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Current as of Sept. 22, 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 - 2.0%
- 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 - .21%
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45-54 years old - .51%
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55-64 years old - 1.6%
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65-74 years old - 5.4%
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75 and up - 17.1%
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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 - 38 years old
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Emergency department visits w/ COVID-like illness - 19% decrease
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ICU beds available in Florida - 26%
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Hospital beds available in Florida - 28%
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Vaccine Tracking
Last updated: September 18, 2020 10:15 PM PST
212
vaccines are in development.
33
are now in clinical testing.
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America’s Democrats often say they want to emulate Europe, and given their fondness for coronavirus lockdowns we can only hope this time they mean it. Parts of Europe, like parts of the U.S., are experiencing surges in new Covid-19 cases. Unlike many in the U.S., European leaders have learned from their earlier experiences with the virus.
The uptick in cases, as measured by positive tests, is noticeable across the Continent—with one exception we’ll come to in a moment. The renewed outbreak is worst in Spain and France, whose seven-day rolling average of new cases per million residents are about 215 and 130, respectively, from lows of about eight during the June lull. The rise elsewhere is less severe but still pronounced. Germany is up to 20 or so cases per million residents, from four earlier in the summer.
These surges aren’t discriminating on the basis of previous government policies. Italy, Spain and the U.K. were serious hot spots in the pandemic’s first wave in the spring and all imposed strict lockdowns. All three are suffering new waves of the disease anyway.
So is Germany, which avoided the worst ravages of the first wave. At the time, Berlin’s aggressive test-and-trace program coupled with a moderate lockdown were hailed as a public-health role model. Now it’s fairer to say the jury is out on whether Germany permanently suppressed the disease or merely delayed its inevitable spread.
European officials are noticing all of this. They also are noticing that although the new wave has brought more cases, so far the death rate has not been as high as in the spring, and hospitals are weathering the storm well. That’s why their enthusiasm for draconian national lockdowns is waning as the pandemic grinds on. Instead Europe is adopting narrow, local lockdowns and milder control measures.
In Britain, some cities have re-entered a form of lockdown. The rest of the country is continuing its reopening, with limits on the size of some gatherings and mask mandates in most indoor spaces. Denmark doesn’t mandate masks except on public transit but does restrict some larger events.
One theme is that politicians increasingly are alert to the health and economic dangers of mass lockdowns, including mass unemployment, missed education and psychological ills. Another theme is that European leaders are now more inclined to focus on individual responsibility than government action. “There is only so much a government can do,” Herman Goossens, coordinator of a European Union pandemic advisory panel, told the Journal this week. He suggests emphasizing steps individuals can take to control the virus’s spread, such as social distancing and mask wearing.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because that has been Sweden’s approach throughout the pandemic—and Sweden is the conspicuous exception to Europe’s new coronavirus wave. The country eschewed a mandatory lockdown and instead urged prudent individual measures such as working from home when possible and maintaining social distancing.
While it suffered a higher death toll earlier in the crisis—concentrated, as elsewhere, in nursing homes—a second wave has yet to materialize there. If this trend continues, it will provide an important point in the debate over what, if anything, the spring’s lockdowns elsewhere accomplished.
The most notable feature of Europe’s virus response is that policy makers’ judgments are evolving as leaders learn more about the virus and their countries’ ability to manage it. Americans might well ask when their politicians and media will become similarly adaptable in the face of an evolving pandemic.
One in three people have stopped communicating with someone they know because the individual did not take coronavirus precautions seriously enough, according to a recent study conducted by Stannah.
Twenty-nine percent said they have stopped interacting with a family member, while another 13% said they had cut off communication with a friend over the issue.
Other results from the survey include:
- 29% have taken part in a social media argument over someone else’s social distancing habits, while 21% had an online disagreement about their own social distancing behaviors.
- 53% had someone close to them who is not social distancing to the extent that they feel necessary.
- 64% said they had rules for how far of a distance to keep away from others.
- However, only 44% said they had rules for who they would welcome into their home. 62% said they would have family over to their home, while only 38% said they would invite a friend over.
- Among parents, 44% said they would allow their children to have friends over, although only 30% said they would let their kids visit the home of a friend.
The survey was conducted among 983 people on the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform. The average age of the respondents was 38.31, with a standard deviation of 12.20. The study relied on self-reporting, so the data could be exaggerated or underreported, and it has not been weighted.
