At this morning’s agenda review, Escambia County Commissioner Doug Underhill said the most important information that citizens need to have every day is hospital bed availability.
Every day, he believes the public must know: “Did the hospitals have the ability to handle where we’re at?”
“That’s what the citizens need to know, he said. “And especially in my neighborhoods of limited resources, people respond to fear.”
He added, “So along the very same lines of the discussion about there should be one click to find out where I can go and get a test today, it should be one click to find out that citizens can be reinforced that our hospital system is not overrun.”
My response is by the time our hospital system is overrun, it’s too late.
The daily new cases and positivity rates are indicators that citizens should be following. Hospitalizations and deaths lag behind the test results.
To ignore new cases and positivity rates would be like not checking the speedometer of a car until after you ran through the railings on a steep curve and crashed.
Per the Florida Department of Health county reports, Escambia County had 24 additional hospitalizations from June 20-July 1 (12 days); from May 25-June 19 (25 days) only 10 additional hospitalizations.
COVID hospitalizations have more than doubled and are increasing at a faster rate. Â I think citizens would like to know that.
Chalk this up to another SDS – Sh$t Doug Says.