Well now, you actually admitted a mistake. Color me shocked. Thank you for doing the honorable thing. You should have known this was BS. There's no way that number passed the smell test. California has 8k people hospitalized and Florida has 7 times that amount? I think not.
"DeSantis for the win" -- Florida a leader in cancelled football games. College football: Not surprisingly, state of Florida a leader when it comes to games canceled or postponed because of COVID https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story...-canceled-postponed-because-covid/3780960001/ This is 2020, so success will be defined in different ways. For UCF, this may not have been the season it expected record-wise, but this was by every other measure a successful year. The Knights finished the regular season 6-3. Although their second half against USF Friday wasn’t a masterpiece – the Bulls scored 32 points but came up short in a 58-46 shootout – they played nine games without interruption after the opener was canceled because of COVID-19 issues within the FIU program. "It's a testament to our players for taking accountability and protecting themselves,” UCF coach Josh Heupel said. “It's really a hard thing to do. Our entire program - players and staff alike - have done a great job and allowed us to get out there and play and compete." Nothing was guaranteed. Just ask each of the other six FBS programs in the state, all who have had at least two games canceled or postponed because of the coronavirus, FIU leading the way with six, FAU with five. In fact, it was anything but smooth in this state, which has had 22 games impacted, most because of issues with the Florida teams. With more than 100 FBS games having been canceled or postponed because of the coronavirus, Florida accounts for about 20 percent of those. Yet, the state has just 5.5 percent of the 127 schools playing in the FBS this season. From all indications, those teams have taken this virus seriously and implemented guidelines and protocols within their programs. But college football cannot be played in an NBA-like bubble and with up to 100 players in contact with each other and the general population on campus, this was nearly an impossible ask, especially in this state. Florida surpassed 1 million total cases Tuesday and has always been a hotspot when it comes to this virus. The state is led by a governor who two months ago dropped all statewide coronavirus-related restrictions and suggested our football teams – college and professional – open up their stadiums to full capacity. Since then, the numbers have surged. Fortunately, those who have treated the virus seriously and responsibly did not listen to Gov. Ron DeSantis and stadiums remain at 20 percent capacity at best. FIU (0-5) has the most stops and starts this season with one game in September, two in October and two in November. The Panthers have played on back-to-back weeks just once. They hope to finish the year with two rescheduled games, this week at Charlotte and Dec. 11 against ranked Marshall. Florida Atlantic (5-1) is not far behind, having squeezed in just six games. The Owls have had some bad luck, losing many of those games because of issues on the opponents' side. FAU is having a solid season in Willie Taggart’s first year, its only loss to Marshall, and hopes it can finish with rescheduled games against Georgia Southern and Southern Miss, both on the road, and possibly a bowl game. The three Power Five teams each went through a rough patch, with Florida’s coming in mid-October, Miami returning this week from a two-week shutdown and FSU now having had to cancel or postpone a game for a third consecutive week, one because Clemson traveled to Tallahassee with a player who tested positive for COVID-19. The Gators hope to make it at least to the Dec. 19 SEC title game where they will play Alabama. The Hurricanes were forced to postpone two games because of issues within their program and then switch their game this week when Wake Forest had to cancel. The Hurricanes now are playing at Duke Saturday. The Seminoles are in a holding pattern and some are wondering if they will even play again in 2020. “That’s what makes it so difficult, the players can’t let their guard down at any moment,” Miami coach Manny Diaz said. “We had done a really good job and it kind of got us there for a little bit. It’s tough. It just shows all it takes is one mistake in judgment and that could be the issue that makes some guys miss a game.”
Too funny. If they didn't cancel the games, you'd be all over DeSantis for being the reason these "super spreader" events were allowed to continue.
Actually in Florida they were Superspreader events.... didn't they allow fans to pack the stands in the games. Thanks for the reminder that these are also tragic Superspreader events. I can understand trying to get teams to play with precautions in place. But the local community positive testing rate should be below 5% before they are allowed to travel.
I'm not saying they are superspreader events. I'm saying that's what you would call them. And there you go. 5% some number you and the Church of COVID believe in. inb4 government this and that. Experts this and that. The experts suddenly said we only have to quarantine now for 10 days on a positive exposure, not 14. Adaptive modeling.
Superspreader Central Florida Gators coach insists he wants 90,000 fans at game despite pandemic https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...n-mullen-full-stadium-fans-the-swamp-covid-19 Pack The Swamp? Gov. Ron DeSantis gives clearance for full capacity stadiums in Florida https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/f...arance-for-full-capacity-stadiums-in-florida/
DeSantis lifted state imposed restrictions, stating that each franchise could make its own decisions. Get government out of it. Right move.
