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Current as of Oct. 7, 2020, at 7:00 a.m. |
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COVID-19 Testing Sites in Florida
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Drive-Thru Testing sites available are listed by county. Each walk up site can test up to 200 individuals per day. Access the list here.
Safe. Smart. Step-by-Step.
Graphs, Charts, and Real-time Tracking of COVID-19
Data Sources
Data Sources on Social Media
Other Resources
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Current Statistics
- Fatality rate in Florida - 2.1%
- Covid fatality rate in FL by age group:
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15-24 years old - .03%
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25-34 years old - .07%
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35-44 years old - .23%
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45-54 years old - .54%
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55-64 years old - 1.8%
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65-74 years old - 5.7%
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75 and up - 17.9%
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Seasonal influenza mortality rate in the US (2017 CDC) 18-49 yo - .02%
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Median age of new Covid cases - 40 years old
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Emergency department visits w/ COVID-like illness - 20% decrease
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ICU beds available in Florida - 23%
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Hospital beds available in Florida - 25%
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Vaccine Tracking
Last updated: October 1, 2020 9:00 AM PST
213
vaccines are in development.
35
are now in clinical testing.
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We're told that life is never getting back to normal, so we need to suck it up and accept a world of mask-wearing, economic disruption, and social distancing. It's a denatured echo of the warnings we've heard before that government responses to COVID-19 are pushing the world toward authoritarianism—but dressed up as if that's a good thing.
That's unfortunate, given that less-intrusive responses to the pandemic are proving at least as effective as heavy-handed ones. And that's before we even discuss the inherent value of the freedom that looks destined to be pushed aside by public health concerns and by disingenuous government officials.
"As 2020 slides into and probably infects 2021, try to take heart in one discomfiting fact: Things are most likely never going 'back to normal,'" wrote CNN International Security Editor Nick Paton Walsh last week. In his piece he discusses the likely permanency of mask mandates, telecommuting, reduced physical contact, and similar changes to life.
Some of the alterations Walsh mentions may be matters of personal choice, but a good many of them are imposed by "politicians who pretend that 'normal' is just around the corner," as Babson College's Thomas Davenport says in the article.
We're supposed to accept our newly constrained lives as "the new normal"—in a phrasing that's already very tired, indeed.
Actually, repeated references to a "new normal" aren't just tired; they're ominous.
"As the need for an extension of quarantine into the summer or beyond seems likelier, the new normal will certainly include unanticipated trade-offs," Andy Wang warned in May in the Harvard International Review. "The central irony of the crisis may be that the very methods that liberal democracies are currently using to effectively fight the virus are the same tactics that authoritarian leaders use to dominate their people.
While the world is not sinking into authoritarianism, a post-quarantine world could be less democratic than its previous iteration; the tools that have been temporarily deployed in the fight against a once-in-a-lifetime disease may become permanent."
These authoritarian tools may become permanent because government officials are rarely punished for doing something, even if the something is awful and counterproductive. It's leaving things alone to be worked out by individuals according to their own priorities and preferences for which politicians get called out.
In addition, people who go into government tend to be the sort who naturally gravitate toward using power. And crises are excellent excuses for accumulating unprecedented authority and using it in novel ways.
"For authoritarian-minded leaders, the coronavirus crisis is offering a convenient pretext to silence critics and consolidate power," Human Rights Watch cautioned in April.
"The 'lockdown measures' adopted by many European states have disproportionately impacted racialized individuals and groups who were targeted with violence, discriminatory identity checks, forced quarantines and fines," Amnesty International reported in June.
"Governments around the world must take action to protect and promote freedom of expression during the COVID-19 pandemic, which many States have exploited to crack down on journalism and silence criticism," the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression noted in July.
The U.S. has hardly been immune to public health-driven authoritarianism during the pandemic.
"In halls of power across the country, the growing novel coronavirus pandemic has sometimes been used to stretch, bend or ignore established law and policy," Jenny B.
Davis wrote for the ABA Journal in April. "Fundamental freedoms, privacy protections and access to justice have been curtailed in the name of public safety, with legal justifications ranging from appropriate to patently inaccurate."
Since then, judges have overruled some officials, including the governors of Michigan and Pennsylvania, who overstepped their authority and violated fundamental rights.
