But if asymptomatic people can spread it then saying you can go back to work with no symptoms and no need for a test...how is that helping stop teh spread of Corona... Again..politicians should not make medical decisions.
First, politicians make policy. We don't have doctors making laws for a reason, which we can go into if you would like. Second, is there empirical evidence showing someone who had Covid and recovered, but tested positive weeks later is contagious? If so, why is the CDC recommending policy that goes against this? Aren't the CDC the equivalent of doctors for the purposes of this argument? Surely they can make medical decisions, no?
The local media in Florida wants to know why Florida continues to hide data that is available in nearly all other states. Florida was one of the last three states to report current COVID hospitalization data to the public. Now most of the data that would be useful for treating COVID in Florida is not available from the state to hospitals and physicians. Florida collects more data on COVID-19 hospital patients than it shares with the public If the state publicly disclosed all the data it was keeping, experts say it would help them better understand how the virus is spreading https://www.tampabay.com/news/healt...ital-patients-than-it-shares-with-the-public/ The state agency that tracks COVID-19 hospitalization data gathers far more information than it shares with the public, including how many patients are suspected to have the disease but haven’t yet tested positive, how many are in intensive care beds and how many are on ventilators. The Agency for Health Care Administration, or AHCA, also tells Florida hospitals in its data reporting guidelines dated April 19 to exclude from official COVID hospitalization numbers people who tested positive for the coronavirus but are being treated for other medical issues — even heart attacks and strokes, which are two conditions that can be associated with complications from the disease. More detailed data would help researchers and public health experts understand the spread of the virus, especially by analyzing trends in areas such as hospital admissions and ICU volume. But AHCA shares only how many people are hospitalized with COVID-19 as a primary diagnosis, by county. The agency began sharing that information on July 10 after pressure from public health experts. “There is so much granularity here that we could report on,” said Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of South Florida, after reviewing the guidelines. “... What’s being made available to the public right now is woeful.” Salemi, who closely tracks the state’s COVID numbers and has built his own dashboard to monitor trends, said keeping stroke and heart attack patients who have a secondary diagnosis of COVID out of the official statistics could “muddy the waters” of the true number of cases. He said it’s harder for epidemiologists to suss out trends and identify new hot spots with just county-level aggregate data. Florida was one of the last three states to report current COVID hospitalization data to the public. The state health department has long included “cumulative hospitalizations” in its county reports, but that information does not allow public health experts to track the disease’s progression in a community or its strain on local hospitals. On Friday afternoon, there were about 9,200 patients hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of COVID statewide, including about 2,000 in Miami-Dade and nearly 1,300 in Broward, according to the state. Patrick Manderfield, an AHCA spokesman, did not respond to questions about why AHCA does not share more of the information the agency collects from hospitals with the public. He said hospitals enter all information, including the primary diagnosis, into the Emergency Status System, or ESS, an electronic database. “From the onset of the public health emergency, the agency has leveraged the ESS to collect key information to inform the state’s response,” Manderfield said. Manderfield added that AHCA also uses ESS data to produce a daily report on COVID-positive staff and residents in long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes. The AHCA reporting guidelines and data instructions use both stroke and heart attacks as examples of conditions that should not be counted as a COVID hospitalization even if the patients have tested positive. In its data instructions, AHCA tells hospitals to include the current number of COVID positive patients receiving care for COVID symptoms and to “exclude patients receiving ... care for reasons other than COVID symptoms such as an accident, heart attack or childbirth.” Elsewhere in the document, the agency uses the examples of “a car accident or a stroke.” Marcus St. John, an interventional cardiologist and medical director of the cardiac catheterization lab at Baptist Hospital Miami, said that those conditions can be triggered by COVID-19 inflammation, though he said he believes it’s unusual for an otherwise healthy person to suffer a heart attack or a stroke purely because of a COVID-19 infection. “COVID can result in cardiovascular complications in folks who otherwise might not have had a cardiovascular event,” St. John said. “But it’s still such a common underlying condition that the majority of patients are going to have their events in spite of, not because of, COVID infection.” St. John added that cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death in the United States and that COVID infection is more likely to aggravate an existing medical condition that could push someone over the edge than it is to cause a heart attack or stroke on its own. He said Baptist Hospital’s cardiology department has not been inundated with COVID-related complications. Instead, St. John suspects that more patients who need cardiovascular care are not receiving it. “What has been more notable as a consequence is a drop-off in presentations in heart attacks and strokes by people avoiding care,” he said. Salemi, the USF epidemiologist, said there is a general lack of transparency from state health officials on COVID-19 statistics, but he said the reporting of hospitalizations was particularly meaningful to better understand the virus. “They’re clearly ... receiving these reports,” Salemi said. “So why are we getting such aggregated information?”
