If you live outside of Florida I bet you believe that those of us still crazy enough to live here are on borrowed time. It is a Covid hotspot dontcha know. We are on the cusp a bubonic Armageddon. Bodies are piling up in morgues. Nurses and physicians are committing mass suicide out of despair brought on by this plague inflicted by Donald Trump. We're talking wrath of God. Beirut bomb levels of catastrophe. Swarming locusts. Dogs and cats, living together. Mass hysteria. Must be true. I saw it on the TV.
Oh wait, that was Ghostbusters.
Ready for the truth? Can you handle the truth? Let me give you the report for Sarasota and Manatee counties. This is the metro area that encompasses Sarasota and Bradenton. This is the fastest growing area in all of Florida. What is actually happening in terms of Covid should shock you.
Florida is home to 21,933,000 people (see here). How many have succumbed to Covid since March 6, when Florida's Government started keeping tabs on the disease? 7,084. That means 0.032% of the population have died from Covid in the last six months. To put this into perspective, the CDC reports for 2017 that 46,044 Floridians died from heart disease. I do not recall nightly news broadcasts wailing hysterically about fat Floridians eating double cheeseburgers and clogging their arteries. But less than 8,000 deaths in six months and we are supposed to put on masks and hide in our closets? Nonsense.
Let's take a closer look at Sarasota County over the last 30 days. According to the US Census, Sarasota County was inhabited by 433,742 souls as of July 1, 2019. Here are the numbers according to the Florida Covid 19 "Dashboard." Just follow this link and click on Sarasota County. Five thousand nine hundred seventy four Sarasotans tested positive since the first of July (July 7 to be precise). That is 1.3% of the total county population. Hospitalized? 360, which represents 0.08%. How about deaths? 160. That is roughly consistent with the number of deaths recorded state-wide--0.036%.
Ever hear of the concept of "perspective?" I am sure that the families of those whose kith and kin perished from Covid and/or co-morbidities exacerbated by Covid don't care a whit about the stats. But the truth is the disease is not spreading like wildfire. People are not flooding the hospitals. Just look at today's stats for the major medical center in the region:
Sarasota Memorial Hospital:
Total hospital beds: 839
Today’s patient census: 642
Today's COVID+ patients total: 70 (no change from yesterday)
Most of the media is irresponsible and alarmist. They report positive tests as if those equate with people destined for the hospital and then the morgue. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Yes, Covid is a disease and a very small percentage of the population will die if they contract it. But it is not a health crisis that requires shutting down businesses and forcing kids to stay away from school. It is time for the American people to demand honest reporting and deal with real facts and actual science instead of the voodoo scare tactics being spread by partisan pundits and doctors masquerading as experts.
Yeah, Right,
I acknowledge your expertise in quoting Roberts, who ruled on an injuction not a law, which puts this right back to the locals who are saying that yes, gambling in a Casino is safer than attending religous services, because "science". I hear him loud and clear, political science is important, religous services not. He's destroying his and the court's image of impartiality and just conduct rather well.
I'm sure the folks being economicly impoverished will be made whole by the "right to govern" government that declares them non-essential, orders the police off the streets when antifa shows up, releases those charged with crimes immediately, empties prisons, and chases the mask-less for violation of the orders of local government executive. This is how your fellow communist sympathizers sow disention. Feel free to lable, or libel, away from down under. Like you I'm not in NYC, Portland, Seattle or Minneapolis. I'm equally not in terror of a viral infecct so dangerous you have to be tested to tell you had it and 99.6% who do survive. The kabuki won't last too much longer.
Posted by: Fred | 10 August 2020 at 10:58 AM
The trouble is that America thinks it’s fighting the battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes. The truth is more like Napoleons retreat from Moscow. You are thinking tactics, not logistics.
What makes this virus so dangerous is not it’s lethality but it’s infectious characteristics. It is infectious for a number of days BEFORE you have symptoms. It therefore requires the public to have the intellectual ability to realise that locking the stable door after the horse has bolted is not a winning strategy.
