The liberal Sun-Sentinel has a headline by "public health professionals" claiming the demonstrations did not influence the spike in COVID-19 positive tests and then in the article, completely disprove the headline. Are readers intelligent enuf to see the disconnect? Hmm. Clearly in Florida, the demonstrations/”wyatting” (real word censored by Facebook), did precipitate and significantly worsen the reopening which was already in progress. We match several other cities cited in the article (whose headline says otherwise). So let’s rip up that page of the paper, people!!
In terms of hospitalizations in the tri-county area due to COVID-19, several articles today address that and most are deeply flawed. Not sure where to begin. I would estimate that over half of the hospitals, ACCORDING TO THE ARTICLE'S STATEMENT may not be near any sort of breaking point and elective surgery continues. Some in Miami are stopping elective In-Patient (not OP) surgery, IN ANTICIPATION, of a problem. The hospital COVID-19 data is certainly skewed by the routine testing of all hospital admits, thus buttressing the numbers of "COVID-19" hospitalizations significantly. In short, the press remains as blinded as we are and DeSantis is taking steps to require COVID-19 reporting by hospitals. The FIU data continues to confuse and until we get specific numbers from specific hospitals I will give it minimal credibility and only use their data to characterize any trend (which I can do successfully without their data anyway).
We had a significant one day spike in deaths in Broward and PBC with the total tri-county death number as recorded yesterday of 36, which was bested on June 2 and by the baaad period of May 5-8..WITH SIGNIFICANTLY LESS REPORTED CASES then. Go figure. But the trend is your friend and we'll need this number confirmed over the next few days. This confirms to me that the actual case number now is substantially higher as it was in May, to still be generating these M&M numbers and for a tri-county area of over 5 million, we are actually not doing too badly. Death rates continue on a significant downtrend state-wise and in the tri-county area. I predict we'll be under 2% by sometime next week for the state. In these tough times we really need, more than ever, for the hospitals to step up and give us utilization data so we know where we stand. They also need to factor out those patients admitted for another reason who happen to test COVID-19 positive. This could be a high number. With this number factored out, I think you'll see hospitalization usage due to COVID-19 only, lower than reported now. ICU bed availability, which hospitals tend to maximize anyway appear to be low enough to accommodate continued plans for the reopening.
People, this is what mitigation strategies result in, a delay of the inevitable. Our health care systems still appear to be accommodating and as long as we get the data confirming this, then we stay open, including the beaches!!