1/ As we approach the end of the calendar year, it's interesting to look at Florida emergency room data and compare current levels to those at the beginning of the year (since we're back into respiratory virus season).
ED visits that result in cough-associated admissions:
2/ Visits that mention cough, fever, or shortness of breath:
The risk to people under the age of 20 is >1000 times lower than the risk to those over 70
2/ This information should be disseminated everywhere, but instead we hear that everyone can die of COVID, so everyone should avoid getting it. Yes, everyone can die of COVID, but if you're young, that's like saying you could die on your way to the grocery store.
3/ Those deaths happen, but they're rare enough that we don't let it affect our decisions about carrying on with life.
This failure of messaging has led to the acceptance of policies that were explicitly not recommended pre-COVID:
I want to take a few minutes to take down a garbage article in the Palm Beach Post about @GovRonDeSantis. I'm doing this mainly to give you tools for analyzing similar articles.
The main point in the headline is that "criticism mounts." So the PBP and their like-minded newspapers are all reporting about each others' critical stories to build a narrative that DeSantis is a terrible governor.
2/15
This article only showed that death reporting changed after the @HealthyFla announcement on October 21 that they would be instituting additional review on deaths. They produced no evidence that it was related to the election or that it was directed by DeSantis.