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I was just talking to my contact at the local hospital. She says they have deaths that are NOT being reported on the website. She had to work on the covid ward yesterday, she really has no reason to lie and say that she is seeing deaths in her hospital when the reports say zero deaths.
If she had a death today or yesterday or even two days ago it may not yet be reported until the death certificate is produced. That can take a week to ten days. Daily numbers of deaths are useless when reported daily, one needs to wait a week then look back a week. End of month reporting would be far more accurate if say on August 31 a report came out that gave deaths from July 24 to August 24. Even bi-weekly if it didn't report the current week.
That was at least a month ago and no the officers were not vaccinated. One was here in Volusia County. While I know many, including me and my husband, who got Covid after fully vaccinated I know no one who ended up in the hospital who was vaccinated. While I don't know them directly I have heard of several unvaccinated and young who have ended in the hospital and some died. One just this past Monday night died in South Carolina.
My husband had what he referred to as the worst cold he ever had but nothing like the flu we had a few years back. Came on quick, lots of congestion and cough but nothing in the lungs and tired. I had a very mild case. Maybe a small fever early on but then just a little runny nose, no congestion, and a cough that was different than my normal reflux cough. It took my husband 5 days to get off the couch. I was ok in a day.
It does seem to strike particularly hard those who are extremely overweight but it also has struck people who are not overweight. Our neighbor who is 66 but extremely healthy and active but unvaccinated ended up in the hospital. He luckily lived.
I don't fault DeSantis; however, there are things I disagree with him on like his not allowing businesses to mandate vaccinations like cruise ships. He lost that battle. I am 50/50 on the masks, especially in early education where it is important in language development and social skills. Young kids can't get vaccinated so maybe, if there is no indication that they get seriously ill, that getting it is like the measles parties that used to occur.
Adults on the other hand should get vaccinated or risk complications. With the Delta virus it is not will I get it, but when will I get it.
"Florida is the only state where more people are dying of COVID now than ever before"
DeSantis' anti-scientific, incompetent epidemic policies cause great suffering in Florida relative to other states. Despite the availability of both vaccines and antibody infusions, Florida residents are dying of COVID infections at record rates.
<<But then came the hypercontagious Delta variant, which continues to hit Florida harder than anywhere else in the country.
The result? DeSantis just added another, less flattering distinction to his résumé. When COVID first surged across the Sun Belt last summer, the average number of Floridians dying of the disease every 24 hours peaked at 185, according to the New York Times’s state-by-state COVID database. The same was true over the winter.
A few days ago, however, Florida’s daily death rate cleared 200 for the first time, and today it stands at 228 — an all-time high.
This makes DeSantis the first (and so far only) governor in the U.S. whose state is now recording more COVID-19 deaths each day — long after free, safe and effective vaccines became widely available to all Americans age 12 or older — than during any previous wave of the virus.>>
Unlike other media articles and discussions, and policy pronouncements, this article doesn't even mention COVID sequelae, which DeSantis likely has inflicted unnecessarily on additional hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Floridians.
A national map in the article demonstrates vividly why the DeSantis Department of Health likely doesn't report COVID hospitalizations to its citizens (see post 335 in this thread). Based on U.S. Department of Health & Human Services data, the map shows that Florida is the only state with more than 70 COVID in-patient hospitals beds used per 100,000 residents on a 7-day average. Nevada, Lousiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia are between 50-70 beds. Forty states are below 20, with a large majority of those below 10!!!
This article contrasts Florida's epidemic experience with that of California, where masking and a greater social caution about COVID appears to have spared CA the record-shattering Delta surge now underway in FL.
<<Last summer, COVID surged in both Florida and California, just as it did across much of the rest of the Southern and Southwestern United States. California fared better. There, new daily cases peaked at 25 per every 100,000 residents; total hospitalizations peaked at 23 per every 100,000 residents; and new daily deaths peaked at 0.35 per every 100,000 residents.
In Florida, those numbers were more than twice as bad: 55 cases/100,000 residents, 56 hospitalizations/100,000 residents and 0.86 deaths/100,000 residents.>>
During the current surge, California is doing much better, and Florida much worse, DESPITE THE AVAILABILITY NOW OF VACCINES AND ANTIBODY INFUSIONS.
<<In California, the current new daily rate case is somewhat higher (35 cases/100,000) than it was during its summer 2020 peak — in part because California is now conducting twice as many tests per day (about 250,000). Yet despite that, and despite the fact that Delta is twice as transmissible as the initial strain of SARS-CoV-2 that was circulating in 2020, current hospitalizations in California (21/100,000) are still lower than last summer’s peak — and deaths, the metric that matters most, remain twice as low (0.17/100,000).
That’s the kind of progress you’d expect after vaccination.
Florida is the opposite. There, new daily cases appear to have topped out at 138 per every 100,000 residents — more than two and a half times last summer’s peak. As a result, the state’s current hospitalization rate (80/100,000) is nearly one and a half times last summer’s peak; new daily deaths (1/100,000) are higher than ever. And they’re both still climbing.
