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Current as of July 17, 2020, at 8:00 a.m.
COVID-19 Testing Sites in Florida
  • 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.

The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity is giving daily updates on Florida’s Reemployment Assistance program: View DEO Dashboard Here .

Florida Department of Health COVID Dashboard: Access dashboard here .

Graphs, Charts, and Real-time Tracking of COVID-19

Data Sources

Data Sources on Social Media

Other Resources


Current Statistics

  • Fatality rate in Florida - 1.5%

  • Covid fatality rate in FL 15-24 years old - .02% (less than 1%) 
  • Covid fatality rate in FL 25-34 years old - .05% (less than 1%) 
  • Covid fatality rate in FL 35-44 years old - .20% (less than 1%) 
  • Covid fatality rate in FL 45-54 years old - .41% (less than 1%) 
  • Covid fatality rate in FL 55-64 years old - 1.2%
  • Covid fatality rate in FL 65-74 years old - 4.2%
  • Covid fatality rate in FL 75 and up - 14.2%
  • Seasonal influenza mortality rate in the US (2017 CDC) 18-49 yo - .02%

  • Median age of new Covid cases - 39 years old
  • Emergency department visits w/ COVID-like illness - 15% decrease
  • ICU beds available in Florida - 17%
  • Hospital beds available in Florida - 22%

Vaccine Tracking

Last updated: July 16, 2020 8:48 AM PST

197
vaccines are in development.

19
are now in clinical testing.


Is it  misleading  to cite expanded COVID-19 testing as one possible explanation for the post-lockdown increases in confirmed cases that some states have seen? Or is it  misleading  to cite post-lockdown increases in confirmed cases without taking expanded testing into account?

I am inclined to think the latter is more true than the former. But maybe you should not trust me, since I have long been  skeptical  of sweeping restrictions on movement and economic activity as a response to the COVID-19 epidemic.

By the same token, however, you should not trust The New York Times, which has long supported such policies in its  news coverage  as well as its opinion pages. "Pence Misleadingly Blames Coronavirus Spikes on Rise in Testing," says the headline over a recent Times  story . But judging from the evidence presented in the story, that is not what Vice President Mike Pence actually did.

"I would just encourage you all, as we talk about these things, to make sure and continue to explain to your citizens the magnitude of increase in testing," Pence said during a call with governors, according to a recording obtained by the Times. "And that in most of the cases where we are seeing some marginal rise in number, that's more a result of the extraordinary work you're doing."

In other words, Pence thinks we should take expanded testing into account when we look at recent COVID-19 trends. He did not say that was the sole explanation for what is happening—just that it is an important factor to consider, especially when an increase in cases is "marginal," which is true.

"Seven-day [case] averages in several states with coronavirus outbreaks have increased since May 31," the Times says, "and in at least 14 states, positive cases have outstripped the average number of tests that have been administered." Since  every state  that imposed a lockdown has at this point lifted or loosened it, those numbers hardly seem like conclusive evidence in favor of those policies, or against reopening the economy. Nationwide, new cases have been  declining  since the end of March, and that downward trend continued as lockdowns were lifted.

By contrast, in Texas, where I live, the  daily number  of new confirmed cases has been rising since late May, from 1,083 on May 26 to 4,246 yesterday—a fourfold increase. The  seven-day rolling average  of new cases has more than doubled, from 928 on May 26 to 2,386 on June 16. During the same period, daily COVID-19  hospitalizations  rose from 1,534 to 2,518—a 64 percent increase. By comparison, the  number of viral tests  performed each day had risen by just 29 percent as of June 15.

The increase in testing during this period clearly cannot account for the increases in cases and hospitalizations. Furthermore, the  percentage of tests  that were positive, based on a seven-day average, rose from 4.3 percent on May 26 to 6.7 percent on June 15, which reinforces the point that Texas is seeing a real and substantial increase in infections. So yes, The New York Times is right to suggest that emphasizing increased testing can be misleading, although the paper is wrong to dismiss the issue out of hand.

Unless you think lockdowns were completely ineffectual, it makes sense that COVID-19 infections would rise as restrictions on movement and economic activity were loosened. Yet Texas started doing that on April 30, and it did not see notable upward trends in cases and hospitalizations until this month, weeks after you would expect to see some impact from lifting the lockdown.

