"DeSantis for the win" Not content with excluding some mayors - DeSantis refuses to listen to COVID concerns of the other mayors and demands they tell their residents that COVID is not a problem. Miami-Dade mayors met with Gov. Ron DeSantis about COVID. They didn’t want a pep talk. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article244225972.html Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis came to Miami on Tuesday for a meeting with local mayors on COVID-19, and they didn’t want to hear a pep talk. The bipartisan group of municipal leaders told the Republican governor he needed to convey the urgency of the health crisis facing the Miami area. At a meeting where DeSantis touted the promise of high school football in the fall and minimized the COVID risk for children, mayors told him Miami-Dade families were scared about putting their kids back in the classroom. The mayors also told DeSantis they needed better information from the state contact tracers on the sources of Miami-Dade’s runaway spread of COVID as cities and the county ponder another wave of business closures or restrictions on public spaces. “We have to make a lot of decisions .... We need the ability to have as much actionable data as we can possibly have, so we can make intelligent decisions that we can justify to our residents and to our business owners,” Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said during the public discussion with DeSantis in the 29th-floor offices of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez. “There is a significant amount of pressure, right now, for us to shut down at some level,” said Suarez, a Republican. “If things do not improve, quickly, over the next week or two, I think we’re going to be under a significant amount of pressure to do something like that.” For the first time during the COVID crisis, DeSantis wore a mask while he spoke at a microphone during a media event. Miami-Dade’s emergency rules require masks in all indoor spaces, but DeSantis removed his before speaking at a Miami press conference Monday. On a day when Miami-Dade’s hospitalization report showed COVID patients exceeding intensive-care capacity for the first time and coronavirus ambulance calls surging, DeSantis told the mayors Miami-Dade had an “abundance” of hospital beds. He described Miami-Dade as getting hit the hardest by COVID and encouraged the county to do what’s needed to tackle the virus. “You don’t have to agree with me on everything, but you’re the leaders at this place in this time ... and people need to follow it,’‘ DeSantis said. He thanked them for “the different perspective,” and concluded: “It’s important to take a stand now and turn this thing around.” Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber, a Democrat, said too much encouraging talk from elected leaders sends the wrong message in a county that will plunge into a hospital crisis if the public doesn’t do a better job protecting itself from the virus. Gelber suggested that the public was getting mixed messages and referred to the recent visit from Vice President Mike Pence in which he commended the progress Florida was making as cases soared. “When people hear that. I think people will follow a path of least resistance,’‘ Gelber said. “Some people will say... ‘one of my leaders just is saying I don’t have to, so I don’t think I do.’ ” Gelber acknowledged that the governor can disagree about issuing a mask mandate but urged him to at least send a strong and clear message about wearing them. “I think we need a sense of urgency in our community right now, a true sense of urgency, and I think it really has to come from, from the president, from the governor,’‘ he said. “We’re trying our best, but people will follow the messages they hear from the people that they believe in and they respect.” LOCAL ACTION TO CURTAIL SPREAD Gimenez, a Republican congressional candidate, has already ordered a 10 p.m. curfew to try and cut down on the late-night socializing he’s blamed on the county’s surge in COVID cases. Last week he ordered restaurants to close their dining rooms, and casinos to close completely. “The message that has to be from all of us is we need to wear our masks indoors and out. We need to keep social distancing,” Gimenez said from behind a black Office of the Mayor face mask. “We need to wash our hands. We need to keep our hands away from our face. We need to have plenty of disinfectant always around.” Carlos Migoya, CEO of the county’s Jackson hospital system, said COVID could overwhelm available staffing if the situation worsens over the next several weeks. He said more contact tracers and other help requested by cities won’t free up beds or stop the spread of COVID quickly enough. “We have to do something now,” he said. “What I need to see from everyone here...is use your police department, firefighters, all municipal workers, all public officials, be out there being ambassadors and