Since they had an announced maintenance window earlier today, this is not surprising. It is surprising that anyone missed the big message on the left side of the portal announcing the maintenance window to update the data feeds into portal when looking at it earlier today before 5pm EDT. Not not to worry the entire portal is back up now that the announced maintenance window has been completed.
Hecklers, gaffes dog DeSantis as coronavirus rages in Florida The Trump ally is on the defensive as Election Day nears. https://www.politico.com/states/flo...antis-as-coronavirus-rages-in-florida-1302399 He whiffed on a question about the death of civil rights icon John Lewis. Hecklers disrupted him. And he awkwardly distanced himself from his own administration’s back-to-school order. Faced with a bad and worsening outbreak, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has lost his coronavirus swagger. Throughout the pandemic, DeSantis has traveled the state holding televised press briefings to highlight numbers that put his administration's response in a favorable light. The events have been marked by a confident DeSantis focusing on the positives and lashing out at those who bring up the negatives. But as Florida has turned into a global coronavirus hotspot, the near-daily briefings have turned the Republican governor, one of President Donald Trump’s biggest allies, into a national punchline. Unlike New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who successfully used his coronavirus spotlight to elevate his profile and dispatch with critics, DeSantis keeps finding new ways to embarrass himself. The gaffes and worsening news have fed a national perception that Florida is consumed in chaos and leaderless as the virus rips unchecked through a must-win state for Trump less than four months from Election Day. On Monday, a day in which Florida again registered more than 10,000 new Covid-19 cases, DeSantis was interrupted by protesters who crashed the press briefing in Orlando. They screamed “shame on you” as police escorted them out, according to video of the event. DeSantis, speaking over the disruption, said the state would not “defund the police.” Police budgets have become a rallying cry for protests across the country in recent months, but they weren't the focus of the hecklers on Monday. “And we will not be defunding the police, don’t worry about that,” DeSantis said. “We’re going to be supporting our men and women in law enforcement.” Protesters could be heard banging on windows as the press conference continued, forcing DeSantis and officials at OneBlood, a blood donation center where the event was held, to speak over the noise. The purpose of the briefing was to stress the importance of plasma donation as need rises amid the pandemic. “And we will not be defunding the police, don’t worry about that,” DeSantis said. “We’re going to be supporting our men and women in law enforcement.” Protesters could be heard banging on windows as the press conference continued, forcing DeSantis and officials at OneBlood, a blood donation center where the event was held, to speak over the noise. The purpose of the briefing was to stress the importance of plasma donation as need rises amid the pandemic. “I hope none of them need convalescent plasma,” said Bud Scholl, the company’s CEO, as he talked over the bangs and continued shouts of protesters. Like other recent coronavirus briefings, the theme of the day was drowned out by the day's events, which repeatedly have sidelined the governor's attempted pandemic narrative and painted him as losing his grip on the situation. That perception is starting to concern some Republicans. “It’s not that he does not care, it’s that he seems to have a hard time showing people that he does. He truly cares about policy, the data, and donning what he believes is right for Floridians, but that doesn’t always get conveyed,” said one Republican legislator. “He’s constantly focused on the substance and execution, but some of these self-inflicted wounds distract away from that reality.” The GOP lawmaker said he supports DeSantis, but is concerned the daily chaos is hurting the response. “Given a choice between the steak and the sizzle, I’ll pick steak every day of the week and twice on Sunday,” the person added. It was the second time in a week DeSantis has faced hecklers. In Miami last week, Thomas Kennedy, an immigrant rights advocate and persistent DeSantis critic, drew national headlines when he yelled “shame on you” as DeSantis started his coronavirus briefing. “You are an embarrassment,” Kennedy shouted. “We are getting record-breaking cases every day and you are doing nothing.” Florida has reported more than 10,000 new cases in 10 of the past 11 days, including 10,058 on Monday, a day on which there was an additional 90 deaths. The state’s positivity rate has not been under 10 percent for nearly a month. DeSantis also drew criticism after a coronavirus briefing in St. Augustine on Saturday, where he was asked by Vice News about that city’s decision to move a Confederate monument. The question referenced Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and civil rights icon who died Saturday. Lewis was lauded by elected officials of both political parties after his passing, but DeSantis punted on his chance to say anything about Lewis’ death or the removal of Confederate monuments, which has become a growing topic of debate in Florida in recent weeks. “I appreciate the question, but we are trying to focus on the coronavirus,” DeSantis said with a noticeable nervous twitch, before calling on another reporter. The pass won DeSantis a round of national headlines, again for the wrong reasons: He had failed the politically easy task of praising a civil rights icon from a neighboring state. On Monday in Orlando, DeSantis had another head-scratching moment when he distanced himself from his own administration's order that schools open classrooms starting next month. The order was issued July 6 by Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, who was appointed by and answers to DeSantis, as Trump ramped up his public push to get students back into classrooms by the August start of the school year. The push to get kids back into classrooms as the pandemic worsens has drawn scrutiny. On Monday, the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, sued to block the Corcoran order. DeSantis seemed to imply that the order was done without his approval. “I didn’t issue an executive order, that was the Department of Education,” DeSantis said in response to a question Monday. “You know, they have a board and they do, they do different things.” Corcoran said on Friday that the governor had been involved in the order. “What the governor did was allow us to execute an emergency order that said, ‘here are all the options we want available to parents,’” Corcoran said during a virtual town hall meeting. Neither the governor’s office nor the Department of Education responded to requests seeking clarification.
