Note: Please do not reply to this email as replies will not be reviewed. If you have a question or comment, click here.
|
|
Current as of Sept. 1, 2020, at 7:00 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.
Graphs, Charts, and Real-time Tracking of COVID-19
Data Sources
Data Sources on Social Media
Other Resources
|
|
Current Statistics
-
Fatality rate in Florida - 1.8%
- Covid fatality rate in FL by age group:
-
15-24 years old - .03%
-
25-34 years old - .06%
-
35-44 years old - .21%
-
45-54 years old - .47%
-
55-64 years old - 1.5%
-
65-74 years old - 5%
-
75 and up - 16%
-
Seasonal influenza mortality rate in the US (2017 CDC) 18-49 yo - .02%
-
Median age of new Covid cases - 46 years old
-
Emergency department visits w/ COVID-like illness - 28% decrease
-
ICU beds available in Florida - 24%
-
Hospital beds available in Florida - 27%
|
|
Vaccine Tracking
Last updated: August 31, 2020 10:16 PM PST
207
vaccines are in development.
29
are now in clinical testing.
|
|
The race to find successful antibody treatments against Covid-19 is heating up as GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Vir Biotechnology Inc. start human trials to evaluate a potential drug that could be available as soon as the first half of next year.
The therapy is advancing directly to the middle and final stages of clinical tests with a study that began last week, the companies said in a statement Monday. The trials will involve 1,300 high-risk patients from across the globe and focus on preventing hospitalization for people with early or mild coronavirus symptoms, with initial results possible before year-end.
Glaxo and Vir are among a number of drugmakers seeking to fight, or even prevent, Covid-19 with monoclonal antibodies, which aim to mimic the body’s natural immune response. Such treatments could provide a short-term solution before a vaccine becomes available, and may also be necessary for older or more vulnerable people who don’t respond as well to a shot.
AstraZeneca Plc also said last week it had started human trials for a combination of two antibodies, while early data from a pair of antibodies being tested by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. are due in September. Eli Lilly & Co. started final-stage trials for its drug in U.S. nursing homes this month.
A successful treatment could bypass the need for the body to produce its own antibodies, which is especially important in the absence of an effective vaccine, said Hal Barron, Glaxo’s head of research. The companies are also planning further studies looking at preventing infection and treating more seriously ill hospitalized patients.
“A vaccine is incredibly important for the impact it can have at scale,” Barron said in an interview. “But we do believe this monoclonal antibody in particular is unique and that the class in general will potentially play a very important role in this pandemic.”
Glaxo and Vir, which signed a $250 million Covid-19 pact in April, are also looking at potential vaccines for the disease, as well as treatments and shots for other coronaviruses. A mid-stage trial for a second antibody treatment that could also act as a prophylactic T cell vaccine is due to start later this year.
“The need for these antibodies is likely to be so large that no one company will be able to provide it all,” George Scangos, Vir’s chief executive officer, said in an interview.
|
|
Contrary to what you might have been told, a 32.9% fall in GDP is a smaller decline than a 22.1% one, or even an 11.9% decline. Those are the economic slowdown estimates for, respectively, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. It's not magic, or deceit, or even American exceptionalism that explains why that 32.9% is actually smaller than 22.1% and 11.9. It's because the U.S. reports economic changes on an annualized basis (meaning it shows how bad it would be if the quarter continued all year), while everyone else just lists what happened during those three months. Removing that trick means that the U.K. saw a 22.1% economic decline in the second quarter, Germany saw an 11.9% decline, and the U.S. economy contracted by "only" 10.6%.
Yes, yes, of course, it's election time and "Orange man bad!" and all that, but actually, the American response to the economic troubles has been pretty good — better than other major economies.
As to why it has been better, one clear and obvious reason has been the speed at which things have been done in the U.S. It's possible that $600 bonus on unemployment benefits was a bit excessive or that stimulus checks weren't really necessary, but what was done was done quickly. That paragon of social democracy, the European Union, is only just done arguing about who is going to pay for it all — much of the money won't even be spent until next year.
In recessions, as with so much of the real world, there are times when immediate action is crucial. Even imperfect action is better than just discussing action. Our standard economics here tells us that in such a recession, to stop it becoming a depression, we need to get the money out the door right now. The U.S. did that well. Alternative plans may have done 5% or 10% better, but the important thing is that action was taken quickly.