enforcing the masking, social distancing and cleaning hands as a way to get this done.” In addition to DeSantis, Gimenez, Suarez and Gelber, Migoya’s audience included the mayors of Miami Gardens, Pinecrest, Doral and Bal Harbour. After the meeting, DeSantis communications director Helen Aguirre Ferré posted a message on Twitter that touted the governor’s cooperation with local governments in the state’s COVID response. “Florida is a large and very diverse state, which does not easily lend itself to a one-size-fits-all approach. On a county level, @GovRonDeSantis believes it is important to have a united effort and speak with one voice to the extent possible as we saw today in @MiamiDadeCounty,” Ferréwrote. The county’s COVID numbers reached new alarming levels on Tuesday. Adaily trackerof Miami-Dade’s supply of hospital beds showed more COVID patients in intensive care than the reported census of ICU beds — with capacity crossing the 100% mark for the first time, to 106%. The calculation is based on daily reports from hospitals, and includes ICU patients in beds that haven’t formally been converted to intensive care. Ambulance and other rescue calls tied to COVID also soared, to 218 on Monday. Before the Fourth of July holiday weekend, that number hadn’t topped 150. The county also reported 2,090 new COVID cases out of about 6,800 people tested. That meant 31% of the day’s tests came back positive, triple the county’s target of 10%. Tuesday’s media event was designed to broadcast unity among state and municipal leaders. But it got off to a rocky start when Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez, uninvited but leading the county’s second-largest city, arrived at County Hall to join the event.The Republican was turned away at the Clark Center lobby, and said a DeSantis staffer told him he couldn’t attend. Asked about Hernandez, DeSantis said he wasn’t aware of the situation and would be happy to meet with him. Hernandez has also clashed with Gimenez during the COVID crisis, one of several mayors who complained about being in the dark on countywide emergency orders that cities must enforce. Cities may impose stricter rules than the county, and some did during the first wave of business closures in March and April. Doral Mayor J.C. Bermudez called for an end to the piecemeal approach to shutdowns and rules, calling for cities, the county and even Florida to be “going in the same direction.” “I say that because it does no good to have one rule in Doral and one rule in Miami,” the Republican mayor said, “because everybody in our cities travels from one to the other.” SHARP RESPONSES ON SCHOOL OPENING The sharpest exchange came after DeSantis asked mayors how their communities were feeling about reopening schools in the fall. In recent days, DeSantis has knocked down the idea of COVID making it impossible for schools to reopen because local governments already allow stores like Walmart and Home Depot to operate. When Gelber said a mandate for reopening schools conveys too much confidence about safety, DeSantis interrupted him. “There is risk in everything,” he said. “What’s the level of risk for school-age children?... Fortunately, the risk is relatively low.” Miami Gardens Mayor Oliver Gilbert pointed out reopening classrooms involves a large number of adults, too, because the school system is Miami-Dade’s largest employer. “It’s cafeteria workers. And it’s bus drivers,” he said. “And it’s teachers. I hear you say minimal risk. This conversation would go a different direction if just one child contracts COVID-19 and dies.” Later, asked by a reporter if he would allow Miami-Dade’s school system to keep all buildings closed in the fall, DeSantis didn’t answer directly but cautioned against ignoring the downsides of another period of mandated home learning. “What about having football season, things like that? We’ve got a lot of young kids who this is their ticket to be able to go to college through athletics,’‘ said DeSantis who played baseball through his college years. “Next, what happens to all those dreams and all those hopes, and all those aspirations? And that is something that’s majorly important to me. The growth and development of our school kids is majorly important to me. “And just think about, like when I was in high school, if you would have just canceled my season in my year, that would have been big time devastating for me. And I think that’s probably true for a lot of people,’‘ he said. “We want to see opportunity for the students, and we want to see, obviously, with a parental choice for them to be able to exercise that for distance learning if they want. But I think we just have to give as many opportunities for kids as possible.”
If anyone is interested in the data and the real situation, feel free to read the DeSantis thread. I post actual data, not just articles and narratives. But that won't be as fun as saying Florida is burning and everyone is dying.
