Florida Governor Ron DeSantis offered a puzzling explanation Friday for his state’s recent explosion in new coronavirus cases—11,433 recorded Thursday by the state’s health department. According to him, the spike in cases is simply a result of the state having a “flatter curve” than others. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the federal government’s coronavirus response, said the day prior that Florida had opened up too soon, that it “jumped over a couple of checkpoints,” which the governor justified by saying the state had a “low prevalence” of the virus at the time, though the number of cases had begun to increase by the time reopening began. DeSantis said that Florida had seen recent spikes in cases because of a slower start: “When you have a flatter curve, which Florida has—I mean if you look at the Northeast, they went boom...Florida,Texas, we’re just much flatter. It means it goes on longer, and so you know we said you wanted a flatter curve but this is drawn out over a longer period of time.” Meanwhile, the U.S. recorded more than 60,000 new cases on three separate days this week. More than 3.1 million people have been infected with the virus, and more than 130,000 have died of COVID-19.