Florida and Texas closing in on 10,000 COVID-19 deaths
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Texas and Florida were rapidly closing in on 10,000 coronavirus deaths Friday, while President Donald Trump's false claims about the progress of the pandemic were weaponized by Joe Biden.
The national death toll from the virus that has upended the way Americans live and wrecked the economy was 168,334 and climbing Friday, and the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases was nearing the 5.3 million mark, NBC News figures showed.
The U.S. continued to account for a quarter of the world's more than 760,000 COVID-19 fatalities and nearly 21 million confirmed cases.
Florida eclipsed the 9,000 death mark two days after Gov. Ron DeSantis raised eyebrows by repeating an awkward metaphor that likened the state's efforts to reopen schools in the middle of a pandemic to the 2011 Navy SEALs operation greenlighted by President Barack Obama that killed Osama Bin Laden.
"Martin County Superintendent Laurie Gaylord told me today that she viewed reopening her schools as a mission akin to a Navy SEAL operation," DeSantis said of his conversation, before continuing the comparison.
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"Just as the SEALs surmounted obstacles to bring Osama bin Laden to justice, so, too, would the Martin County school system find a way to provide parents with a meaningful choice of in-person instruction or continued distance learning — all in, all the time."
Texas, which is also in the process of reopening its schools over the objections of many school officials, health experts and parents, had reported 9,836 coronavirus deaths as of Friday morning, the NBC News figures showed.
The U.S. has logged the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in the last two weeks, most of them in Southern and Sun Belt states that began reopening in May and June at Trump's urging, despite warnings from public health experts that the coronavirus was cresting.
Georgia, one of the last states to shut down and the first to reopen, reported 136 deaths Tuesday, the highest number since the start of the pandemic.
California, the largest state in the nation and the first to exceed 600,000 coronavirus cases, is nearing 11,000 deaths, the NBC News figures show. It was the first to enact shelter-in-place rules. But Gov. Gavin Newsom, under pressure from business and other groups, began lifting restrictions in May and June after which the number of new cases and deaths started exploding.
Six weeks after Newsom reclosed large sections of the economy, however, there are signs that the state is getting a handle on the coronavirus and that the transmission rate is going down, The Los Angeles Times reported.
"While our gains might feel slow and our future remains fragile, our success over the last three weeks is real," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday. "We begin to see signs of light."
In other developments:
- Now that he has chosen Sen. Kamala Harris of California as his running mate, Joe Biden is taking aim at the litany of erroneous claims Trump has made during the pandemic. Deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield released a memo listing 150 examples of the president "downplaying the threat posed by COVID-19." "Simply put, Trump has regularly lied to the American people on matters of life-and-death," she wrote. Among other things, Trump has touted "unproven and possibly dangerous treatments," is guilty of "elevating racist rhetoric and disregarding advice from public health officials," and suggested the virus would simply disappear one day. There was no immediate response from the Trump campaign to the Bedingfield broadside. But the Trump remarks she cites are well documented and have been reported by numerous news outlets.
- A California megachurch is suing the state and Los Angeles County to stop officials from enforcing measures that prohibit large indoor gatherings during the pandemic. Grace Community Church is arguing that "the health orders violate the California Constitution," the Thomas More Society, whose attorneys are representing the church, say. Los Angeles County has filed a countersuit. Currently, places of worship in California are limited to 25 percent of building capacity or 100 attendees indoors, whichever is lower. Singing and chanting, which medical experts say is a prime way of spreading the virus, are also banned. Grace Community is not the first megachurch to land in a church-versus-state battle over coronavirus restrictions.
- Charles Vallejo Jr. is a medical student following in the footsteps of his physician father and physician grandfather. He has buried them both. The coronavirus killed retired doctor Jorge Vallejo, 89, and Dr. Carlos Vallejo, 57, who practiced medicine in Miami Lakes, Florida. Charles Vallejo said he suspects his father contracted the virus while treating his patients who were in rehabilitation centers and nursing homes and inadvertently passed it on to his father at a birthday party. "The week before he got COVID, I was walking my dog and I saw my grandfather cutting a tree," the surviving Vallejo told NBC News.
- South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is urging her coronavirus-concerned constituents to put on their "positive pants."Noem said she got the idea for harnessing optimism to combat the pandemic from a bulletin board in a Sioux Falls fourth-grade classroom. "It said 'Put your positive pants on.' That message reminded me of a lesson that is often easy to forget: an optimistic outlook can be tremendously helpful when responding to life's challenges," the Republican governor said. South Dakota does not mandate masks and of late it has struggled to contain the virus' spread. More than 8.6 percent of coronavirus tests administered in the state have come back positive, according to a rolling seven-day count by Johns Hopkins University on Friday. The World Health Organization's benchmark for business re-openings is 5 percent.