"The Constitution cannot accept the concept of a 'new normal' where the basic liberties of the people can be subordinated to open-ended emergency-mitigation measures," wrote U.S. District Judge William S. Stickman IV in his September 14 decision regarding Pennsylvania's public health rules. "Rather, the Constitution sets certain lines that may not be crossed, even in an emergency."
This should be remarkable even to people who, for some reason, don't especially care about "fundamental freedoms" and constitutional "lines that may not be crossed," because authoritarian lockdowns are certainly not the only way forward.
"In Sweden, new infections, if tipping upward slightly, still remained surprisingly low," The New York Times noted last week. "Almost alone in the Western world, the Swedes refused to impose a coronavirus lockdown last spring, as the country's leading health officials argued that limited restrictions were sufficient and would better protect against economic collapse," the article added.
It's not that Sweden did everything right on the issue, or that it completely avoided the effects of COVID-19. Instead, the country seems to have pulled through a difficult period at least as well as other countries without disrupting life or indulging the power-grab fantasies of government officials.
Sweden serves as an indication that respecting people's liberty doesn't inherently pose a health threat, and that a virus shouldn't be used as an automatic excuse for forcibly curtailing normal life. And, once the virus passes, there will be a minimum of authoritarian detritus for Sweden's residents to clear away.
Lucky Sweden.
For the rest of us, the pandemic is likely to leave lingering damage. The "new normal" of life after COVID-19 threatens to look a lot like old-fashioned authoritarianism.
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The coronavirus pandemic accelerated a major shift in the retail industry. Traffic to stores evaporated. Online credit-card transactions soared. E-commerce sales in the second quarter rose by 44.5% compared with the same period in 2019 and they now make up 16% of all U.S. retail sales, according to the Commerce Department.
Consumer spending has picked up since many cities and states began lifting lockdown restrictions and allowing stores to reopen in May, but only some sectors have regained lost ground. Sales, profits and hiring at many grocers and home-improvement retailers are up. Many apparel sellers have slashed staff and closed stores for good. Weekly foot traffic from July until the second week of September is down by an average of 14% compared with the same period a year ago, according to mobile-device location data from foot-traffic analytics firm Placer.ai.
Online shopping
The pandemic pushed many of the last online-shopping holdouts over the e-commerce hump. Online transactions with credit and debit cards have increased an average of 88% each month since the beginning of April, according to weekly transactions collected by financial-data firm Facteus.
Store closures
Big retailers such as J.C. Penney Co. , Neiman Marcus Group Inc., GNC Holdings Inc. and Brooks Brothers Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection, and each of them closed hundreds of stores. Since April some 5,000 stores in the U.S. have shut their doors for good. In the same period only about 680 new stores were opened, according to Coresight Research. In August alone, almost 2,200 retail stores closed while only 14 opened.
Retail sales
U.S. retail sales have been climbing steadily since late May, though several categories are still struggling, according to monthly data from the Commerce Department. The nonstore retailer category, which includes online merchants, maintained the highest growth rate since the beginning of the pandemic, with an average increase of 22.6% between March and August compared with the same period in 2019. Grocery stores had a 31% sales uptick in March compared with a year ago, but growth has slowed since then.
Sporting-goods stores recovered faster than most and surpassed their 2019 sales numbers, but growth moderated in July and August. Clothing stores haven’t recovered, with sales declining by an average of 44% a month since March.
Employment
Initial claims for jobless benefits held steady at 870,000 last week, revealing a loss of momentum in the recovery of the labor market. Retail is one area where job losses could be permanent. Labor Department monthly data showed employment at sporting goods retailers remains at 20% below what it was in August of last year even though monthly sales have increased by an average of nearly 17% since June.
Clothing stores had the worst employment rate, with a decline of almost 29% as of July, compared with the same month in 2019. During its most recent earnings call, Macy’s Inc. said it had a permanent reduction in its workforce of 3,900 and that almost all employees who were furloughed were back at work.
Profit margins
The sudden shift in consumer habits changed the profit picture for retailers in the S&P 500. eBay Inc. by far had the biggest increase in its profit margin in the second quarter compared with the same period last year, according to an analysis of FactSet data. Other winners were automotive and discount chains, which managed to boost profitability despite the higher costs of operating in a pandemic.