In other words, Florida did roughly twice as badly as California last summer in terms of COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths. This summer, however, Florida is doing roughly four times worse in terms of cases and hospitalizations — and nearly six times worse in terms of deaths.>>
Unlike other media articles and discussions, and policy pronouncements, this article doesn't even mention COVID sequelae, which DeSantis likely has inflicted unnecessarily on additional hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Floridians.
Should be:
Just like other media articles and discussions, and policy pronouncements, this article doesn't even mention COVID sequelae, which DeSantis likely has inflicted unnecessarily on additional hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Floridians.
Majority of FL public schools students now under mandatory mask mandate
When will Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recognize his error and reverse his ban on public school mask mandates? Will Republican legislators continue to tolerate the ban?
<<ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Just over half of Florida’s 2.8 million public school students now face mandates to wear masks in classrooms as a courtroom battle continues over efforts by Gov. Ron DeSantis to leave such decisions up to parents.>>
A recent poll indicates a majority of Floridians now oppose DeSantis' mask policiies.
<<A Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday found that a plurality of DeSantis’ constituents believe he is hurting rather than helping efforts to slow the spread of the disease; that 61 percent of Floridians believe the rise recent explosion was preventable; and that 63 percent believe masks are effective while 59 percent support wearing them indoors.
The poll also found that 60 percent of Florida residents support requiring faculty and students to wear masks while in school, something DeSantis has opposed so stridently that he has threatened to strip funding from the school districts who impose mask mandates.>>
<<DeSantis is not pausing, though. Despite the soaring rates of Covid cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, the governor appears as committed as ever to opposing preventative measures and endangering the health of — or, frankly, flat-out killing — the people he represents. “Politicians wanna force you to cover your face as a way for them to cover their own a****,” he said at an event last week.>>
Long COVID is a burgeoning medical, economic catastrophe
The Lancet, one of the world's preeminent medical journals, in a new article warns long COVID (lingering if not permanent sequelae from a COVID infection) is a "modern medical challenge of the first order." This is the best single paragraph that I've read about long COVID.
<<As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the need to understand and respond to long COVID is increasingly pressing. Symptoms such as persistent fatigue, breathlessness, brain fog, and depression could debilitate many millions of people globally. Yet very little is known about the condition. The term “long COVID” is commonly used to describe signs and symptoms that continue or develop after acute COVID-19. A NICE guideline, for example, includes both ongoing symptomatic COVID-19 (from 4 to 12 weeks) and post-COVID-19 syndrome (≥12 weeks), but there is no agreed upon definition. How distinct is long COVID from other post-viral syndromes? No clear biochemical or radiological features exist to aid diagnosis, and there are potentially several phenotypes with different presentations, prognosis, and outcomes. With no proven treatments or even rehabilitation guidance, long COVID affects people's ability to resume normal life and their capacity to work. The effect on society, from the increased health-care burden and economic and productivity losses, is substantial. Long COVID is a modern medical challenge of the first order.>>
The evidence has long supported the warning now made explicit in The Lancet, as is obvious to anyone reading my COVID posts.
The U.K., likely due to its national healthcare system, has far superior national health monitoring and statistical analyses than the U.S. (e.g., the U.K. actually closely monitors the health of 500,000 citizens in a "biobank" which utilizes advanced medical testing, including genomics). The Lancet article reports that 1.5 percent of U.K. citizens report long COVID symptoms. Unlike the U.S., the U.K. also has an Office for National Statistics.
<<Clearly, the condition is of public health concern. In the UK, for example, an estimated 945 000 people (1·5 [percent] of the population) had self-reported long COVID on July 4, 2021, according to the UK Office for National Statistics, including 34 000 children aged 2–16 years. Prevalence was greatest in people aged 35–69 years, girls and women, people living in the most deprived areas, those working in health or social care, and those with another activity-limiting health condition or disability.>>
The U.K. biobank has allowed U.K. researchers to analyze the before-and-after impact of a COVID infection. One very disturbing finding is that even a mild COVID infection may destroy brain tissue.
<<Even mild cases of COVID-19 may lead to loss of brain tissue, according to findings from a long-term study involving 782 volunteers. As part of the ongoing UK Biobank study, participants underwent brain scans before the pandemic. For a before-and-after comparison, researchers invited 394 COVID-19 survivors to come back for follow-up scans as well as 388 healthy volunteers. Most of the COVID-19 survivors had had only mild-to-moderate symptoms, or no symptoms at all, while 15 had been hospitalized. Among the COVID-19 survivors, researchers saw "significant" loss of gray matter in regions of the brain related to smell and taste - the left parahippocampal gyrus, left orbitofrontal cortex and left insula. Some of the affected brain regions are also involved in the memory of experiences that evoke emotional reactions, the researchers noted in a report posted on medRxiv on Tuesday ahead of peer review. The changes were not seen in the group that had not been infected. >>
In the absence of any statistical measure of long COVID prevalence in the U.S., per capita case rates may be a proxy. U.S. confirmed cases are 11.7 percent of the population, UK confirmed cases are 10 percent of the population, and Florida confirmed cases are 14.3 percent of the population.