One  popular explanation  of the timing is that the new infections we are seeing now can be traced to gatherings on Memorial Day weekend, when people who may not have seen each other for months got together, often in close quarters without regard to social distancing guidelines. Around the same time, Texas also saw  mass protests  against police brutality in reaction to the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Those factors are plausible explanations in light of what we know about the outsized role of "superspreading" events in the epidemic. In Hong Kong, epidemiologists Dillon Adam and Benjamin Cowling  found , "just 20 percent of cases, all of them involving social gatherings, accounted for an astonishing 80 percent of transmissions." Another 10 percent of carriers "accounted for the remaining 20 percent of transmissions," meaning that 70 percent of people infected by the virus did not pass it on to anyone. Those findings, Adam and Cowling note, are consistent with the results of other studies.

The implication is that targeted measures aimed at curtailing superspreading—such as masks, social distancing rules, and restrictions on large, crowded gatherings, especially indoors—are likely to be more cost-effective than broad business closures and stay-at-home orders. The latter approach not only imposes enormous economic costs but tests the patience of people whose cooperation is required to make control measures work. If Texas never had a general lockdown, Texans might have been less inclined to flout social distancing rules on Memorial Day or more willing to  wear masks  in public—precautions that are far less onerous than the mass quarantines nearly all states imposed.

Those orders, especially insofar as they  drew distinctions  between permissible and prohibited activities that made little or no sense, left people  exhausted by arbitrary dictates . In this context, it is hardly surprising that some Texans rebel even at relatively modest precautions when they are recommended by the same public officials who deprived them of their livelihoods and confined them to their homes. That reaction, while understandable, poses a real problem as we settle in for the long haul and wait for a vaccine to save us. Precautions that might have been sustainable without lockdowns may prove less tolerable after that bitter experience.

There is some (relatively) goods news in the data from Texas. The seven-day average of  daily COVID-19 deaths  has actually fallen since the lockdown was lifted, although it is higher now than it was in late May. That positive trend may reflect improvements in treatment and/or changes in the preexisting health status of newly infected people.

Youyang Gu's  epidemiological model , which has an impressive  track record  of projecting COVID-19 fatalities, shows daily deaths in Texas  gradually declining  through September. The model's estimate of the reproductive number for Texas—the average number of people a carrier infects—has fluctuated only slightly since April 30, sometimes dipping below one and sometimes rising a bit above that threshold, which indicates a continuing epidemic. The model's  projections  suggest that the reproductive number in Texas will remain slightly below one during the next few months, indicating an epidemic on the wane.

Whether that actually happens depends on how Texans behave now that they are free to move about and return to work. The lockdowns, whatever their  marginal contribution  to slowing the spread of the coronavirus (still a matter of much  dispute ), may simply have delayed COVID-19 deaths rather than preventing them. The eventual death toll will depend on people's willingness to follow sensible guidelines, and it seems that many of them are in no mood to do that.


On Dec. 17, 2014, Rebecca Taylor  received  a call from the school nurse in her daughter Scarlet's Tacoma, Washington, school saying that Scarlet had a fever and Rebecca should pick her up. Two days later, and after just four hours of being in the hospital from what should have been a routine flu in an otherwise healthy child, Scarlet was dead.

While this was a rare tragic story, it's less rare than parallel stories of COVID-19, yet nobody ever thought to shut schools during the flu season.
Adam Ratner, an NYU physician of pediatric infectious disease, noted that so far this season he has had young patients who have developed life-threatening pneumonias and needed surgeries to drain abscesses in their chests — and most of these children were perfectly healthy before they got the flu.
That is a  quote  from a CNN article on Jan. 7 about the deadliness of the flu season to children in a year when the seasonal flu killed 174 school-age children. Yet, like most facts that can be gleaned through extensive research online, if it's not published incessantly in daily headline news and obsessed about by the media-political complex, people don't know about it. And if they don't know about it, they are not scared of it.

The reality is that every flu season, many more children die from this common ailment than have from COVID-19. And unlike with COVID-19, where the rare pediatric deaths are among those who have serious conditions, many of the flu deaths occur in perfectly healthy children.  According to the CDC , "influenza is dangerous to children," and during the 2017-2018 flu season, which everyone forgets was considered a pandemic, the federal agency estimates that the actual number of pediatric deaths was closer to 600.

A 2018 CDC  study  of six flu seasons concluded that half of flu-related deaths occurred in otherwise healthy children, 22% of whom were fully vaccinated. Thus, even with a vaccine, the flu is still much more deadly for children, especially perfectly healthy children.

