For February’s first 10 days, the Florida Department of Health reported Escambia County’s positivity rate dropped to 9.38% – its lowest rate since the end of November. The county had 1303 new cases based on 13,866 reported tests – the fewest tests over a 10-day period since Dec. 1-10.
Unfortunately, Escambia County has had 65 deaths reported since Jan. 31. Had the COVID vaccine been rolled out in December or November, how many of those deaths could have been avoided?
The minority community is lagging behind their white neighbors when it comes to having gotten both doses of the vaccine, particularly when compared to death percentages. Â The Black community comprises 28% of all COVID deaths in Escambia County and accounts for less than 7% of the completed vaccinations.
| Both Doses | Deaths | ||
| White | 9004 | 64.2% | 63% |
| Black | 964 | 6.9% | 28% |
| Am. Indian | 48 | 0.3% | 0% |
| Other | 2166 | 15.4% | 7% |
| Unknown | 1838 | 13.1% | 2% |
| Total | 14020 | 100.0% | 100% |
The 2019 Escambia County census estimate was just over 319,000 so we’re still a long way to getting even half of county residents vaccinated keeping in mind that some will only get one shot and then not the second and some will refuse to get vaccinated. Mask wearing in the city remains hit-or-miss with an emphasis on the “miss” and in some places even social distancing is ignored. You would think that even if store managers did not care about their customers, they would at least enforce the mayor’s mask order, the city’s mask ordinance and their own store policies if only to protect their own store employees. Described below are two examples of massive leadership failures. I was in the Walmart on Creighton on Friday. I counted “49” people not wearing masks. A Pensacola Police Officer was on duty and I saw him in the store so he must have been the same people I did. I was in Joe Patti’s on Saturday morning. People were packed in there like sardines. I do not recall ever seeing so many people in Joe Patti’s. Everyone was elbow-to-elbow and bumping into each other. There were a lot of out-of-state vehicles in the parking lot. Most people were wearing masks but too many were not. There was an armed security guard on duty, he might have been an off-duty Deputy or he might have been private security. Hard to tell at a distance. He was not wearing a mask. Two Joe Patti’s employees were not wearing masks, at least not wearing them over their mouth and nose. They had them under their chin as they were dealing with customers. On the other hand, I was in the Publix on 9th Avenue this morning. The store was not crowded which was nice. Even better, all but one person was wearing a mask. Imagine how much better we’d be if the city enforced its mask ordinance and amended it to require that all businesses had to make masks available for customers. Some do have mask available for customers. Our elected officials do know. Yesterday, I was in the Pulbix on 9th Avenue. Commission Bender was there doing his grocery shopping and in the check-out line behind me. He had a mask. He also must have seen all of the people “not” wearing masks and heard the standard Publix customer service announcement that mask are [not really] required.