This is why the American economy is roaring back. Unemployment has been falling by significant fractions of a percentage point each week. By the scales of such things, this is huge. Retail sales are higher than they were a year ago. Durables (an indication of both investment and confidence in the future) were up 11% just this last month. We could even point out that the level of U.S. unemployment, now at little under 10% in the aftermath of the terrible coronavirus recession, is about the same figure as France has in normal times — ah, the joys of socialism.
Of course, I'm not trying to say that everything is peachy — it isn't. It's also not true that President Trump is solely responsible for everything that's gone right. But the U.S. economic reaction to policy about the coronavirus has done rather well, better than most other places...
I expect the U.S. economy to continue to recover better than nearly all other places, simply because it is a more flexible economy to start with. All those things frequently decried such as job insecurity, fire at will, and the lack of worker job protections are exactly what make it possible to adapt to the vicious economic changes we've recently had and come back stronger...
Could things have been done better at points? Sure, and hindsight is 20/20 too. But the overall economic performance of the U.S. has been pretty good these past months compared to what other countries achieved under the same pressures. You have to give America, and the guy running the country, some credit for that.
Fast forward to 2025. The annus horribilis, 2020, is in the fairly distant past. The popular esports national championship is taking place —-between two powerhouse higher education teams —Google and Microsoft. Just as a century earlier America fixated on the Harvard vs. Yale football game, and later ball throwing contests between top SEC universities known more for football than learning, schools like Alabama and Ole Miss, now the insurgent for profit high tech giants are battling.
Far fetched fiction? Not necessarily. Both Google and Microsoft, along with many other high tech private powerhouses, are moving headlong into teaching employable skills, and certifying vocational competence. Why? For many Americans, traditional higher education is vastly too expensive and too hung up on weird and even threatening left-wing ideology and indoctrination, rather than scholarly dissemination and discovery. Many mostly semi-affluent Americans still want four or five gap years between adolescence and life, provided by residential “colleges” serving the strange triple functions of country clubs, hedonistic party sites, and halls of learning. However, an increasing proportion of the population of our slow growth, aging and debt ridden society are just saying “no” to traditional college.
Non-traditional providers of knowledge, like 2U and Coursera, are reportedly booming, and a few nimble and risk-taking state universities like Purdue (which bought Kaplan’s on-line services, now Purdue Global) and the University of Arizona (which is buying Ashford University) are moving into non-traditional modes of delivery in big ways.
But now the big guns are getting really involved. Google is moving quickly to offer high level vocational training via several Google Career Certificates, short courses (six months or so of training) hosted on Coursera designed to offer a big vocational return at a moderate cost—many initial participants will get scholarships from Google in its effort to quickly achieve critical scale economies. Not to be left out, many of the other big names of high tech loaded with resources and hoards of very bright people are moving in as well. Microsoft, for example, at this writing has a new worth, based on market capitalization, of $1.72 trillion, probably conservatively 25 times that of America’s richest university, Harvard. Even now, several coding academies have been doing well, in some cases charging nothing for instruction in return for a share of the earnings of the graduates.
Let’s do some forecasting (something economists do poorly). Let’s use an automotive analogy. In a few years, we will have perhaps 200 truly Lexus/Mercedes type universities and residential colleges doing the triple functions described above. We will have a few hundred mostly public Chevy/Ford/Honda type schools struggling to do what Harvard, Claremont McKenna, etc. do. We will have, figuratively, intensive care rooms and cemeteries filled with dying/dead minor league state universities and private schools. And we will have Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple and undoubtedly some other agile new providers. The community colleges may get brutalized in the process.
The accreditation agencies that kept competition down and perceived undesirable riffraff out will be measurably weakened; the smart and savvy Mother Superior of Accreditation, Judith Eaton, president of the Council of Higher Education Accreditation, smartly just retired, ahead of the deluge. Meanwhile, new ways of certifying competence, perhaps something like my oft-proposed National College Equivalence Examination, will be created, as employers discover the 75% or even 100% wage premium that they have been paying for college degrees is too much, and that diplomas are an obscenely expensive screening device...