Appreciate the heads up. There aren't 802 deaths this week and reporting that there are is just misleading and completely inaccurate. There might have been 802 deaths reported this week, but this data is trying to push a narrative. Thus, I'll make sure to note that it isn't an accurate depiction of what the true story in Florida is.
Also, GWB, as I am not familiar with this site, can you tell me why she is showing total tests for the week of 7/12 as a bit over 60k when the Florida DoH Portal shows way more tests (both positive and negative)? Her data is weekly, just like the Florida dashboard. Incidentally, the DoH portal is backed up by the testing facilities publishing data.
You can go to top level website for detailed information on the source for the totals displayed on her portal — including links to the backing information. The real question is why the totals on the DeSantis portal disagree with figures presented by hospitals and other sources in Florida. As well as why does the DeSantis portal always provide information making the COVID situation look more rosy. Read information on her data sources and feeds here - https://floridacovidaction.com/library/
Did you see how I actually pointed out a specific discrepancy between the site the woman put together and the Florida dashboard? I pointed to a specific data set on a specific week and asked what the reason for the variance was. If you are touting one source over the other, you'd think you could answer why we should use that one source. Additionally, if you're going to claim "the real question" is why the totals on the "DeSantis portal" do not match the hospitals and "other sources" in Florida, POINT OUT THE SPECIFIC DATA the same way I did it. Don't make generalized statements, don't throw around ambiguous accusations....own the fuck up and show what is wrong so we can investigate. OR don't make the claim. That's how we solve the differences. I took you off ignore after one week to see if you've actually started to come around to understanding this, but I'm beginning to fear you're just doing the same "doom casting".
A good read. FAU EXPERT: FLORIDA’S GRIM CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK IS FALSE NARRATIVE BY PAUL OWERS | 7/20/2020 Rebel Cole, Ph.D., a professor of finance in Florida Atlantic University’s College of Business. Rebel Cole For several weeks, Cole has analyzed coronavirus figures provided by the state and offers daily hospital bed capacity updates on Twitter, noting that new cases are having minimal impact on bed availability. To help people understand what is being reported, Cole and Jon Taylor, a Ph.D. student at FAU, have created a COVID-19 data tracker. Based on his analysis, Cole believes that Florida schools and universities should return to in-person classes in the fall, noting that students with respiratory problems or school employees whose age puts them at risk for the disease could learn or work remotely from home. Keeping schools closed would continue to compromise the education of students, particularly the economically disadvantaged, many of whom do not have broadband, internet access or even computers, he said. The economy also would continue to suffer because millions of parents can’t go back to work if schools remain closed. “By doing this, you’re hurting the most vulnerable economically,” he said. “It’s a bad policy.” Testing has skyrocketed in Florida, increasing from about 30,000 a day during the second week of June to 60,000 a day two weeks ago, to almost 100,000 tests a day this past week, according to Cole. The state is conducting more daily tests than the entire country was reporting in the last two weeks of March, when schools and businesses closed and people were ordered to stay home. On July 12, the Florida Department of Health reported that the state posted 15,300 new coronavirus cases on July 11, easily breaking the one-day state and national record. But many of those cases were the result of tests administered one week or more before that date, according to Cole. “It’s the day the tests were reported to the Department of Health, not the day the test was administered,” he said. “The daily numbers are totally unreliable.” Cole said a recent spike in “daily deaths” is based upon faulty reporting. He examined the 156 deaths reported on July 16 and found that only 18 actually died on July 15 or 16. Most were reports of deaths that had occurred days and even weeks earlier. “We need to focus on death by ‘date of death’ rather than by ‘date of a data dump,’” he said. In a Twitter post July 11, Cole wrote that he found 333 COVID-19 testing labs in Florida reported 100 percent positive tests, meaning the labs didn’t disclose any tests that were negative for the disease. That makes the state’s percentage of positive tests appear higher than it actually is, undermining public confidence and skewing the debate over whether schools and businesses should be open, Cole said. He added that the state’s figures reveal less than 10 percent of the hospitalized patients are 34 or younger, while death totals show that people under age 35 are about four times as likely to die of the seasonal flu as COVID-19. Even the daily fatality rate for age 75 and older has plummeted from about 40 percent in April to less than 5 percent in late June. It is clear that improved treatments have made the disease less deadly, according to Cole. “Follow the data, and the data show that children, high-schoolers and college students are not at risk,” he said. Cole also points out that the original strain of the COVID-19 virus, known as “D614,” mutated into a new strain known as “G614,” which researchers have found to be about 10 times as infectious as the original virus. It is G614 that is prevalent across the Sun Belt, where positive cases have soared, but it appears much less lethal than D614, he noted.
I've heard that mutated strains of viruses are generally less lethal than their predecessors as the more lethal strains kill off their hosts and therefore cannot spread. Any truth to that?