- The twin shafts of light that symbolize the fallen Twin Towers and appear every year to commemorate the victims of 9/11 have been extinguished by the pandemic. The 9/11 Memorial said it was too risky to the crew that produces the "Tribute in Light," which sends the beams upward into the night sky from dusk on Sept. 11 to dawn on Sept. 12 in lower Manhattan. "This incredibly difficult decision was reached in consultation with our partners after concluding the health risks during the pandemic were far too great for the large crew required to produce the annual Tribute in Light," the 9/11 Memorial said in a statement.
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To put in perspective, Florida has a population of 21 million, California 40 million, and Texas 29 million. Florida has 594,817 cases of COVID and 9,276 deaths. This is as of Thursday, Friday's numbers haven't been posted yet.
You can see from the number and population that Florida is doing worse than either California or Texas.
I suspect that when Friday's numbers are posted we'll be over 600,000 cases.
We have a Sheriff in Marion County that has banned mask wearing for this deputies and the Sheriff office and all substations. Yes, indeed he's a winner. /s
Really? California already topped 11,000 deaths. And just reported another 150 deaths Friday.
All this talk of reopening businesses, schools, and yet again not one mention of the continued "peaceful protesters" (aka Democratic backed Brown Shirts) aiding in the spike.
Typical leftist slant on reality. Reopening economy bad- totally to blame. Protesting, rioting, arson, looting- not worth even mentioning.
Yes really. It obvious that neither math or stats are your forte but some kind of political rant is.
Here are the stats so you don't hand out the wrong information again.
Cases per 100k California, 1417. Florida cases per 100k, 2481. Florida has a bit more than double the cases per 100k than CA.
Deaths per 100k California, 28. Florida death per 100k, 41.
BTW, Florida had 228 deaths on Thursday. Friday had another 204 deaths.
It could be interesting to crunch a few numbers.
How many people in your local protests in CA - looks like the average protest is about 500 and lasts for what 2 or 3 days? There are several of them. What 100? 1000? Let's pretend it's 500,000 protesters - not at the same time or place. Outside - quite a few with masks (it helps with the tear gas).
How many people, in total, will show up at the bars, Wal-Mar, schools etc.
Wal-Mart - let's just look at the employees 92,000
Bars and Night Clubs - just employees 40,000
Schools - just teachers 319, 000
Students 6,000,000
So you have 6 1/2 million before you even count the Wal-Mart and bar customers.
The protesters are their taking their chances because they would like the police to stop shooting them.
The bar customers want to party.
I really don't see any moral equivalency there.
Someone in the department needs to wear a mask on duty, and if disciplined in any way, then take his or her case to court.
To make things even more stupid the mayor vetoed the city council mask mandate. Then the CC struck back and overrode his veto.
800 health care workers including 200 doctors in Marion county sent a letter to Woods calling him out for putting citizens of Marion county in danger.
All of these people are up for re-election in November including Woods the Sheriff. Should be interesting to see the results.
New cases are trending down in Florida and Texas , but going up in California . Even Georgia is basically flat with a slight trend down. So why does it seem like NBC is trying to say "Southern States Bad; California Good?"
Here's some numbers from the CDC's current count is as of August 15, 2020...
By the way, cases are dependent on the number of tests. The more tests performed, the more cases will become exposed and since 40% of cases are asymptomatic, those 40% of cases would never even know they were infected with COVID-19 unless they were tested. The United States has performed over 70 million tests, more than twice as many tests as any other country in the world.
43 per 100,000 deaths in the entire state of Florida
33 per 100,000 deaths in the entire state of Texas
28 per 100,000 deaths in the entire state of California.
The top 4 states with the most deaths per 100,000 are:
281 per 100,000 deaths in NYC excluding the rest of the state
80 per 100,000 deaths in New York State excluding NYC, although when you add NYC you come up with 162 per 100,000 deaths for the entire state of New York..
179 per 100,000 deaths in the entire state of New Jersey
128 per 100,000 deaths in the entire state of Massachusetts
125 per 100,000 deaths in the entire state of Connecticut
I remember the day I heard this woman on the radio who could barely contain herself. She said she was a nurse over a number of facilities for older people. She lived in NY and was trying to communicate with the governor's office and couldn't get through. I guess she had something in common with Tara Reade, but much worse. Cuomo had just signed an executive order demanding nursing homes to accept people whether they had COVID-19 or suspected of having it. His executive order was dated March 25, 2020, even though 19 deaths had already been tied to the rest home in Washington state by March 11, 2020.