Carriers joins United in offering free ticket changes as airlines adjust to coronavirus travel restrictions
The sluggish rebound in passenger demand since April and concerns that Covid-19 cases could rise during the fall and winter have pushed airlines to identify new competitive strategies. The carriers are seeking to provide passengers with more reassurance about returning to the skies. Southwest Airlines Co. has never charged baggage or change fees, a policy it has used as a marketing tool.
American has gone a step further than United and Delta, dropping fees for international flights to and from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean, as well as most domestic tickets. “We need to give people a very good reason to do business with American Airlines, ” Chief Revenue Officer Vasu Raja said in an interview.
Like United, American and Delta didn’t remove charges from long-haul flights, many of which are operated in tandem with overseas partners. Mr. Raja said that could change at American when international travel starts to return.
American also took steps to bolster its basic economy tickets by allowing upgrades, which still can’t be changed or refunded, but offer stripped-down fares aimed at luring passengers from budget carriers such as Southwest and Spirit Airlines Inc.
Delta generated $830 million and American $818 million in revenue from change and cancellation fees last year, according to the Transportation Department. Overall, U.S. carriers reaped $2.8 billion from the levies, with change fees ranging from $200 to $500, which can sometimes exceed the original fare.
Some lawmakers last spring called for change fees to be curtailed or removed altogether as a condition for federal aid to the industry, but carriers have opted for voluntary relaxation in an effort to lure back travelers.
Seat assignments and other extras have remained popular through the pandemic-driven travel downturn, according to low-cost specialists such as Spirit, which rely heavily on non-ticket revenue.
Some carriers such as Delta continue to block middle seats, and the industry continues to push for unified protocols for passenger health screening, wrestling with issues such as customers who become ill before they travel...
|
|
Protests have spread across the United States for months now, along with calls for defunding local police departments. But the movement to defund police has a crucial flaw: the policy that it seeks would harm the minority communities whom the protesters claim to care about. Moreover, those communities don’t even agree with it.
Cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Portland are making significant cuts to their police budgets, while others, including Houston, Chicago, and Newark, have maintained or even increased spending levels on law enforcement. The glaring differentiator between these cities: those with black mayors or many black council members have opposed demands to cut their police budgets. Even in New York City, where Mayor de Blasio agreed to some cosmetic cuts, some black and Latino council members opposed even these.
A recent Gallup poll found that 81 percent of African-Americans opposed reducing police in their neighborhoods; 61 percent wanted the same amount of police, while 20 percent wanted more. (Out of the four major ethnic groups, Asian-Americans were the most likely to want reduced police presence in their neighborhoods.) This black support for more police comes even as black respondents to the poll reported the highest frequency of police interactions and the lowest confidence that their interactions will result in positive treatment.
The “defund the police” movement is backed by progressive activists and politicians, who in turn are funded by nonprofit social-justice organizations and money from corporations shaken down by agitator groups like Black Lives Matter, which pose as community organizations, though they have little popular representation or membership. They champion the most adverse policies for the very citizens they claim to be fighting for.
Amid the protests in New York City, filmmaker Ami Horowitz walked around interviewing residents about defunding the police. Horowitz found wide support for defunding and a widespread hatred of the police among white hipsters in the affluent, mostly white East Village. Some said that black Americans would be “infinitely” better off if the police were abolished.
When Horowitz went to Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem and interviewed black New Yorkers about the same topic, however, he heard the opposite response. “People would be just going crazy,” one man said. “It would be worse than what it is. Robberies, looting, raping, murder.” Another local said, “Abolishing the NYPD, that would be suicide.”
This sentiment is shared widely among black Americans of all political stripes. When the Houston city council was swamped with testimony from residents pushing for the dismantling of the Houston Police Department, black council members pushed back, saying that these people clearly didn’t spend time in the communities that they claimed to support. The black mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner, supported an increase in the police budget.
Progressives and radicals don’t understand, or don’t care, that black neighborhoods need the police.
Especially in the current economic climate, black communities are struggling financially and can’t afford to contract with private security, hire off-duty cops, or secure constable protection to patrol their neighborhoods, as some better-off areas can do.
Black people also suffer a lack of personal protection. Black gun ownership, while currently surging, has historically been low. Only about 24 percent of black Americans have reported legally owning a firearm. In urban areas, only 19 percent of residents have reported owning guns. These communities rely on protection from the service that they pay tax dollars for—the police.
