Unless you have something to add/clarify. As it stands now, our recent discussion seems to suggest that yes------yes we do.
Well the newest studies show persons infected with Covid who are asymptotic carry as much virus as persons who are symptomatic. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2769235
More than 19,000 Floridians projected to die from COVID-19 by December, experts say Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation releases new coronavirus projections https://www.clickorlando.com/news/l...to-die-from-covid-19-by-december-experts-say/ Health experts said Florida has reached its peak for coroanvirus cases, but the death rate is still rising. New projections released Thursday by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation project thousands of Floridians will die from COVID-19 in the next four months. Dr. Omayra Mansfield, the chief medical officer for AdventHealth Apopka and AdventHealth Winter Garden, participated in the hospital’s morning briefing. She said overall the area’s coronavirus cases are plateauing. “In the last few days, we’ve maybe seen a blip down or a blip up, but generally speaking that averages out to stay at that plateau,” Mansfield said. Mansfield said the area reached its peak of COVID-19 cases last month. "We do believe we reached our peak for this particular wave about two and half, two weeks ago now," she said. She credits this to the community following safety guidelines, like wearing masks and social distancing. But she said we are not seeing a dramatic drop in cases yet. “We would hope to see a further decrease if people continue to exhibit these good behaviors that we’re asking them to, but a lot of the burden on this is going to fall on our community to follow the best recommendations,” Mansfield said. his comes as Dr. Ali Mokdad with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation released new COVID-19 projections on Thursday. His projections are used around the world, even by the White House. He agrees that Florida is seeing a decrease in cases, but an increase in deaths. “Mortality, unfortunately, we keep going up a little bit because there is a lag between infection and mortality, which sometimes it’s between two to three weeks,” Mokdad said. According to the IHME projections, 19,358 Floridians will die from COVID-19 by Dec. 1. Mokdad said the state could be forced to shut down again in late August to stop the spread. “We expect Florida will reach the 8 deaths per million (people) sometime in the next couple of weeks and they will impose mandates all over again and we’re assuming these mandates would be at least for six weeks,” Mokdad said. Mokdad said projections show if the state doesn’t shut down and eases back on restrictions, 61,938 people in Florida will die from COVID-19 by Dec. 1. He adds if 95% of the state wears a mask, the projections show 15,765 Floridians will die by Dec. 1. Mokdad said mandates will stop the spread of the virus. “Yes, because right now we’re heading into fall and winter and seasonality will increase COVID-19 circulation, we know that,” he said. Both doctors said we could see an increase in cases as schools reopen this month. They are encouraging everyone to keep following safety guidelines, wear your mask and don’t let your guard down. As of Thursday, Florida has reported a cumulative total of 510,389 COVID-19 infections and 7,871 deaths.
The good thing with throwing around forecasts randomly like this is eventually one of them will be right and you can shriek "See??!!! I was right!!" In other news, the 7 day MA is currently around 166 or so deaths a day, and either falling or stabilizing depending on how you look at the chart. Only 25 days to go until we'll be at 600 per day. And if we do actually get to 19,000 deaths by December, we still won't be even close to New York's 32,817 they managed to rack up in a month and a half. But I know you're rooting for Florida!