Ah, the ol' "nearly every state" thing again. You like to say that a lot. "Nearly every state except Florida this and that..." The Agency for Health Care Administration, or AHCA, also tells Florida hospitals in its data reporting guidelines dated April 19 to exclude from official COVID hospitalization numbers people who tested positive for the coronavirus but are being treated for other medical issues — even heart attacks and strokes, which are two conditions that can be associated with complications from the disease. So if someone has a heart attack or a stroke, we should consider them COVID hospitalized if they happened to test positive for COVID? Even if they are asymptomatic? There's a serious flaw in assuming someone had a heart attack or stroke from COVID but are otherwise asymptomatic.
Why don't you post from the rest of the article the statements from doctors saying this data is important. Including the reality that heart attack and strokes two likely symptoms to be caused by COVID-19 -- so the data is very relevant to helping determine effective treatment. This lack of transparency in Florida of COVID data comes across once again that the state is merely trying to hide the actual number of people hospitalized with COVID.
So much winning... Ron DeSantis admits GOP put up "pointless roadblocks" so fewer people would sign up for unemployment Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis confirms the state's unemployment system was broken by design https://www.salon.com/2020/08/05/ro...eople-would-sign-up-for-unemployment_partner/ In an interview with CBS4 Miami's Jim DeFede, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) admitted that Florida Republicans, led by his predecessor, deliberately crippled the state's unemployment system so that fewer out-of-work people would apply for benefits. "Do you believe that the system was in part put together the way it was to discourage people from being able to collect unemployment?" asked DeFede. "I think that was the animating philosophy," said DeSantis. "I mean having studied how it was internally constructed, I think the goal was for whoever designed, it was, 'Let's put as many kind of pointless roadblocks along the way, so people just say, oh, the hell with it, I'm not going to do that.' And, you know, for me, let's decide on what the benefit is and let's get it out as efficiently as possible. You know, we shouldn't necessarily do these roadblocks to do it. So we have cleared a lot of those." When DeFede pointed out to him the current system was designed by former Gov. Rick Scott, now a senator and ally of DeSantis, he replied, "I'm not sure if it was his, but I think definitely in terms of how it was internally constructed, you know. It was definitely done in a way to lead to the least number of claims being paid out." For months, Florida Republicans have faced allegations that the unemployment system was broken by design. It has been a massive obstacle as the coronavirus pandemic has shuttered businesses and left millions out of work and reliant on unemployment insurance.
More data is always better. There's no argument I could possibly make (or want to make) that could say otherwise. The question is why some data is held back and other data isn't. You seem to imply there is a nefarious plan to withhold it. I keep saying it is either a good reason or there is incompetence. You can't seem to prove the nefarious angle, though. That's rather unsurprising.
Please stay at home. Florida man spits on boy for wearing mask in restaurant: ‘You now have the coronavirus’ A Florida man allegedly assaulted a child for wearing a mask at a restaurant. Police said 47-year-old Jason Copenhaver spotted the boy sitting at a table wearing a mask at Ricky T’s Bar and Grille in Treasure Island, and told the child to take it off, reported WTVT-TV. Copenhaver also asked the child to shake his hand, and when the boy refused the older man grabbed his arm, leaned in close to his face and sprayed saliva on the boy. “You now have the coronavirus,” Copenhaver allegedly told the boy. Copenhaver later told police that he had never been tested and was not sure whether he was infected with the potentially deadly coronavirus. Witnesses said Copenhaver appeared to be intoxicated and was not wearing shoes during the incident. Copenhaver then approached a restaurant employee in a threatening manner and tried to punch the worker twice, police said. But that employee took physical control of Copenhaver, took him outside and held him on the ground until police arrived.