Just how scary is the flu to children, if we were to apply the same lack of context and perspective as we do with this virus? Perfectly healthy children could die so quickly, the parents don't even see it coming. From the 2018 CDC study:
Nearly two-thirds of children died within seven days of developing symptoms. Over one-third died at home or in the emergency department prior to hospital admission. In fact, children without other medical conditions that would predispose them to serious flu complications were more likely to die before hospital admission.
Moreover, other kids get seriously ill and develop side effects, such as blindness. One 4-year-old girl  in Iowa was left blind  by the flu this past season. Even those who suffer no serious consequences are often bedridden for a week or longer with high fever, muscle ache, and incessant coughing, unlike with COVID-19, where almost every child who develops it is  asymptomatic or very mildly symptomatic .

Thus, if we are going to limit or modify schooling and mandate that kids wear suffocating masks all day, shouldn't this be done every year from November to April – by a factor of 10? And given that the flu does linger for all months of the year at least at the threat level of COVID-19 to children during the off months, if schools are closed for COVID-19, shouldn't they always be closed because of the flu?

In other words, if you give me control of the media and medical academia for a month, I will have every parent in America easily convinced that children must be locked down forever. If the threat level of COVID-19 to children is the new threshold for shutdown, we are done as a civilization, even if this particular virus becomes extinct tomorrow. Remember, unlike with this virus, where  children barely contribute to community spread , with the flu, children contribute substantially to the spread and pick it up most often from other kids in school.

This is a glimpse into the context and perspective that is lacking in the hyper-focus on the worst outcomes in any group of people in a country this size.

Just consider the statement from California Superintendent of Instruction Tony Thurmond. "I do think that, if school had to open tomorrow, most of our districts would open in distance learning," he  said  during a briefing earlier this week as county governments in L.A. and San Diego closed schools in September. "And that is a decision that I think is a good decision if conditions don't change."

If conditions don't change?  Not a single child has died  of COVID-19 in the state of California. Not one in this state of 40 million people. Kids are not only more likely to die of the flu, but are more likely to die in a car crash on the way to school or in a playground accident at school.

Also, consider the fact that they are insinuating that schools can't return to normal until there is a vaccine. Well, when was the last time we had a foolproof vaccine for a respiratory virus? Notice how the flu is much more dangerous for children than COVID-19, even though there already is a vaccine. According to the California Department of Public Health's  Influenza Surveillance Report , there were 187 reported ICU and fatal cases of the flu among children during the 2017-2018 season. Among those cases with available influenza vaccination information (120 cases), 61 (50.8%) received the 2017–2018 influenza vaccine.

Not only does that show the flu is more deadly, but it also demonstrates that even once we get a vaccine for a respiratory virus, they are often not nearly as foolproof as other vaccines. Thus, if zero pediatric deaths in California is too much of a risk to assume, then a half-baked vaccine won't exactly matter.

Finally, we already know that children almost  always get the virus from adults  and that the primary location for transmission is at home. So, if we are really concerned about an infinitesimal degree of risk to children, who's to say that school closures would mitigate that degree of risk? As a Johns Hopkins  analysis  of mass quarantine in 2006, which was co-authored by famed smallpox eradicator D.A. Henderson, noted, "When schools closed for a winter holiday during the 1918 pandemic in Chicago, 'more influenza cases developed among pupils . . . than when schools were in session.'"

What is truly driving the agenda to close schools?


The governors of Texas and California, the nation’s two most populous states, recently reimposed coronavirus lockdowns despite falling death rates and health-care capacity far beyond hospitalization rates. Numerous other governors  have delayed reopenings  or reversed them in similar situations.

Lockdowns are not necessary to prevent coronavirus deaths, since the current capacity for treating cases is far above what is needed and people  are going to get this disease  until there’s a cure. Further, lockdowns accelerate systemic weaknesses such as our national debt, poor education, large numbers of working-age men who do not work, failure to pay for decades of overspending at both the national and state levels, tendency to bail out corrupt institutions such as schools, big business, and hospitals, and bloated health care system.

The Chinese Communist Party knows of all this. That is why it has expertly manipulated American corporate media’s anti-American biases to undermine their biggest competitor for control of the world.