More than anything else, black communities are calling for better interactions with police, not for dismantling departments. In the same Gallup poll cited above, more than 90 percent of black respondents favored specific reforms aimed at improving the relationship between communities and police. They want more training and more prevention and punishment for abusive and excessive behavior. They want the type of policing often found in affluent suburbs, with a greater focus on de-escalation, diversion, community service, and rehabilitation as opposed to arrest and incarceration.
Some of the advocates surely have good intentions. But policy isn’t judged by intent. The outcome of police reform, at least in its current shape, will be more damage to poor and minority communities.
|
|
A nationwide sewing group called “Auntie Sewing Squad” has been making free masks for people who need them during the coronavirus pandemic.
Jacksonville resident Lori Ann Brown discovered the group, which was started by comedian Kristina Wong, in the spring.
“Back in March, I started making masks for all of my friends, all of my neighbors, all of my family,” explained Brown. “And I started running out of fabric and supplies, and I thought, ’I don’t know how I’m going to keep doing this.’”
That’s when she joined the sewing group made up of anonymous sewers from all across the country making masks.
The masks are sent to various groups and organizations, including schools, indigenous people and farm workers under the threat of wildfires in California.
“It’s a very joyous job,” Brown said. “It’s the best feeling in the world to make a mask for a small child and to know I’m impacting the world. He could grow up and be a leader, he could grow up and discover something wonderful, and I want that.”
Brown said her home is considered a major hub for the sewing group. She collects donations and organizes distribution from inside her old entertainment room that’s been transformed into a sewing room.
She also established a branch of the sewing group called “Grandmas Sewing Squad.”
“I’m doing this because I love my country,” explained Brown. “I truly believe that every one of those masks will save a life.”
To date, Brown said Aunties Sewing Group has distributed nearly 90,000 masks...
Humans are inherently social creatures — connecting with others makes us happier, healthier, and even smarter. On the flip side, social isolation can wreak havoc on our physical and mental health.
The pandemic has shone a spotlight on this issue — people who once had full social calendars are now finding themselves stuck at home — but social isolation has been a problem for seniors since long before 2020.
Since they're more likely to live alone, have lost family and friends, and experience chronic illnesses that stand in the way of a social life, seniors are also more likely to experience social isolation, which puts them at higher risk of dementia, heart disease, and even premature death.
Now, a trio of Texan teens has used the free time afforded to them by lockdowns to create Big & Mini, an online platform that sets up video chats between seniors and young people — combating social isolation while promoting connection across generations.
Big & Mini works similarly to a dating app, but instead of matching compatible singles, it matches mentors ("Bigs") with mentees ("Minis"). There are no age requirements for being a Big or a Mini — users choose their label — but generally, Bigs are seniors and Minis are younger people.
To start the process, each person completes a survey, answering questions about themselves and their interests. Initially, the co-founders would then manually match Bigs and Minis based on their answers, but they've since automated that process.
Users then get an email with details on their match and the time and date of their first video chat.
This meeting will take place via Jitsi, an open-source video conferencing service. The co-founders chose this platform because it requires less tech savvy to navigate than comparable services, such as Zoom — no downloading or installation of software required.
After the first chat, both the Big and Mini will get a survey asking if they want to schedule another with that person or meet someone new.
All three of the site's co-founders — University of Texas at Austin students Allen Zhou and Aditi Merchant and Zhou's younger brother, Anthony — had volunteered in nursing homes prior to the pandemic.
When the lockdowns began, they were forced to combat the social isolation they already knew was a problem for seniors in those facilities.
"We found ourselves feeling lonely, even though we were constantly connected with phones, and we had our families and everything," Merchant said. "So we imagined that, for a lot of seniors or older adults, it would be significantly more difficult to find those connections."
"When we saw that this was a problem, we decided this is something we can do," the older Zhou said. "We can leverage our software expertise to connect people."
Within a week, the trio had built the first version of Big & Mini.
"Creating Big & Mini was our way of solving two problems at once," Merchant told OneZero. "From the perspective of the 'Big,' they are gaining companionship while on the side of the 'Mini,' they are gaining access to mentorship."
As of August 6, Big & Mini had about 1,000 users. In the future, the site's creators plan to reach out to youth groups and organizations catering to seniors as a way of connecting with many potential users at once.
They don't plan to shutter the site when the pandemic ends, either — the problem of social isolation among seniors will still be around and so will Big & Mini.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