If the U.K. long COVID rate is 1.5 percent, then hypothetically, the U.S. long COVID rate may be 1.8 percent (5.9 million persons), and the Florida rate 2.1 percent (443,000 persons), reflecting the ratios of the confirmed case percentages.
Sadly, our political leaders spurred by prominent individuals such as ex-President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, have effectively trivialized the COVID virus despite the death toll and undeniably negative impacts on our healthcare system and economy. Long COVID or any concern about the long-term impact of even an asymptomatic infection on the long-term health of children, let alone adults, doesn't appear as even an after-thought to these political opportunists.
Even the Biden administration has implemented only a "Trump PLUS" COVID strategy, focused on a more effective vaccine rollout and dealing more aggressively with the economic consequences of the pandemic, but shockingly neglectful of rebuilding the public health defenses and reinstituting in the public health strategies tragically obliterated by the Trump administration.
The U.S. has adopted few of the public health measures aggressively employed in other democracies, especially Australia and New Zealand, to suppress COVID transmission and infections. These public health measures were so effective in Australia and New Zealand that weeks or even months would pass with NO COVID infections. Masks were not worn as a political protest, but because they were not necessary. COVID deaths, mostly at the onslaught of the epidemic, are a small fraction of U.S. levels (1/50th as few and still below 1,000 in Australia, with a population (25.4 million) greater than Florida (21.5), and fewer than 50 in New Zealand (5 million). Florida's per capita death rate is over 200 times as great as in New Zealand.
With confirmed cases in Australia at only 48,816, 0.191 percent of its population, its long COVID rate may be less than 0.003 percent of its population, or less than 800 persons. A similar analysis for New Zealand with only 3,228 cases, or .065 percent of its population, suggests less than 40 cases of long COVID in New Zealand.
Due to the great success of their public health measures in controlling the COVID epidemic, both Australia and New Zealand took a very casual approach to vaccination, especially slow to acquire and administer MRNA vaccines. So as the Delta variant slipped through their COVID defenses, both nations in the last two months have resorted to at least regional lockdowns of varied lengths to contain the Delta variant as they aggressively play catch up on vaccinations. Both nations (see above links) still have less than 30 percent of their populations fully vaccinated, but both expect to pass the 80 percent level (national vaccine mandates are under consideration) in the next several months. With both a vaccine shield and robust public health defenses to contain any limited COVID break-out and protect both nations from any virus infection from abroad, both nations contemplate a future in which COVID is highly manageable with a populace that survived the pandemic with relatively few losses to death or lingering health deficiencies (long COVID).
Half of Australia's population lives even today in a COVID-free zone.
Of course, with Delta breakthrough cases and hospitalizations evident even in Australia, it may not be until the second quarter of 2022 that Australia and New Zealand can administer third doses and greatly raise the national herd immunity. And the risk remains of even a more contagious and virulent variant. Yet the path forward in both New Zealand and Australia seems much more clear and manageable than in the U.S., especially in the most hard hit states, such as Florida.
While it would involve much more research to quantify, both Australia and New Zealand have reimbursed businesses and individuals to compensate for economic losses due to lockdowns. Until the Delta variant outbreak, Australia actually reported record employment. I suspect, but can't document, that the cost of the pandemic to the Australia and New Zealand, all factors considered, have been much less than experienced on a relative basis in the U.S.
Such considerations don't even comprehend the incredible toll on American society resulting from such factors as the deaths of family breadwinners and mentors, educational deficiencies, reduced labor availability and productivity due to both deaths and long COVID, alienation of medical workforces forced to risk their lives and their families well-being as a result of inept public health policies, the impact of greatly increased national debt and inflated Federal Reserve balance sheet, the impact of increased health insurance costs on both businesses and individuals, the impact on individual health due to deferred healthcare measures and even surgeries.
Long COVID means that acquired health deficiencies also are a major consequence of the U.S. COVID epidemic. Much as Florida has reduced transparency regarding the current Delta variant surge by not reporting deaths by county or any hospitalization data (see post 335 in this thread), both the U.S. media and political leaders have ignored long COVID. It is not discussed, let alone investigated or statistically analyzed. Shameful and dangerous indifference, not incompetence, perhaps bests characterizes the U.S. attitude toward long COVID.
A Florida circuit court judge ruled today that Florida law does not allow a governor or the state board of education to enforce a ban on school district mask mandates in order to reduce COVID transmission. Gov. Ron DeSantis' spokesman said DeSantis will appeal the ruling.
<<“The law expressly permits school boards to adopt policies regarding the healthcare of students such as a face mask mandate even if a parent disagrees with that policy,” [Circuit Court Judge John] Cooper wrote....
After a three-day hearing, the Florida Second Judicial Circuit judge ruled that Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Board of Education’s actions on mask mandates are “without legal authority” and are by definition “arbitrary” and “capricious.”>>
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"Florida is the only state where more people are dying of COVID now than ever before"