Lockdowns of Western nations, and chiefly of the United States, are China’s only hope for achieving this long-term plan in its coronavirus-weakened state. Thus, continuing to play into this mass-murdering regime’s hands through cuckolded American leadership will have far more deadly consequences than coronavirus. This is why the lockdowns need to end now, and never come back again.

Keeping a Knee on Our Economy Will Kill Our Country

A July 13  New York Times article  says the re-shutdowns are killing the willpower of small business owners to keep their doors open, even after Congress threw $660 billion in deficit spending at them.

“We did everything we were supposed to do,” Texas karaoke club owner Mick Larkin told the Times. “When [Gov. Rick Abbott] shut us down again, and after I put out all that money to meet their rules, I just said, ‘I can’t keep doing this.’”

Estimates say between 66,000 and 110,000 small businesses may already have closed for good during the coronavirus panic.

“Small businesses account for 44 percent of all U.S. economic activity, according to the S.B.A., and closures on such an immense scale could devastate the country’s economic growth,” the Times observes. “…Many small businesses are also finding it onerous keep up with constantly changing local guidelines, while others are deciding that no matter what their local officials say, it just is not safe to keep going.”

There is a hard limit to how much fake economic activity current and future taxpayers can float. We had already reached it before coronavirus hit. A bailout economy will crash irrevocably at some point. No matter how much Congress thinks they can suspend the laws of nature, never-ending economic inflation through accelerating claims on future American earners’ incomes is utterly unsustainable.

Americans cannot afford a Potemkin economy. The first step toward getting to a real economy is to end lockdowns and never impose them again.

We Have No More Equity to Mortgage Our Kids’ Futures

Keeping schools shut down, or only partially opening them, also suffocates our economy by making it difficult for two-income families and single parents to support themselves. It is simply not possible to work full-time and teach children full-time, which is what online schooling requires of working parents.

School shutdowns also hobble American society long-term, as they and online schooling both  significantly reduce  how much children learn, especially in math. Math competence strongly predicts a nation’s economic future, to the point that  one estimate finds  if U.S. kids just learned as much math as Canadian kids do, our nation would increase its gross domestic product by $77 trillion over the next 80 years.

It’s therefore quite reasonable to assume that setting kids back in math by a year or two, as continued coronavirus schooling will do (it’s  already set them back in math almost a year ), will short our economy tens of trillions of dollars — right at the time trillions in unfunded entitlements for Baby Boomers will come due. We simply can’t afford that, and China knows it.

Besides harming our country, shutdowns harm children. There is  next to zero risk  to children’s health of going back to school, as evidence from myriad first-world countries show. There is a massive risk to kids’ futures of depriving them of a good education. One estimate found keeping U.S. kids’ math knowledge to pre-pandemic levels instead of raising it to Canada’s would deprive them of  an estimated  20 percent in additional income for every year of their lives that they work.

Doing what China wants in continued lockdowns will not just hamstring American kids financially, it will bequeath them a far more dangerous world in which an aggressive, mass-murdering regime that deliberately sent a deadly virus abroad grows in power as their nation’s ability to deflect that power decays. In 20 years, America’s kids will not be impressed that we spared grownups some unsubstantiated unease in return for condemning the next generation to a much higher likelihood of poverty, a bankrupted social safety net, and a homeland at the mercy of a bloodthirsty global power.

Media Push U.S. Politicians to Fulfill Communist Plans

In urging lockdowns, therefore, U.S. media has amplified and helped implement Communist goals. The Chinese Communist Party endorsed, promulgated, and lobbied for strict lockdowns with the goal of kneecapping foreign competitors, including the United States. As Michael P. Senger pointed out on Twitter based on a June New York Times article, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “launched a massive social media campaign in Italy to advertise its coronavirus lockdown measures in early March.”

Democrats spent three years spinning a presidential impeachment out of a few Facebook memes from Russian trolls and bots in 2016. This NYT article and  a long ProPublica report  provide evidence that the CCP has been using a far bigger propaganda campaign to destroy the United States through economic suicide and destruction of social cohesion. And it’s working.

It is no exaggeration to say that the world’s future depends on the United States acting strategically to counter Chinese propaganda and aims rather than strangling ourselves on lies. Our economy and military sustain the world. China is the number one beneficiary if we choke, and it has been wanting to challenge the United States for dominant global power for decades. They needed another generation or two to be able to get there.