But statistics! Yes, how about statistics; here’s one. You have five million confirmed cases. That is just 1.6% of the population. Care to think what a 16% case load might do to the health system? Think logistics!
That is why doctors and epidemiologists are running around with their hair on fire.
Posted by: walrus | 10 August 2020 at 03:16 PM
walrus
Only the hysteria has to do with the hospital statistics. You are stoking the fires.
Posted by: turcopolier | 10 August 2020 at 06:19 PM
Fred: "gambling in a Casino is safer than attending religous services, because "science"."
Because "common-sense", Fred.
There is a reason why attendance of religious services is called a "congregation".
I'll give you three guesses why that name is chosen, and why that makes it impossible for the authorities to exempt religious services from social-distancing limits.
As I said: "common-sense", which seems to be in very short supply nowadays.
Posted by: Yeah, Right | 10 August 2020 at 06:26 PM
Yeah, Right,
Congregation: a group of people assembled for religious worship. Casinos are where people crowd together to spend money, drink, eat and socialize.
Walrus,
you mean people aren't going to die at the rate the fear mongers have been propagandizing for months. "Think logistics!" I don't recall NYC using that hospital ship at anything near capacity, nor LA. Nor do I hear any calls to build new ICU units. On a completely unrelated notes is there any word on how that professor with the Imperial College model is doing, still employed and still screwing his mistress? (Unlike millions around the world, who are now unemployed and getting screwed by government at multiple levels. )
Posted by: Fred | 10 August 2020 at 09:31 PM
Fred: "This is how your fellow communist sympathizers sow disention."
No, you appear to be quite capable of sowing dissension on your own.
In this very thread you have decried the authority of governments to govern by declaring their decisions to be unconstitutional, while being equally dismissive of a decision of the US Supreme Court which, very obviously, is constitutionally authorized to make such a decision.
Cognitive dissonance, writ large.
And, again, in this very thread you have both been dismissive the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on the basis that he is unelected, while being equally dismissive of regulations authorized by State Governors who, indisputably, are elected to their office.
Cognitive dissonance, times two.
Because you appear to be cherry-picking your principles based on nothing more than your prejudices.
Fred: "The kabuki won't last too much longer."
Yes, yes, and I'm sure there is a little humbug of a man hidden behind the curtain.
Or... maybe not. Maybe all that you are fuming against is a government that governs, and a judiciary that judges, and both taking their advice (though, I'll point out, not their marching orders) from the best expert advisors that they can find.
Imperfectly, yes, just like everywhere else in the world.
But here is a dangerous thought: they may be right, and you may be mistaken.
Posted by: Yeah, Right | 11 August 2020 at 12:40 AM
Colonel,
"IMO there are not enough forces to declare martial law across the country"
I'm very glad to hear your assessment. The limitation of forces domestically would be another restraint to the dictatorial tendency the POTUS might or might not have.
Posted by: TonyL | 11 August 2020 at 02:55 AM
Meanwhile in the Black and Blue revolutationary lands:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8612317/Cook-County-prosecutor-Kim-Foxx-dismissed-25-000-felony-cases-including-Jussie-Smollett.html
25,000 felony cases dismissed by the prosecutor. That bodes well for "justice". In Seatle the left scored a victory by convincing the black police chief to resign and Portland, well what's not on CNN doesn't happen.
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1293073982061608960
Posted by: Fred | 11 August 2020 at 09:29 AM
Yeah, Right,
I am grieved that a resident of Austarlia is so hurt by my comments.
"decried the authority of governments to govern"
Not so. I posit that the governments mandating that some conduct of citizens can be declared "non-essential" to be unconstitutional by both multiple state and the federal constitutions. Public safety was the same rationale used by FDR in incarcerating Japanese Americans in 1942. As to the Chief Justice, I'm sure he's a nice guy. I disagree with his judgement and am in no way dismissive of him, though am of your legal reasonings as non-American pontificating on what the United States should do, though they are, in their own way, quite humourous.
Posted by: Fred | 11 August 2020 at 12:13 PM