"Winning" with fake information As COVID spreads, Florida governor’s spokesman pushes misinformation https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/p...0201203-34c63unxu5h7bgjnmj7miv27ni-story.html Since taking the top communications post for Florida’s governor in July, Fred Piccolo Jr. has used his personal Twitter account to spread misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. During the gravest health crisis the state has ever faced, the governor’s spokesman has questioned the efficacy of mask wearing and mask mandates at least 16 times, and has claimed that COVID-19 is less deadly than the flu at least three times. Only about 3,100 people follow Piccolo on Twitter, and while he identifies himself on the account as the governor’s spokesman, he doesn’t appear to use it as an official messaging channel. Piccolo, a public employee who government records say makes over $154,000 a year, offered “context” for his tweets. The South Florida Sun Sentinel asked independent experts to fact-check his tweets and the context he offered. RELATED: Secrecy and spin: How Florida’s governor misled the public on the COVID-19 pandemic » “It makes everyone’s jobs more difficult,’ Leslie M. Beitsch, chairman of behavioral sciences and social medicine at Florida State University College of Medicine, said after reviewing a half-dozen of Piccolo’s tweets. “But worse than that, it politicizes something that we are going to struggle to un-politicize. We need to get on the same page, all of us.” “I guess from the perspective of someone working within public health, we would have really preferred to have a unified message from the top down, but instead we have a fight in messaging between political sources and the expert in the field,” said Dr. Jill Roberts, a professor at the University of South Florida’s College of Public Health, after reviewing Piccolo’s tweets. Masks Since taking office in late July, Piccolo has tweeted about masks at least 16 times. In his tweets, he has shared questionable scientific studies about the effectiveness of masks, mischaracterized other scientific studies that show masks work to stop the spread of the virus, and consistently cast doubt on the efficacy of mask mandates as a policy tool. He has only told Floridians to wear masks once on his Twitter feed. “Keep distancing, and wearing a mask when you can’t distance,” Piccolo said on Aug. 28. RELATED: Florida's COVID response - a timeline of secrecy » “What he doesn’t understand is math,” Roberts said after reading a Nov 18. tweet in which Piccolo cited the results of a Danish study on masks published in early November. “This isn’t statistically significant, this Danish study didn’t have enough power to make any conclusions whatsoever.” When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study on Nov. 27 showing that the virus spread more slowly in counties in Kansas that had mask ordinances than in counties without a mask requirement, Piccolo shared criticism of the study and its media coverage. “Must read. Major bias alert,” he said. “This is an area where the science is becoming firmly established. Masks are effective. They protect other people, and the newest wrinkle is that the wearer is themselves protected,” said Beitsch. “The Governor has always advocated wearing a mask, he just does not believe in mandates.” Piccolo said via email. “He believes they are both unenforceable and a dangerous precedent in the exercise of government power. At the same time he knows the data points to the reality that masks, while a tool in the toolbox, is not a panacea.” “I would disagree with that,” Roberts said. “I think mandates are pretty powerful, and you can find data on the different counties when they put mask policies into place. In terms of being unenforceable, that’s not at all true. The reality is that just simply supporting the measure would have made all the difference.” ‘Less deadly than the flu’ “In any year we see 25 to 30 thousand people die because of influenza. How many times that are we at deaths for COVID right now?” Roberts said after reviewing Piccolo’s tweet. “We’re talking over 200k. How could you possibly try to sell that message?” “I should’ve said kids rather than people,” Piccolo said in an email, before saying that the COVID-19 and the flu are equally deadly in children under 5 years old. In other tweets, Piccolo has said that the COVID-19 is as deadly as the flu for those under 20, and also for those under 60. All of those claims are inaccurate. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, COVID-19 killed about 100 children in the six months between March and September 2020. If the coronavirus continues its current trend, it will likely be slightly deadlier in children than the flu. Seasonal flu kills between 37 to 188 children a year. COVID-19 is already twice as deadly as the flu for those 20 to 49 years old, and five times as deadly for those 50 to 69 years old. But experts say that even making the comparison by age group misses a crucial point: COVID-19 is many times more infectious than the flu. “The issue here isn’t that kids are going to get sick and die,” said Beitsch, “which isn’t trivial — it’s that the kids transmit the disease to a bunch of other people who will get sick and die. The argument isn’t about flu vs COVID-19, its about transmission to people who will get sick.”