Here in Florida, we've been back "open" for about a month. I say that, but bars and movie theatres are still closed. Restaurants are limited to 50% capacity. People were predicting that our governor was opening too soon, and that we'd see a big spike in new cases and deaths. So what are the numbers of new cases and deaths? Well...
As you can see, we had a peak around the end of March, and then the number of new cases has been up and down ever since - fairly flat with no definite upward or downward trend. Same for the number of deaths.
Here's the last 30 days...
Again, fairly flat. So far, Florida has had 2,460 deaths. Maybe. It turns out that so far this year, Florida is reporting about 1,500 deaths from pneumonia, compared to about 1,200 for the same time period last year. The suspicion is that some of those "extra" 300 deaths were probably from coronavirus. Even so, that would make Florida's COVID19 deaths 2,760, which is still pretty low compared to, say, New York.
But let's look at another random state, like ohhhh, Iowa. There are a large number of meat-packing plants in Iowa, and they had some outbreaks in some that were disturbing. Other than that, how's their number of new-cases doing?
Iowa's new-case peak was around the end of April. Governor Kim Reynolds (who had never issued a stay-at-home order) began re-opening her state on May 1st. You would think that by the end of the month there would be some sort of evidence of this. But no dice, no spike. If anything, it appears that the number of new cases is trending downward. It's so hard to tell. But what about COVID19 deaths in Iowa?
Well, aside from that one strange spike around May 25th, Iowa's death rate shows a steady and slow climb, which is to be expected. Maybe. The last reported data was on May 28th. It will be interesting to see what the new numbers are as we begin this week.
Other states are experiencing a similar leveling or slight decline in the number of new cases and deaths. However, for some reason the news media still wants us to panic over the coronavirus, doing absurd things like wearing masks outdoors and while driving alone in our cars. They still cling to the narrative that this virus could explode through the population like wildfire, despite statistical evidence that it's doing no such thing.
Protect the elderly and vulnerable. Wash your hands more than before. If you feel unsafe, or horrified at the thought that you could become an asymptomatic carrier and kill some random person, then stay the hell home until we tell you it's safe.
Which might be never.
1 comment:
Again, I think the problem with looking at such a huge sample is that it can be very misleading for certain sections of the whole. Yes, looking at my state as a whole shows not much is happening since reopening the state. That is because the virus has come and gone on the very easy targets in the large population centers. But for many rural counties like ours, the total was pretty much flat lined from March thru April and now that restrictions have been lifted, the graphs show them spiking upwards (starting around May 1) with not a hint of turning down much less resemble those up and down spiky graphs you posted. Deaths are the same way. In terms of percentages, in the month of May our positive cases has risen 6700% and no that isn't a typo!
For us anyway, our turn is finally here. Thus far 2.4% of our county's population has officially been diagnosed with Covid-19 in the last month. Assuming 80% of people infected go undiagnosed, that means nearly 10% of our counties population has been infected within the last month. These are staggeringly higher than your county but don't affect our state totals much since we are such a rural county and small percentage of the total. It also means, that despite the state being "open", I'm probably going to hunker down a little bit longer.
I think the conclusion I draw from this is that shutting down our economy as a state, though damaging to our economy, probably still was the best option. Instead of all of us spiking at once, it just hit the easy targets and continues to spike in pockets throughout the state and thus flattening the curve. Our county's hospital beds are maxed out for Covid patients and have been for the last month. They have been life flighting patients every day to other regional hospitals for care. Fortunately, our regional hospital had the first big spike in the state way back in early April so is now able to accommodate them. Things might be a lot different with us all spiking at once.
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