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Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Over the course of six months, the United States as well as the entire world has succeeded in bringing itself to its knees, economically, socially, and politically.
It may seem like a lifetime ago but we entered the year 2020 not just as a country but as a global civilization: the richest, freest, and healthiest we have collectively been in history. Yet at the turn of the decade, we turned our back on the ideas and institutions that have served us so well.
We have forgotten the value of liberty as governments worldwide impose lockdown orders without a moment’s hesitation. Gone are the notions of limited government, as officials elected and unelected arbitrarily exercise power they were never granted.
We have forgotten the necessity of entrepreneurs, as businesses are labeled essential and nonessential, while protestors wheel a guillotine up to the house of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
We turned our backs on the idea of individual dignity. Government officials, intellectuals, and even everyday citizens perpetuate shameful rhetoric about the necessity for greater disruption to normal life, with little regard for the consequences these policies have brought upon us.
The great tragedy is that these ideas, not our scientific instruments, our wealth, or any other material resource are what allowed us to build a civilization where its inhabitants can live healthier, wealthier, and more comfortably than any human has remotely experienced. How we can respond quickly to problems such as Covid-19 with precise solutions, not incompetent and disastrous policies. We have seen firsthand and in rapid fashion the damage to society that comes with abusing our principles and how futile our vast resources are without them.
The Power of Ideas and Values
We are fortunate to be living in a time known as the Great Enrichment, a time period in human history brought about by the growing popularity of ideas beginning sometime around the 16-17th century but fully coming to implementation in the 19th century. The Claremont Review of Books notes
“For most of history, humans have survived on roughly $3 a day—enough for subsistence living. In good times that amount might double or triple, but one bad harvest or natural disaster could plunge a community back into abject poverty. Around 200 years ago things began rapidly to change; today the average American lives on about $130 a day. Europe, Canada, Australia, and parts of South America and Asia have experienced similar increases. What explains this truly staggering development? After all, earlier societies engaged in commerce-friendly practices like establishing markets, pursuing international trade, and securing property rights, too. Yet this extraordinary growth—this Great Enrichment—only occurred after 1800.”
This was no coincidence, but the consequence of a set of ideas centered around freedom. Deirdre McCloskey writes extensively on the emergence of such ideas when she notes
“What came under question in the world 1517 to 1848 and beyond, slowly, on account of the religious radicals of the sixteenth century and then the political radicals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and then the abolitionist and black and feminist and gay and untouchable radicals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was illiberty and indignity, the one political, the other social.”
By restraining government and gradually clearing aside social barriers, more and more people were able to contribute to society in voluntary as well as mutually beneficial ways. It turned out that free people meant more ideas, more competition, more inventions, more business, more workers, more everything. This is what makes a free society something worth fighting for and something worth defending.
When those who rule are restrained and placed on the same standing of those they rule, society is capable of tremendous accomplishments. That is because it is free of the arbitrary hand that picks winners and losers. Solutions come from the marketplace of ideas and are decided upon by the effectiveness of persuasion as well as reason. Great titles and resumes do not grant special authority. The allocation of wealth, merit, and resources are decided not by a central authority but by countless voluntary interactions that occur in a market that respects private property and mutual exchange.
“Thank the English Levellers and then Locke in the seventeenth century, and Voltaire and Smith and Franklin and Paine and Wollstonecraft among other of the advanced thinkers in the eighteenth century – the ordinary people, the commoners, both workers and bosses, began to be released from the ancient notion of hierarchy, the naturalization of the noble gentleman’s rule over hoi polloi.”
For much of human history, the common man survived on mere scraps, seeing little improvement in living standards for centuries. Society was divided along rigid lines of nobility and peasantry, the rulers and the ruled. What changed all of this for the better was the proliferation of ideas and values concerning individual worth. This accomplishment was not sudden, nor was the workload necessarily attributed to one group of people. It is the struggle of humanity since inception.
Tom Palmer delivered a comprehensive lecture where he noted that whispers of freedom and justice can be seen taking root in literature as far back as the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh.
“The revaluation was derived not from some ancient superiority of the Europeans but from egalitarian accidents in their politics between Luther’s Reformation in 1517 and the American Constitution and the French Revolution in 1789. The Leveller Richard Rumbold, facing his execution in 1685, declared, “I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another; for none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him.”