The CCP strategy for achieving that has been promising its citizens political competence and economic advancement in exchange for severe repression that allows for directing the nation’s entire economy into soft and hard global power. Coronavirus strikes at the heart of both these strategies. That’s the CCP’s main leverage over the Chinese (besides terrorizing people). So the only way Xi Jinping staves off losing his head over mismanaging this outbreak is by bringing the world down with him.

The CCP is fighting for its life and its 100-year plan to get us to stay locked down. Keeping freedom alive for the world requires that they don’t win. Key to fighting back is following Sweden and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s successful coronavirus management strategies: End government lockdowns, and allow American citizens to act on their own judgments about coronavirus risks.

In a year of financial firsts, this one stands out: Mortgage rates have fallen below the 3% mark.

The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage fell to 2.98%, mortgage-finance giant  Freddie Mac   FMCC -1.40%  said Thursday, its lowest level in almost 50 years of record keeping. It is the third consecutive week and the seventh time this year that rates on America’s most popular home loan have hit a fresh low.

The  coronavirus pandemic  has upended markets around the world, sending stocks on a wild ride and yields on U.S. government debt to record lows, but its effect on the 30-year mortgage is especially significant. Consider its history: In the early 1980s, it peaked above 18% after the Federal Reserve raised rates to fight runaway inflation.

Below 3% is a “tremendous benchmark,” said Jeff Tucker, an economist at Zillow Group Inc. “It’s also an indication that we remain in a crisis here.”

The average rate on the 30-year mortgage stood at 3.72% at the beginning of the year and 3.81% a year ago, according to Freddie Mac.

Mortgage rates tend to move in the same direction as the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. Yields fall as prices rise when nervous investors buy up safe-haven assets like bonds when the economic forecast is darkening.

The spread between the yield on the 10-year Treasury and rate on the 30-year mortgage has narrowed in recent weeks, largely because lenders had spare capacity to process applications after clearing a backlog of refinancings. Still, the larger-than-usual gap means there is room for rates to fall even farther, Mr. Tucker said.

Not all mortgage rates have declined at the same pace. Interest rates on jumbo home loans, those too large to sell to Freddie Mac or  Fannie Mae , have fallen to around 3.77% from 3.84% at the beginning of the year. From the middle of 2015 to this March, jumbo rates were consistently lower than or equal to the rates on so-called conforming loans, according to Bankrate.com.

Earlier this year, some lenders  placed new restrictions  on these larger loans—in most markets, loans of more than $510,400—after the investors who typically buy them soured on loans without government backing.

Low mortgage rates typically boost home sales, but they did little to ease the pandemic’s impact on the housing market this spring.  Existing-home sales  fell 9.7% in May from the month prior and 17.8% in April, according to the National Association of Realtors.

“On the surface, low rates look great,” said Tendayi Kapfidze, chief economist at LendingTree. “But when you get into the details there are other factors affecting whether people are able to purchase homes.”

A home purchase is out of the question for many of the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs in recent months. And fears that recurrent coronavirus outbreaks will lead to a protracted downturn could also keep some with the means to buy from committing to big purchases.

Sydney Countie had to shelve her homebuying plans this spring when she was furloughed from her job as a social-media coordinator and her boyfriend was forced to close the tattoo studio he owns.

Ms. Countie returned to work within two months, but the lockdown kept the tattoo studio closed until late June. The four mortgage lenders they talked to wouldn’t approve a loan for a one-income couple, she said. They decided to keep renting and try their luck in the housing market next spring.

For those who are looking to buy, inventory is tight and prices are high. The number of homes on the market fell 27.4% in June from a year earlier, according to Realtor.com. Home prices rose 4.7% year-over-year in April, potentially muting any savings from low rates.

Still, there are indications that some of the buyers who stayed home during the spring are venturing into the market. Mortgage purchase applications rose about 17% in June from a year earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Economists at Fannie Mae expect sales to peak in July or August as the backlog of delayed spring deals is cleared.

Falling rates often prompt home buyers to speed up their purchasing plans. That was the case for Phillip Caldwell and his wife, Tracey, when they locked down a rate of 3% in late May, much lower than they expected.

The first-time home buyers decided to move from Seattle to Mr. Caldwell’s hometown of St. Louis, putting down an offer on a house in the Creve Coeur neighborhood in late spring. Shortly after, Mr. Caldwell set out for the 30-hour trip from Seattle to St. Louis with his husky, Rolland.

“A big factor that played in was that mortgage rates were going down,” Mr. Caldwell said. “We thought it might behoove us to get it done now.”

