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Unlike most people, I sat down and recorded the daily numbers the FL Dept. of Health released.
Right now the media is talking about how the hospitals are going to be choked with new patients.
They're saying the number of patients is trending up.
No.
No, they really aren't.
The number of patients peaked in mid-August. The hospitals reported plenty of capacity remained during that peak. The number of people in the hospital with WPC now is about 1/3 of that peak.
We're definitely seeing more cases, but the severity isn't being reported, and I suspect that the testing is catching a lot of people who're not infectious because of the number of testing iterations.
The thing is, we're not seeing a strong change in the percentage of new cases vs tests. 8.5% or so of people tested are coming up positive. So when they smash the panic button and claim 10k new cases, remember that there's over 100k new tests to go with that. Fewer tests, fewer cases.
Hospitalizations have been running fairly steady, decoupled completely from the number of new cases.
Deaths have been running fairly steady, decoupled completely from the number of new cases and mostly decoupled from hospitalizations.
That positive tests are climbing but people getting sick enough to call 911 isn't at the same rate says to me that the disease is mutating to less severe.
That the hospitalization and death rate don't appear to be linked any more makes me think that we're getting better at treating it. When was the last time the media complained about extant therapies for WPC? Gee, wasn't it right about when Orange Man got all better using one of the therapies they said didn't work because he advocated for it?
Anecdotally, FWIW, we got our first new cases after a month of no cases, in the last 2 weeks.
ReplyDeleteNone were over 50, and none had co-morbidities.
Concerningly, one had a documented second infection after first having it symptomatically in April/May (but not so bad that hospital admission was necessary), testing negative in August, and no being not only symptomatic, but requiring hospitalization the second time through.
Nonetheless, it is not anywhere near as bad as it was in May/June. (Yet.) I hope that holds.
Case rate is still running right about 10% of number tested, and when last I looked, they had tested over 1/4 of the states 40M inhabitants.
We are getting better at treating it.
If this holds, it'll be a good sign.
But 2-6 95+% effective vaccines arriving on scene, and given to the 40M oldest people in the country, followed by first responders, and then to anyone else who wants it, and the CFR for this drops to numbers lower than deaths from lightning strikes, and will finally be "just the flu, bro".
Given that reality, watch TPTB try to block distribution of vaccine as I outlined, and claim everyone must have it before they can lift the lockdown-mania. and then deliberately screw the pooch on distribution of vaccine, because government.