The wealth, institutions, and accomplishments of society mean nothing without good principles. Turning our backs on the ideas of liberty, entrepreneurship, individual dignity, and limited government has and will doom even the most powerful society to ruin. Embracing these ideas has led rural nations such as South Korea and Taiwan to become economic powerhouses in a single lifetime, but eschewing them will relegate nations such as North Korea to starvation.
Omnipotent Government is Nothing New
Although many would like to think that the draconian practices implemented in response to Covid-19 are the inventions of an enlightened and modern society, these ideas are actually quite antiquated. Shutting down businesses, the tyranny of “experts,” invasive surveillance, public spending run wild, regulatory onslaught, and crushing social controls are all practices that have plagued human existence. They are the ugly byproduct of the human lust for power and domination. Restraining these urges gave way to a society that values individuality, dignity, and permissionless innovation.
The Claremont Review of Books notes
“China was technologically advanced far beyond Europe in the early 15th century, yet Europe surpassed it in the blink of an eye and, for a while, became its master. Europe could do so only after undergoing a cultural shift, reflected in a change in rhetoric and a corresponding re-evaluation of values. For almost all human history almost all societies have harbored a prejudice against commerce and commercial success. Where tolerated, commerce was circumscribed. But something began to change in the 17th century: first in the Dutch Republic, and later in Great Britain, a new attitude emerged towards “betterment.” From being despised, betterment came to be honored—and then became the rage.”
As the saying goes, liberty is always unfinished business. Even prior to Covid-19, those in impoverished countries around the world such as Peru, India, Cuba, and Senegal were held back by crushing government bureaucracy. Entrepreneurship, liberty, and prosperity are overshadowed by paternalism, security, and collectivism. Free societies like the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and so on prosper, but even in these countries, there is much work to be done to achieve a truly free society.
Now, such proud giants of enterprise such as the United States and Britain have imposed some of the harshest lockdown measures in the world. The economic consequences, such as double-digit unemployment rates and GDP reductions will take years to remedy.
The social unraveling of communities and the damage to the framework of limited government may never be remedied.
Human history is a great epic of the individual against the state. The marginalized against the majority. The invention of the printing press and the freedom of speech that it encouraged is but one example of the power of ideas as well as the draconian tendencies of the state.
A story in the Washington Post explains,
“Thanks to the printing press, copies of the (95) theses and news of its posting circulated widely in Europe, eventually forcing a rift in the church and ending its long religious supremacy. Europe’s monarchs, fearing for their own prerogative, kept a sharp eye on printers, requiring them to obtain official license. In England, the notorious Star Chamber, an often secret, non-jury tribunal, enforced the royal line with a heavy hand, ordering, for example, the execution of William Carter in 1584 for publishing pro-Catholic pamphlets.”
These ideas of controlling the narrative, be it religion or Covid-19, and the supremacy of experts, be it the church or certain public health officials, is nothing new. Unfortunately, we also know where such behavior leads. Human progress is facilitated by liberty and inclusion, not domination and exclusion. Such behavior today, whether it be the silencing of dissent against the preferred opinions favoring lockdowns or cheering on the state as it exercises more arbitrary power than ever has led society down a path to misery as it has throughout history.
Key Takeaways
The late Dr. Donald Henderson, who led the eradication of smallpox, may have implicitly endorsed the ideals of the Great Enrichment in combating pandemics when he wrote
“Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.”
Although likely not a scholar who studied the works of those such as Deirdre McCloskey or any other economist, his words very much affirm these ideals. By doing as he says and ensuring “the normal functioning of the community is least disrupted,” we affirm the power of free people and condemn the incompetent hand of unilateral intervention. Freedom and prosperity are what allow a society to eradicate disease as well as protect the vulnerable. His words accentuate the values of individual dignity and voluntary association, ideas that lead to outcomes that maximize social as well as economic benefit.
A healthy and prosperous society is not guaranteed by the size of its wealth, the capabilities of its technology, or the perceived intelligence of its experts. Rather it is upheld by the promulgation of ideas. Ideas rooted in free enterprise, limited government, individual dignity, and the rule of law. America, the most powerful polity in human history, brought itself to its knees by turning on these proven principles in the midst of a pandemic that freer countries handled far better.
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Smithfield Foods Inc. thought it was doing great. In the first quarter of this year, the pork giant’s earnings were up 190% over the same period in 2019. Then the pandemic hit, and the close quarters of meatpacking plants made them ideal places for the coronavirus to spread.