Lower rates can also expand home buyers’ budgets, a major upside at a time when inventory for low-cost starter homes is in short supply.

Tressie McMillan Cottom was thrilled when she was approved for a rate of 3.05%. “It meant I could look at a higher price point and more homes became available,” she said.

The college professor needed to find a house in the Chapel Hill, N.C., area and she knew competition would be fierce. Her Richmond, Va., house sold in hours when she listed it in early July.

“On my second trip to Chapel Hill, I just came with my checkbook and told my agent ‘We’re picking one of these,’” she said.


The number of  job  openings in the U.S. is starting to shrink again as a resurgence of the novel  coronavirus  — and business shutdowns — threatens to derail the nation's gradual  economic  recovery from the pandemic.

Over the past two weeks, job openings have fallen by 5.5 percent, according to data published by Glassdoor, revealing a stalling rebound from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

"As the recovery loses steam, declining job openings point to a fragile labor market, where economic progress will be overwhelmingly determined by progress against the virus," the  report  said.

Since early March, when COVID-19 first gained a foothold in the U.S., hiring has plummeted by 25 percent, with just 4.6 million positions available. Only 22 percent of employers have increased their hiring since June 22, while 35 percent have reduced it, the report found.

Job openings bottomed out in early June and appeared poised for a strong, so-called "V-shaped" recovery. But hopes for a rapid rebound have cooled amid a renewed threat of more layoffs as the U.S. battles a resurgence of COVID-19 cases.

Some states have hit pause on their plans to reopen, while others, including California, are reimposing restrictions they had previously lifted, like shuttering restaurants and bars. Workers at Levi's, United Airlines, American Airlines and Wells Fargo learned this past week they were — or could be — laid off or furloughed soon.

"Slumping job openings are a reminder that the virus is firmly in the driver’s seat of the labor market," the report said. "A worsening public health crisis could easily derail an economic recovery that’s already struggling to find its footing."

The decline in job openings over the past two weeks has been broad-based, affecting all of the major industry groups. However, tech, trade and transportation and consumer services accounted for the biggest hiring slowdowns -- evidence that it's the result of not just new COVID-19 cases, but more-sweeping concerns about the sustainability of the recovery, Glassdoor said.

Still, most industries, including retail and consumer services, are hiring more than they were during their crisis lows.
Every state has seen a decrease in job openings over the past two weeks, ranging from Wyoming, down 0.2 percent, and Iowa, which saw a plunge of 16.8 percent.

Interestingly, some states that are battling coronavirus spikes saw some of the small declines in job openings: Arizona (-2.5 percent), Florida (-3.1 percent) and Texas (-3.2 percent). That may be because those states were aggressive in rolling back restrictions implemented earlier this year that required nonessential businesses to close.
However, Glassdoor said the economic progress is "unsustainable" if the crisis escalates and state and local governments are forced to reimpose restrictions. On the other hand, if the public health crisis improves, the recovery may continue.

"The risk of a rollercoaster recovery, where rolling waves buffet the economy up and down, should not be underestimated," the report said.


Across the country, private schools are in existential trouble thanks to COVID-19. Long financially struggling as they have had to compete against free public schools, several have already permanently closed, including two in Baltimore and five across Maryland. We are in danger of losing something precious: the only institutions able to provide something markedly different from government-controlled K-12 schooling. If not done right, government aid threatens to make matters even worse.
Private schools are not typically rich. While “private school” may conjure images of posh institutions like Andover in Massachusetts or Sidwell Friends in Washington, D.C., most private schools are modestly priced with no endowments. For some perspective, public schools spend more than  $15,000 per pupil , while the average Catholic school charges only around  $8,000 , and other religious schools around  $10,000 .

Tuition at religious schools typically cover just  50% to 70% of average educational costs . Schools often make up the difference with fundraisers and parish subsidies. But this year, spring fundraisers were canceled or curtailed by law, as were in-person worship services where donations are collected. And with families suffering their own COVID-19 financial losses, many private schools cannot raise tuition.

Nationwide, at a minimum  107 private schools have announced that they will shut their doors permanently , at least in part due to the crisis, as of the time we are writing, according to data from Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. Nearly 16,000 students attended those schools. Among the two closed in Baltimore is the Institute of Notre Dame, which counts U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski as alums.
 
