I noticed from here that new cases in Florida are way down in the last few weeks. I haven’t heard about any draconian measures that were taken. Did people just eventually get on the mask train? Any ideas?
Here’s a Florida editorial that doesn’t have all the answers, but have some. And you’d think they’d be in a good position to know if there had been any other known changes.
We must wait for public health officials to tell us for sure, but it stands to reason that the turnabout in new Florida infections owes quite a bit to the mask-wearing mandates set down by governments like Palm Beach County and businesses like Publix, Walmart and Lowe’s.
As to the last few days they point out a big question mark:
Let’s hold the cheering for now. First, it was not immediately clear if the reported numbers were lower merely because some testing sites had shut amid preparations for the expected hurricane. Second, you can never discern a trend from a one- or two-day event.
Ft. Lauderdale area checking in …
In FL, as in many states, there are the urban / suburban areas with high population density and the great rural outback with low population density. FL is different from many such states in that the rural areas are a larger fraction of the total.
The Governor, a Trumpist, answer to the rural areas and has enacted only weak anti-COVID orders.
The high density counties have gotten much more serious. In my county the serious enforcement of mask requirements and aggressive enforcement against scofflaw businesses and their owners picked up in mid July.
Which means that now 3 weeks later we’re seeing the payoff in reduced infections. In another 2 weeks we’ll see the payoff in reduced deaths.
Like the whole USA, we’re all concerned about school starting. But we’re especially concerned about what starts happening in early October when people from NY/NJ/CT start flooding down here by the 10s of thousands every weekend to stay for a week or so then go back north. With each wave they import more seasonal colds, flu, and now more COVID.
Right now NY/NJ/CT & FL have mutual state-imposed 14-day mandatory quarantines against any/all visitors from the other side. Which have approximately zero enforcement.
The upcoming clash between snowbirds escaping the cold and the quarantine orders will be very “interesting”.
Problem is that when you look specifically at Florida you’ll see the pattern of fatalities vs infections are not consistant.
The death rate has fallen, but its the way it has fallen - first it rose in a similar way to everywhere else from early July through to the end it went up from 17 to 256 - pretty fast but in line with other outbreaks, but it has fallen from 245 in early August to 96 just 6 days later.
This is not the pattern that we have seen anywhere else, it has actually fallen faster than it rose.
When you look at the corresponding infection data, what you see is a rise from early June of around 1000 cases per day through to around 11000 per day in mid July and then took another 3 weeks to decline to 6500 cases per day for August 11th.
If you take the usual time for recored infection to fatality its usually about 3 to four weeks, so looking back what we see today is this dramtic decline in deaths from a period in time when infections were averaging around 10000 per day - infections at that time were not declining at all, and yet the corresponding deaths 3 weeks later is not only falling, it has jumped off a cliff.
Its worth noting that this pattern is not replicated anywhere else in the world, not in nations with younger populations nor in nations with healthcare systems that are at least as advanced as the US.
In other words Florida figures are a fabrication.
Florida has history of manipulating its coronavirus data, also worth noting that Florida is an extremely significant part of the US electroal college in the US presidential elections and is a heavily Trump supporting state.
I agree that these are not trustworthy numbers, but even the official numbers aren’t good. They report a downward trend in both cases and fatalities, but the overall numbers still aren’t good.
It has not fallen that much. The rolling average of daily fatalities is still frighteningly high. It dropped a lot on Sunday, August 9; Sundays often underreport so don’t read too much into that. Actually, you should never read too much into one day.
This article is interesting and hints at deliberate data manipulation.
I’m afraid I can’t access your link, its because of the EU data protection laws, its not unusual for US media not to want/need to comply so access gets blocked
For what it’s worth, you can try this link to what appears to be the same story. This appears to have been original local reporting and I don’t think it’s been picked up by national outlets, I can’t find it elsewhere.
I actually try to select accessible links. If I’m linking to the general coverage of a current event, I make a point of selecting a link to a free site. But that doesn’t work with some of the more in-depth original reporting.