases, 308 new hospitalizations
- Dozens of Kansas psychiatrist’s ineligible ’employees’ cut line to get COVID vaccine before those at risk
- Florida leads nation in cases of new COVID variant, CDC data shows