The schools closing tend to be lower cost and disproportionately the choice of African American families. The average tuition for closing schools nationally is only about $7,000, and African American kids make up more than 15% of total enrollment. African Americans are only about  13% of the overall population .
In Maryland, the five closing schools have student bodies that are 47% African American, and while their average tuition — about $14,500 — is on the higher side, they also provide financial aid, according to an analysis of data from Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom.

Any federal relief should not discriminate against private schools, which are already at a massive funding disadvantage compared to public schools. While the Paycheck Protection Program fit this bill, making private schools as eligible as any other for-profit or nonprofit organization, COVID-19 education relief has not been fully accessible to private schools.

Washington has sent  $30.75 billion  to states for education, with the money to be split between K-12 and higher education, and including about $3 billion at the discretion of governors. Almost all of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund is going to public schools, which are supposed to share the money in the form of services and material. The U.S. Department of Education has issued rules that such things could be distributed proportionate to total enrollment, but that is up to school districts. And private schools need money they control, not trickle-down assistance.

As the federal government debates another relief package, if it does one it should be simple: Allocate a set amount per student and let it follow kids. That seems to be what the  Trump administration is contemplating : Allocate 10% of K-12 relief funding — the proportion of all students who are in private schools — for private school scholarships.

To save these crucial schools in the long run, state and local taxpayer funding must no longer be sent directly to public schools. It should follow kids based on what their parents, who know them best, select... Private schools are in trouble, and we need to do what has always been right: let families decide how their children are educated.

The death rate for COVID-19 intensive care patients has dropped by about one-third since the start of the pandemic, due at least in part to better hospital care, a review of published studies found.

The global analysis of 24 observational studies of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, was published on Wednesday in the journal Anaesthesia.

The research, led by Professor Tim Cook of England’s Royal United Hospitals Bath, found the overall mortality rate of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units (ICUs) has fallen from almost 60% since the end of March to 42% at the end of May. The rate was not significantly different across Europe, Asia and North America.

Study authors offered several explanations, including “rapid learning that has taken place on a global scale due to the prompt publication of clinical reports early in the pandemic.” They also suggested that hospital ICUs might have been under greater pressure early in the pandemic.

Doctors have reported progress in learning enough about the highly contagious virus to have a better grasp of key problems for many patients, although much work remains to be done on the development of treatments and preventive vaccines.

The researchers said their findings could reflect the time for long ICU stays to show up in the data, noting that nearly a third of UK ICU admissions lasted more than 28 days and 9% lasted more than 42 days.

The authors emphasized that the recent COVID-19 ICU mortality rate of around 40% is still much higher than the 22% for other viral pneumonias.

“Optimistically, as the pandemic progresses, we may be coping better with COVID-19,” they said.


When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, several of the hardest hit states temporarily suspended state  licensing requirements , allowing practitioners licensed in any other state to come to the aid of their residents. This was a tacit admission that state medical licensing laws block the free flow of practitioners to patients in need.

Unfortunately, when this crisis is over the old regulations will go back in effect. But the problem is bigger than limitations on U.S. doctors — these same boards restrict doctors from abroad.

Given that the Association of American Medical Colleges projected a total physician shortfall of  90,000  in 2020, and between 40,000 and  122,000  over the next decade or so, we need to rethink our licensing regimen. This is especially urgent now that some say the shortage may be as high as  139,000  in 2033, which is only exacerbated by the pandemic.

And as we’ve seen in recent months, shelter-in-place orders, restrictions on non-emergency treatment and fear of contagion are leading many small medical practices to  close . We could stave off a deadly shortage by allowing the large pool of experienced and motivated health care practitioners from other countries who are eager to come here and willing to provide care to underserved communities in poor or remote areas of this country, but they are blocked by outdated state medical licensing regulations.

State licensing boards require international medical school graduates who have completed post-graduate specialty training and are licensed to practice in other countries to repeat their entire post-graduate training in an accredited U.S. institution before receiving a state medical license. As a result, many experienced foreign‐trained doctors take positions in ancillary medical fields such as nursing, lab technicians and radiology technicians instead of starting  all over again . Some even work as waiters or taxi drivers.

As a general surgeon I remember how Jamil, an operating room technician from Syria, impressed me with his knowledge and focus on my operations as he would pass me instruments. He often politely offered excellent suggestions or insights when I wrestled with a difficult intra-operative decision. One day he told me he was a general surgeon in Syria before he came to the U.S. With a family to support, he was unable to go through an entire 5-year residency program in order to practice here. So he worked part-time as an OR tech to maintain a connection to the field he loved while starting up a small Middle Eastern diner.

