With testing down  38% over the long holiday period, the Florida Department of Health reported only 659 new cases for the week ending Nov. 28 and a positivity rate of 8.33%.  The November cases are more than September and October combined, as are hospitalizations.
| Nov 1-7 | Nov 8-14 | Nov 15-21 | Nov 22-28 | Total | |
| Total | 604 | 784 | 808 | 749 | 2945 |
| Florida | 513 | 676 | 701 | 659 | 2549 |
| Non-FL | 91 | 108 | 107 | 90 | 396 |
| Hosp. | 22 | 39 | 38 | 43 | 142 |
| Deaths | 7 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 32 |
| LTC | 36 | 57 | 33 | 29 | 155 |
Last Monday, local health care leaders reported at a CivicCon session that while the positivity rate is up, Escambia County is not experiencing a second wave of COVID-19 cases. Ascension Sacred Heart Hospital Pensacola President Dawn Rudolph described the recent outbreak as a “wavelet,†not a wave because the current trajectory is “not quite the same†as the steep one seen from June to July.
“We share our data in this community every day with each other and with our local officials, and so it’s really important to see, once even a small trend of ticking up, we watch that,†she said. “Once we got to 75 hospitalizations, we wanted to just bring awareness to the community that we’re seeing a wavelet.â€
Rudolph added, “We’re being vigilant on the day-to-day numbers so that we can make sure that we’re proactive, that we are transparent to the community… We want to know as early as possible if we see that community rate translates into hospitalizations.â€
Baptist Health Care CEO Mark Faulkner concurred with Rudolph, saying the wavelet appeared to be infecting a less vulnerable demographic.
“What we see now isn’t as concerning as to what we saw in July and August when we saw a very steep incline to the curve,†he said, pointing the summer wave impacted “institutionalized setting, like nursing homes and assisted living, where you’re dealing with a higher percentage of more vulnerable citizens.â€
He added, “We’re not seeing those patients presenting to ER as we saw in June and July, so even though the testing is up and the positives are up, they’re not necessarily coming through the ERs.â€
’57-’58 Asian Pandemic
U.S. deaths – 116,000
U.S population – 172M
U.S. deaths/1K – 0.7
’68 H3N2 Pandemic
U.S. deaths – 100,000
U.S population – 200.7M
U.S. deaths/1K – 0.5
COVID-19
U.S. deaths – 265,000
U.S population – 328.2M
U.S. deaths/1K – 0.8
The country didn’t panic in ’57 or ’68, no shutdowns, no masks, but still managed to survive somehow.
CJ. you are so trying to be sooo politically correct and nice. I liked your old self when you call a spade a spade. Trump will be our governor next month, after they kick him out of the white house, and he and the default governor will continue to down play the virus here in Florida, and all the trump groupies will continue to not practice safe social behavior. Therefore, one picks business’s that those type of groupies do not go to. The groupies have all drank the cool aide, and they will not change until their leader leads them to a new promise land.
I think that everyone should be “concerned” even if hospital administrators seem eager to downplay the issue. From what I have heard, people who “work” in the hospitals dealing with actual patients do not paint such a rosy picture. The city’s refusal to enforce its mask ordinance is criminal. Hospital administrators should be openly pressuring Robinson and Quint Studer should be rebuking him in private. Putting aside if Governor DeSantis even really has the “executive” power to strip the city government of a “legislative” power granted it by the Florida Legislature (see Section 381.0016, Florida Statutes), the city should be enforcing the requirement that city businesses post mask ordinance signs (few now do) and should be enforcing the individual mandate knowing full well that the process of issuing a citation (with or without a fine) is more a form of public shaming than punishment. Imagine if the PNJ published a daily list of businesses and individuals in the city issued citations by the Pensacola Police Department. Few would want to be on that list. Speaking of the police, last week I walked into the Walmart on Creighton Road. I was in the store for less than 20 minutes. I was at first very impressed to see a PPD SUV parked at the entrance. I was far less impressed when I walked into the store and saw a PPD officer standing off to the side feverishly typing away on a smart phone. He had a mask but it was dangling from his ear. It was hard to see how wearing the mask would have interfered with his typing. In hindsight, I assume that he was being paid by Walmart and not there in an official capacity as a city police officer though he was in uniform and so a symbol of our city. Inside the store, most people were wearing masks but I passed or saw ten people without masks to include the guy who opted to stand a few feet away at the self-check next to mine when I checked out. That is ten too many. If someone from Walmart had asked them nicely at the entrance, and the store does have people at the entrances, and offered them a mask if they did not have one, I bet that most of the ten would have worn the mask. That Walmart has a lot of out-of-state shoppers, to judge by the car tags, and a majority of its shoppers may not live in the city so unlikely to have heard of the mask ordinance. On the upside, when I went to Fresh Market twice last week, “everyone” was wearing a mask, everyone.