Employee infection rates spiked, forcing temporary closures and sudden shortages in supermarket meat aisles. After its revenue plummeted in the second quarter, Smithfield and other meat processors started looking around for strategies to make sure the same thing didn’t happen again.
While the industry has in some cases installed plastic shields between workstations and made other coronavirus-related changes, some executives contend social distancing isn’t feasible in such a labor-intensive environment.
Smithfield, the largest pork company in the world with 42,000 employees in 40 U.S. locations, decided to invest in some relatively new technology to deal with the threat of contagion.
Howard Anderson, the company’s chief engineer, said he reviewed a range of novel approaches, but was most hopeful when it comes to ionized hydrogen peroxide vapor—and a machine built by San Diego-based Puradigm and distributed by Dayton, Ohio-based Extreme Microbial Technologies (EMT).
“What we liked about [the technology] is that it’s a proactive solution,” said Anderson. Many other options are passive, requiring that air be pulled through a unit to be treated. Smithfield, owned by Hong Kong-based WH Group, said it has installed the units in six locations, including a plant in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with three more locations soon to follow...
EMT, which was started in 2016, contends the Puradigm technology it distributes is an environmentally safe way to help reduce coronavirus in the workplace. But experts say it’s a long way from being able to clear pathogens from the air.
The backbone of the technology is a “coated honeycomb matrix” that, when hit by ultraviolet light, pulls moisture from the air and forms hydrogen peroxide. Particles are pushed out of the machine, spreading through a room and landing on surfaces. According to EMT, when the particles come into contact with pathogens, a chemical reaction neutralizes them.
The company distributes standalone units for office spaces (which are the size of a waste-paper basket) or tech that uses a building’s heating and cooling (HVAC) system for bigger areas.
According to the Trump administration, hydrogen peroxide is active against a wide range of microorganisms, including bacteria, yeasts, fungi, viruses and spores. But at high concentrations, the molecule can be harmful to humans. EMT contends the limited amount of vapor produced by the machines makes them safe for humans as well as food production.
In a study done for Puradigm by the University of Florida in August, the company’s technology was found to be 99.7% successful at reducing microbial contamination levels of the coronavirus on stainless steel surfaces. But this is only a first step toward total indoor protection, since most coronavirus transmission is believed to take place through airborne droplets.
“Surfaces are responsible for maybe 5% of all transmissions. Likely much lower,” said Dr. Erin Bromage, an associate professor at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and an infectious disease expert. “This technology would not work fast enough, nor penetrate a droplet traveling through the air in time to inactivate it before hitting a person’s face.”
Still, Puradigm’s devices have been shown to work against a long list of contaminants that food companies were already worried about, including E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria and the norovirus.
Dr. David Acheson, a food safety expert and former official with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said that if a vapor mechanism can kill the norovirus, it can kill the coronavirus. The FDA granted an Emergency Use Authorization for vaporized hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate N95 respirators, a process used by 6,300 hospitals across the U.S.
“It’s a reasonable assumption that it will work on surfaces,” Acheson said. “But any evidence that it will prevent person-to-person transmission [is] a big question mark..."
Despite the questions, industry analysts are cautiously optimistic about the technology.
“Let’s say we get a vaccine tomorrow that everyone wants to take, I think that as these investments move forward, it’s about future proofing [a building],” said John Walsh, an industry analyst at Credit Suisse. “It’s a way that buildings are going to help distinguish themselves to get people back into [office] spaces.”
But for Nick Santhanam, a senior partner at McKinsey & Co., whether companies like Puradigm and EMT keep growing after the Covid-19 pandemic recedes remains an “open question.”
“People are thinking about it, and clients are asking about it. You’re going to see a massive surge [in adoptions],” Santhanam said. “But will it keep going? That’s tbd.”
Randy Mount, 51, chief executive of EMT, began his career in real estate remediation, eradicating contaminants like mold from residential homes. That was how he stumbled upon the use of vaporized hydrogen peroxide. “We could decontaminate anything,” said Mount. “Restaurants, homes, universities and schools—we started getting a reputation for being the guys to call.”
In addition to Smithfield, his distribution list now includes French-owned Bonduelle Fresh Americas, which he said installed units in one of its four U.S. locations; sausage maker Glier’s Goetta, which has six units in its Covington, Kentucky, production facility; and Graeter’s Ice Cream, a 1,500 employee-company that has installed seven machines in its production facility in Mt. Auburn, Ohio.