To be sure, the quality and approach to the practice of medicine varies in different parts of the world. In some countries doctors treat a different constellation of health problems than those that exist in the U.S. Some also may have less exposure to the technological advances that abound in the U.S. health care system.

There may also be cultural differences that affect their understanding of and communication with American patients. For this reason, private certification organizations like the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG), specialty boards (e.g., American Board of Surgery, American Board of Internal Medicine), as well as rating and evaluation services play an important role in providing critical information to consumers of health care.

In Canada, like states in the U.S., provinces have domain over medical licensing. Several provinces grant licenses to experienced immigrant physicians who have completed postgraduate training residencies in 29 approved  foreign jurisdictions  without them having to repeat postgraduate training in Canada. Instead, they are simply required to pass a “practice readiness assessment,” a relatively short (usually a few months) process involving supervision by a licensed practitioner who must clear them as competent.  

In  Nova Scotia , non-specialty general medical practitioners from other countries may practice under the supervision of a licensed physician and, after a designated period, may independently practice in underserved areas. A similar program exists for specialists who receive postgraduate training in countries other than the 29 approved jurisdictions. There is no reason we cannot do the same in the U.S., and some states are at least taking a step in the right direction.

For example, one year ago  Arizona , followed by Montana and  Pennsylvania , reformed their licensing laws to grant reciprocity to health care practitioners licensed in any of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.  Missouri  is poised to do the same. Lawmakers in the remaining states should follow their lead. But they can take reform even further. 

Enlisting private certification organizations to help develop criteria, states should give reciprocity to health care practitioners licensed in certain countries with reputations for quality medical education. As some Canadian provinces have done, states should develop programs to facilitate integrating experienced doctors from less advanced countries into the pool of health care providers.

States should not be caught unprepared for the next public health crisis. As the physician shortage worsens, they should remove regulatory barriers obstructing eager and able doctors from  other states and countries  who want to help their patients.

The national press won’t forgive Ron DeSantis for winning the 2018 election, but the Florida Governor and the GOP Legislature are building a record of significant reform. We’ve told you about the big  expansion of school choice , and now the state is proving to be equally innovative in building a post-coronavirus economy that will provide more opportunities for more citizens.

The Occupational Freedom and Opportunity Act, which the Governor signed on June 30, is the largest licensing deregulation in the state’s history. It’s all about removing unnecessary barriers that make it harder for people to enter certain professions.

These range from landscape architects and cosmetologists to barbers and hair braiders. The bill makes it easier for people to fill these jobs by removing the need for duplicative business licenses, reducing the training hours needed for licenses, increasing reciprocal recognition of licenses from other states, and eliminating some licensing and registration requirements outright.

Much of this is common sense. For example, the bill waives the requirement for a commercial driver’s license for people who had training or experience driving heavy vehicles in the military. Whole categories—e.g., nail technicians, body wrappers and makeup artists—will no longer have to get a license at all.

The craft and professional guilds that push licensing requirements often claim they are protecting the public. But typically they’re protecting themselves from competition. How was Florida protecting people by requiring licenses for boxing announcers and boxing timekeepers? Thanks to this bill, that’s now gone.

This is a big deal for ordinary people trying to make a living. Most of those affected are folks who either run their own small operations or work for small businesses. Hefty licensing fees and education requirements—and paperwork—can keep people out of jobs. These are workers often forgotten in the focus on bigger, more glamorous businesses, but Mr. DeSantis is right to realize that expanding opportunities for all Floridians is essential for a vigorous economy that spreads prosperity up and down the income scale.

According to “At What Cost?”, a  2018 Institute for Justice study , Florida loses nearly 130,000 jobs each year because of its licensing requirements, which are among the heaviest in the nation. The annual economic value lost to these regulations is conservatively estimated at $460 million.

The same IJ study says licensing means the loss of 1.8 million jobs nationwide each year. And it’s become a much bigger problem. In the 1950s only about 5% of America’s workers were licensed, but today some 19% are. This regulatory calcification is a major barrier to economic upward mobility.

Licensing reform makes so much sense it may sound politically easy. But don’t underestimate the political power of professional guilds in state capitals. Credit to Mr. DeSantis and the Florida GOP for breaking down these barriers to work and opportunity.