Those that remained heavily reliant on in-store shopping saw profits shrivel in the second quarter. Luxury brands like Tapestry Inc. and Ralph Lauren were among the worst performers with declines of 51% and 34%, respectively.
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Our broken health care system has been a campaign talking point for generations, and 2020 is no exception. But what do people think is broken? What does your average worker, parent, student, or small business owner want fixed? My organization, the Foundation for Government Accountability wanted to know the answer to these questions.
When you ask more than 10,000 Americans in focus groups and polling what they want fixed in health care, you get some interesting and unexpected answers. The answers varied, but two themes were overwhelmingly represented: Health care remains top of mind for many Americans and they want more affordable coverage options.
To his credit, President Trump has focused on how to address these concerns despite the Senate’s failure to pass health care reform early in his term. Without legislation to make the broader health care changes Americans need, the administration was still able to use several tools in its executive authority toolkit to make progress on more flexible short-term health plans and association health plans (AHPs). The administration and Congress were also able to work together to remove the ObamaCare individual mandate and combat the opioid epidemic.
These changes aren’t just bullet points on a list of accomplishments. They have real-life implications for millions of Americans.
For a hardworking mother going through a divorce, a short-term plan gives peace of mind. It means she can cover her family during that transition rather than go uninsured. And for many more everyday Americans, short-term plans offer the most affordable path to coverage in an expensive individual market.
Short-term plans are not for everyone and are not the solution to every problem in health care. But they are a solution to the biggest problem a 26-year-old faces in a job without benefits and the biggest problem for 63- or 64-year-old Americans looking for an insurance bridge to Medicare.
The question isn’t whether they’re right for everyone. The question is who they are right for. And the vast majority of those that have signed up for short-term plans were previously uninsured. Why? Because the premiums for short-term plans are, on average, 59 percent less expensive, with eight times more plans available.
Like short-term plans, the administration’s efforts to make association health plans has received inadequate attention.
Think of the staff at your favorite local restaurant. The owners want to take care of their employees but, at least historically, it has been too expensive for them to offer their employees health coverage and stay in business. For years, big businesses have had advantages when buying health coverage, but small businesses and their workers were left scrambling in a different, more expensive market.
With association health plans, the administration’s new rules are finally helping the small guys.
AHPs allow main street small businesses to pool together to purchase health coverage previously reserved for bigger businesses. The result is simple: better insurance for less money.
And it’s not just about health care, either. With an AHP, your favorite restaurant can hire more workers, offer more benefits, or give raises to current employees. For employers like a caterer in Florida, AHPs gave her an off-ramp from plans with premiums that were increasing by double digits most years.
Now, her business has coverage that is 25 percent lower. For 43,000 farmers in the Midwest working with Land O’ Lakes, AHPs mean savings of 25-35 percent. That’s better coverage but also thousands more dollars in the pockets of farmers for groceries, mortgage payments, or equipment repairs and supplies.
Vice President Biden has been talking about new options, as well, but they include either more government money or a government-run program. He wants to move individuals into Medicare under a “public option.” This so-called solution simply pits these new enrollees against older adults on the program in a competition for limited resources. The Medicare program is on shaky ground already.
He also wants to increase subsidies to insurance companies. These subsides only mask the underlying issue of increasing insurance premiums and are limited to plans on exchanges operated under ObamaCare rather than focusing on offering patients more creative, private solutions.
And he wants more able-bodied adults on Medicaid, despite its bursting state budgets, and harming care for those originally on the program such as low-income children, those with disabilities, and seniors, many of whom sit on wait lists for community-based services.
These ideas are not new, and that is the problem. Doubling-down on some of most broken pillars of the current health care system does not help patients in the long run.
Americans want more affordable health coverage options, not more of the same. We need reforms that give patients options that are sustainable, affordable, and reflect the many different life stages that Americans find themselves in.
With short-term plans, AHPs, and other reforms, the president’s administration has gotten one big thing right in our efforts to fix a broken health care system—increasing individual options instead of building more one-size-fits-all bureaucracies that know nothing about the health needs of your family.
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