Installation costs are calculated by cubic feet and bio-load (the number or range of microorganisms in a facility). A machine for a typical food production facility of 5,000 square feet with 12-foot ceilings would cost about $11,000. Mount said his company is on track to make $10 million in sales this year.
Vapor purification, or “nonthermal plasma,” was patented in 2014 by Puradigm. While some businesses began taking steps to address airborne threats long ago, most didn’t see the benefit, given the expense. The pandemic has changed that, creating a huge opportunity for businesses already in the field as more food-processing and food retail look for help.
Padraig Lawlor, Puradigm’s chief operating officer, estimated his company’s 2020 sales will be $17 million, which includes resellers, distributors like EMT and its own sales. But next year, his projection is $72 million. Lawlor said the company is mulling an IPO for 2022.
One retailer that put such precautions in place was Chipotle Mexican Grill, a restaurant chain which grappled with norovirus outbreaks in 2015 and 2017.
In between those years, the company installed combination ultraviolet/vapor hydrogen peroxide systems built by RGF Environmental Group Inc. In 2018, Chipotle added separate restroom units to “address microbiological contaminants, including viruses that originate there,” wrote Kerry Bridges, Chipotle’s vice president of food safety, in an email.
The air-purification systems sold by RGF are similar to what Puradigm makes, said Dr. James Marsden, RGF’s executive director of science and technology. Marsden was a professor at Kansas State University and led Chipotle’s food safety group after the norovirus outbreak.
Florida-based RGF said its sales grew by 500% this year, and that it’s currently testing its product’s effectiveness against the coronavirus.
At Chef’s Garden’s, a 350-acre vegetable farm in Huron, Ohio, that sells to high-end restaurants, business vanished when Covid-19 arrived. As the company pivoted to direct-to-consumer sales, Chief Executive Officer Bob Jones, Jr. looked for ways to protect his 140 employees. He installed units distributed by EMT in April, both to keep staff healthy and “protect the integrity of the product,” he said.
Mike Willing, chief executive officer of Aloha Seafood in San Francisco, said his company’s biggest problem before the coronavirus was that when someone got the flu, it would spread like wildfire through the staff. In 2019, he installed machines obtained from EMT. Since then, Willing said he hasn’t had a single case of the coronavirus to report. “We feel more comfortable with it and my guys are ecstatic,” he said.
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The deep and genuine friendship between Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg provides an especially important model in these intensely polarized times.
As Eugene Scalia, the Secretary of Labor and the oldest son of the justice, emphasizes in this Washington Post essay, the lesson their friendship provides is not that our government leaders would “achieve consensus, harmony, and wondrous legislation” if only they “spent more time together.” Rather:
What we can learn from the justices … — beyond how to be a friend — is how to welcome debate and differences. The two justices had central roles in addressing some of the most divisive issues of the day, including cases on abortion, same-sex marriage and who would be president. Not for a moment did one think the other should be condemned or ostracized. More than that, they believed that what they were doing — arriving at their own opinions thoughtfully and advancing them vigorously — was essential to the national good. With less debate, their friendship would have been diminished, and so, they believed, would our democracy.
Christopher Scalia, the youngest son of the justice, draws the same lesson in this Fox News essay:
Reasonable people of good faith will disagree about important issues. You and your friends will likely hold very strong, very different opinions about what course our country should take and who should lead us there.
A healthy republic requires citizens to debate those issues forcefully and peacefully; a healthy society needs citizens to remember that political disagreement need not turn friends into enemies. My father and Justice Ginsburg mastered this balance. We’ll all need to do the same in the difficult months before us.
During one of my last visits with Justice Scalia, I saw striking evidence of the Scalia-Ginsburg relationship. As I got up to leave his chambers, he pointed to two dozen roses on his table and noted that he needed to take them down to “Ruth” for her birthday. “Wow,” I said, “I doubt I have given a total of twenty-four roses to my wife in almost thirty years of marriage.” “You ought to try it sometime,” he retorted. Unwilling to give him the last word, I pushed back: “So what good have all these roses done for you? Name one five-four case of any significance where you got Justice Ginsburg’s vote.” “Some things,” he answered, “are more important than votes.”
I let him have the last word.
If our friendship encourages others to appreciate that some very good people have ideas with which we disagree, and that, despite differences, people of goodwill can pull together for the well-being of the institutions we serve and our country, I will be overjoyed, as I am confident Justice Scalia would be...
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