Now for some news from Tampa Bay... the headline is so hopeful.... the article hits the harsh realities. Florida hospital data shows good news. But here’s why the pandemic is far from over. Here's what we know from the most recent data on the outbreak in Florida. https://www.tampabay.com/news/healt...-but-heres-why-the-pandemic-is-far-from-over/ This is the first in a weekly series examining Florida’s coronavirus data from Tampa Bay Times Data Reporter Langston Taylor. Send questions or suggestions to ltaylor@tampabay.com. Here’s good news for Florida: fewer people are in the hospital for COVID-19 than a couple of weeks ago. It’s one of the most important signs in the fight against the coronavirus. If current hospitalizations continue to decline, as they have for the past two weeks, that’s a clue fewer people are infected right now and fewer people will die in the future. In mid-July, there were at any given time about 8,700 people in Florida hospitals whose primary diagnosis was COVID-19. In the week ending Tuesday, hospitalizations dropped to about 8,200. It sounds like a small difference — only about a 5 percent drop — but it looks steady. We can put a lot of trust in this number. Other ways to measure the coronavirus outbreak have more drawbacks. The total number of cases is handcuffed by how many people we test. The total number of deaths is a lagging indicator — it tells us how widespread the virus was a few weeks ago. And the value in the current hospitalizations number goes beyond providing an indication on how bad the pandemic is. It also measures current stress levels on the hospital system overall. Fewer patients means more room for everyone else who gets sick. I wish I could tell you when, exactly, this promising pattern began. Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration only began releasing the data to the public on July 10. Forty-seven other states released this data before Florida did, according to the COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer team led by journalists who analyze data nationwide. But hospitalizations probably hadn’t been declining for too long before then, if they were at all. Similar data from Miami-Dade County shows the number of patients admitted with COVID-19 was rising in that county until about July 22, and has been coming down since then. It would be odd if the statewide peak took place more than a couple weeks before not only the most populous county in Florida, but also the one that has been the epicenter of the outbreak. As nice as it is to know that hospitalizations are down, remember that trends can change. In late spring, the data indicated fewer and fewer people were contracting the coronavirus in Florida every day. That flipped after the state re-opened. More people were infected. The outbreak exploded. Deaths, which never fell too far, soared again. Now, three times as many people are dying from COVID-19 as they did at the initial “peak” in May. Changes don’t happen randomly. We know that between mid-March and mid-May, Floridians were leaving home less than half as much as normal. Testing capacity has grown over time. Schools and non-essential businesses closed. Concerts and sports (even those in the middle of a season) stopped cold-turkey. Nursing homes banned family visits. Now, Gov. Ron DeSantis is floating re-opening nursing home visits for some. And some major school districts are scheduled to open classrooms in late August, although plans change by the day. So if hospitalizations are down, why are deaths still skyrocketing? That’s because the state announces coronavirus deaths after a longer delay, making them a snapshot of a more distant past. It takes between a few days and two weeks after someone has died before they show up in the data. But deaths are naturally going to lag other indicators as well. People who die from COVID-19 were often hospitalized before that, tested positive before that and were infected even before that. The state’s early peak in deaths came the first week in May, a full month after its peak in cases during the first week of April. This time around, cases rose steadily through mid-July and peaked at about July 13. We would expect deaths to keep rising a few weeks after that, too. Case numbers dropped somewhat after peaking, before plummeting in recent days. But the threat of Tropical Storm Isaias closed the state’s public testing facilities over the weekend, so we should wait before reading too much into that. Even once deaths turn around, there is a long way to go. States where the pandemic hit earlier show that it can take months for death numbers to come down. Let’s say a goal would be to reduce the number of new deaths per day to less than 10 percent of a state’s peak. In Florida, that would mean reducing new deaths from 185 per day to just 18. While that sounds drastic, remember, that’s about where the state’s deaths were when Gov. Ron DeSantis issued stay-at-home orders in early April. Of the nation’s worst 25 states in deaths per capita (Florida ranks 17th), only eight have achieved that goal at all. All eight are Northeastern states where COVID-19 hit earlier and harder. In five of those eight, it took more than two months to reduce deaths to the 10-percent level. (The others were New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, where death numbers soared before falling more rapidly.) In Pennsylvania, for example, new deaths peaked at near 160 per day in early May, and didn’t fall below 16 until late July. In the 16 other states where deaths haven’t dropped that much yet, 10 hit their peak more than two months ago. This is to say, even if Florida deaths reverse course immediately and never spike again (a best-case scenario), it will probably take the state more than two months to fall below pre-shutdown levels and stay there. The pandemic is not close to being done.
Florida governor says hug with PPE on despite medical warning In an interview with CNN's Brianna Keilar, Dr. Adrian Burrowes said it is reckless and irresponsible for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to say it is safe to hug with PPE on during the coronavirus pandemic. CNN - https://tinyurl.com/yyhlbpen