"DeSantis for the win" If you want to know why coronavirus is spiking in the US, compare Florida with Illinois The two states took two very different approaches — and now Floridians are paying with their lives https://www.independent.co.uk/voice...-illinois-covid-19-donald-trump-a9619286.html Coronavirus numbers in the United States over the last week have been terrifying. Cases have been rising precipitously throughout the country: Ohio, Louisiana, and Tennessee have all averaged more than 1,000 new cases per day. Georgia has averaged more than 3,000 per day. California is over 8,000. Texas and Florida are both over 9,000. And Florida in particular appears to be accelerating: on Sunday it reported 15,300 new cases in one day, a record for any state in the US, and on Monday it was almost 13,000. The spike in cases is not just a result of more testing; percentage of positive tests has also been increasing. In the last month Arizona's positive test rate went from 12.7 percent to 26.8 percent; Florida's went from 4.1 percent to 19.1 percent. While the infection rages out of control in Florida, Texas, and Arizona, though, other parts of the country have had real successes in fighting Covid. In particular, a quick, coordinated, and sustained response in my own state of Illinois has quietly but decidedly reduced case numbers and deaths. Illinois' achievement is both a model and an accusation. It points a way forward for other states.It also shows that the disaster facing the country now was thoroughly preventable. State officials in Illinois have managed to contain the virus by acting early, aggressively, and imaginatively. In mid-March, with only about 100 cases in the state, Chicago's Mayor Lori Lightfoot cancelled the annual St Patrick's Day Parade, and Governor J B Pritzker closed schools. He delivered a shelter-in-place order on March 20. At the same time, before the the caseload had reached crisis levels, Pritzker brought in proactive measures to increase healthcare capacity. He called retired doctors and nurses to return to work. He also ordered McCormick Place convention center to be converted into a 3,000-bed field hospital — a step that proved unnecessary, but which shows how seriously he took the crisis. The state worked ceaselessly to increase testing, and by early June had enough capacity that anyone in the state concerned about their Covid status could get a test. From less than 10,000 tests a day in April, the state now tests almost 40,000 people daily. Public officials in Illinois have also been consistent in telling the public that the virus is serious, and in urging people to take precautions. In my own mostly working-class northwestside Latinx neighborhood, these warnings seem to have been effective. In grocery stores and pharmacies, everyone wears masks. Businesses have installed plastic shields at registers to protect workers. When walking outside, most people responsibly social distance. This isn't to say that every aspect of Illinois' response has worked perfectly. The state went ahead with its March primary election rather than postponing it, a controversial decision which may have led to unnecessary deaths. Pritzker has done little to release vulnerable prisoners. His failure there was responsible for sparking one of the worst Covid outbreaks in the country in Cook County Jail. Nor did Illinois escape a serious outbreak. The state never posted New York numbers, but in mid-May, 191 deaths were reported in a single day. Overall, more than 7,000 people have died. In April and May, the state was regularly reaching more than 2,000 new cases a day, with a high of more than 4,000. That makes it more impressive that the state has managed to get the outbreak under control. Even as restaurants and bars have begun to cautiously reopen and increased testing is in place, new cases in the state are hovering around 1,000 per day. Deaths in the last few days have been in the 20s. Those are the lowest numbers since the beginning of the outbreak in March. Pritzker's aggressive, multi-pronged efforts to promote masking, social isolation, testing, and healthcare capacity stands in sharp contrast to the actions of governors like Florida's Ron DeSantis. In March, while Pritzker was closing schools and businesses, DeSantis left stay-at-home orders to local authorities, despite a rapidly rising caseload. Since then he's consistently downplayed dangers from the virus, even as cases have spiked over the last week. Disney World is reopening, just as many hospital report they have already run out of ICU beds. And deaths are slowly but ominously creeping up. Florida hit a one-day record high of 120 deaths from Covid on July 9. Illinois' numbers could climb again too. Coronavirus hasn't been eliminated in the state by any means. Relaxing stay-at-home orders is a risk. And there's a limit to what local officials can do as long as the federal response remains catastrophically inadequate. Still, Pritzker has shown how much can be done statewide despite Trump's malevolent incompetence. Illinois has not done everything perfectly. But there's no doubt Pritzker has saved hundreds and perhaps thousands of lives. He's largely done the right thing for his constituents. In the coming weeks, I fear we'll see how badly DeSantis and other governors have failed theirs.
Florida is feeling the effects of poor governance. DeSantis thought reopening the economy was more important than controlling Covid. Now he is learning the economy will slow down on its own due to Covid AND there is now a massive Covid outbreak. The two are inseparable.
The Florida situation is bad exactly what the medical experts warned might happen 4-5 weeks ago in 3-4 weeks ( deaths increased around a week ago ). It is very clear now that an outbreak in new cases, no matter how young the average, eventually raises the death count significantly 4 weeks later. The medical community is struggling to keep up now it's very real even if it doesn't impact you personally.
Try to keep up it was only days ago you were quoting daily death rates of 40-60 like that was good ( it's not ) and now we have 130+ in three US states. You just seem lost.
What do we have here, leftists pushing BS again for political reasons? Death per million so far: NY 1679 FL 210 Again, the left pushing bullshit and every TDS Democrat swallowing it whole. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us