She was never able to get through or get anything changed. I say that is one of the reasons why New York had so many people die from COVID-19.
March 10, 2020 Mayor de Blasio was telling everyone to continue with their lives and go out and enjoy yourselves. He also said they were not going to close the schools that day.
Then Cuomo and de Blasio screwed up royally when they reduced the number of subway cars, making each one of them more congested and cut the number of bus trips, making each bus more crowded.
Although Trump had already restrained travel in and out of China by the end of January 2020 and parts of Europe shortly thereafter, Pelosi was singing "Please Come to San Francisco" almost a month later. What gets you is, she then accused Trump of fiddling. The Democrats criticized Trump for both travel restraints.
Now the Democrats who have pushed for spending more money and more lock downs are running around talking about Trump's economy. I knew that was going to be their scheme in the first place. Unrealistic amounts of aid designed to encourage people to develop the habit of not working, thereby increasing the unemployment have all been pushed by the Democrats to be used against Trump. Several countries such as Japan never shut down and have far less known cases, but the USA has performed 70 times the number of tests that Japan has performed. You think if they had performed twice as many tests, they would have more cases? Of course they would.
I wouldn't be saying this if it wasn't so clear the Democrats have no low they won't go to obliterate Trump. They do not care for the citizens of this country. They allow criminals to destroy law abiding citizens lives and livelihoods. They never call out the murder of children or people of color unless they consider it to be politically beneficial to them.
It wouldn't surprise me if Biden gets elected the masks will come off, the riots will stop, schools will be encouraged to open, people will be encouraged to go back to work and the news will stop printing anything to do with the virus as they did during 2009 when it is now estimated almost 600,000 people died from H1N1 worldwide. They really have no idea, because they stopped reporting cases July 24th 2009. They only reported them from May until July 24th during 2009.
If the same situation existed back then as it has during this pandemic we could have had many more people die than the 18,000 they estimate. They have no idea how many people died, actually, since they didn't keep up with it like they have with COVID-19. We were fortunate that we became aware of the first 2 cases in the USA right away from Mexico, unlike being lied to for several months about COVID-19 by the Chinese Communist Party, who allowed people to travel in and out of Wuhan internationally and spread the virus worldwide.
Maybe H1N1 wasn't as contagious. It certainly didn't have no where near as long an incubation period before it became evident a person was infected. People who were born before 1957 had immunity to H1N1, so senior citizens had the lowest mortality unlike the flu or COVID-19. The children had the highest death rate with H1N1. 80% of people who died from H1N1 were under 65 instead of up to 90% who die from the flu and COVID-19 are over 64. Up to 33% of the deaths were children. A child has a higher chance of dying of the flu than COVID-19.
I looked for it, but I couldn't go back any further than February to look for comments I've made, but I remember making a comment about the only two ways we were going to be able to conquer this Corona Virus. Those two ways were herd immunity and/or a vaccine, which is really not a vaccine at all, but does provide some protection against flu like viruses on a yearly basis, I assume. I've only had one flu shot in my life and that was back in the 90's. I've had the flu one time and that was a couple of years after I received the shot. Maybe I wash my hands and keep them off my face more than others or maybe I've just been fortunate to not be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I believe we need to be very conscious of our actions and what we do to protect ourselves from becoming infected. I've worked every day right in the middle of those who do nothing to protect themselves or anyone else for that matter for these last 6 months and have found out a number of these people have become infected. I don't even know who they have been or if any of them died. I know I have 70% alcohol with me at all times and constantly use it throughout the day, wash my hands at every opportunity and always wear a mask when I'm going to be around others.
From what I've read, CDC says 40% of people with COVID-19 were asymptomatic and they had a 75% chance of transmitting the virus, while symptomatic infections had a 100% chance of transmitting. New studies say the first couple of days after becoming infected the possibility of transmitting the virus is the highest.
People who aren't receiving a government check and have to work to provide for their families are much more inclined to want to go back to work, even if it means practicing social distancing, wearing a mask and using common sense. Those who are receiving a government check or receiving support in some other way and don't have to work to provide for their family are inclined to want to keep the country closed for as long as they can.
They may find they outlive the dwindling retirement funds or government sponsored support since those who want and need to work are prevented from doing so from the lack of empathy from people who think they aren't in any danger of losing their security, which is dependent on taxes from people who are employed and pay taxes into the system. Remember the old saying, "First they came for......"