Then starting in early July--the Delta variant ravaged the state and Escambia County.
Our hospitalizations locally from COVID-19 surged to a high of nearly 400 patients. (100 more than the previous surge a year prior)
And folks we know have died and continue to die. More this past week. We've lost 4 county Staff members to COVID.
Yet, the state did not resume reporting the deaths by county as the Delta surge took hold.
So I started asking for the number.
I asked at least three times at public meetings over a period of 6 weeks. I asked staff to work with hospitals to get the number--if the state kept stonewalling. Lots of red tape, lots of explanations about why it couldn't be done.
But I kept asking.
Yesterday-- late in the afternoon--- Marie Mott from the Dept. of Health in Escambia County sent commissioners some information on the cumulative deaths in Escambia County from COVID-19, along with the following message:
"Attached is a screenshot of the CDC Covid-19 death counts
for Escambia County. This number appears to be cumulative, and I have been
unsuccessful at using this database tools to filter for specific time periods.
It is important to note that these data are displayed by location of death, not
residence. Since our local hospitals provide care for residents of several
surrounding counties, I suspect that the number shown for Escambia County is
inaccurately high. In my effort to investigate this suspicion, I have learned
that the Department of Health is working with the CDC to correct this matter. I
will continue to update you as I learn more. Deaths from all causes: 9,266. Deaths involving COVID-19: 1,079."
This is a start, and I thanked Marie personally for sending the information.
But we really need to see this count, daily, chronologically, over time horizontally, so we can put this current surge into context which will assist us in perhaps getting more citizens vaccinated locally--or to at least understand the gravity and seriousness of this situation. I'm staying on it because we deserve this data and the citizens want it.
Funny that anyone would look at an Escambia covid death count of a little over a thousand and think that number looks high. It's probably absurdly low, given how the administrators are doing everything they can to PR away how horrible it is in their hospitals (1500 bucks for an extra nursing shift) and DeSantis removed the ability of medical examiners to add to the count of covid deaths.
ReplyDeleteAre all of the covid patients Escambia hospitals are diverting to Santa Rosa Milton, Gulf Breeze, and Alabama hospitals who then die there going to be received back into this tally as well?
How about the hundreds of covid patients who really need to be admitted for treatment, but are instead being kicked to the curb...some of whom end up dying at home? When they play their game of insisting ER staff not doing rapid testing so they don't get the results in situ, and then drag out their results 7 days, 9 days, 11 days...if those should-be patients are already in the morgue before their covid test comes back positive, do those get counted as a covid deaths?
When a covid patient dies in an area hospital after being treated with a useless course of ivermectin by doctors who should know better, how are those deaths being coded? How about the ones who weren't deemed worthy of monoclonal antibody treatment and died before receiving every form of treatment that actually could have efficacy?
If we want to get really real, maybe after they're done hiding the death stats, somebody could try to drag the rate of nosocomial covid infections out of them. That ought to be fun.
Thank you, nonetheless, for continuing to try to wring some sort of functional death statistics out of these businesses, Commissioner Bergosh. Maybe now people can see that those of us who have been crying foul on the state and hospital data from the beginning were not wearing tin foil hats. They've been finding ways to jack with the numbers from the start, and it has only gotten worse as they have been emboldened in their cover up by seeing it become a smashing success.
In then end, we might not have anything but the excess mortality rate to gauge how many in our community have really died--and will continue to die--from covid. And even that number we might not be able to trust, under this authoritarian regime hell-bent on keeping the truth from its voter and donor pools.
Thank you
ReplyDeleteI think DeSantis and the State of Florida is missing the boat with the COVID response.
Looks like the Federal Government is stepping in.
"President Biden on Thursday is set to announce a new federal rule that will require that all businesses with 100 or more employees ensure that every worker is either fully vaccinated for COVID-19 or submit to weekly testing for the coronavirus.
The Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration will formally issue the rule in coming weeks, a senior administration official told reporters. The rule would apply to more than 80 million workers, the official said.
The announcement is part of what the White House calls a new six-pronged strategy to contain the delta variant of the coronavirus as confirmed cases continue to surge across the country. Biden is set to deliver remarks at 5 p.m. ET Thursday.
The official repeated a line often said by the Biden White House, calling the current surge of infections "a pandemic of the unvaccinated."
"Their actions are affecting us all," the official continued.
The Share Of U.S. Adults Willing To Get Vaccinated Ticks Up, A New Poll Finds
Health
The Share Of U.S. Adults Willing To Get Vaccinated Ticks Up, A New Poll Finds
The vaccine mandate rule coming from the federal government, as opposed to being individually enforced, will shield employers from facing the brunt of potential blowback, said employment lawyer Brett Coburn of firm Alston & Bird.
"I'm sure there will be a lot of employers who chafe at this for a variety of reasons, but some employers I think may welcome it," he said. "It kind of takes it out of their hands to some extent to say, 'Sorry, OSHA said we have to do this and we have to follow what OSHA tells us."
NPR
cont
ReplyDelete"The CDC gives us guidelines. OSHA gives us rules. And that's a really important distinction," Coburn said, noting that he has seen a growing number of companies in the last month move toward vaccine requirements.
Vaccine requirements for federal workers
Biden will also announce that federal workers and contractors will be required to be vaccinated for COVID-19, eliminating an option for unvaccinated workers to be regularly tested instead.
Babies, The Delta Variant And COVID: What Parents Need To Know
Shots - Health News
Babies, The Delta Variant And COVID: What Parents Need To Know
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said federal workers would have about 75 days to become fully vaccinated once Biden signs an executive order. She said that there would be limited exemptions for religious or medical reasons.
Some federal agencies will require proof of vaccination while others will accept attestations, Psaki said. Workers who fail to comply with the requirement will be counseled by their human resources departments, and then will face "progressive disciplinary action," she said.
Similar steps for health workers and teachers
The president's plan to combat the pandemic this fall has six main components, as detailed by a White House fact sheet.
Biden will announce that 17 million health care workers at hospitals and other health care settings like dialysis clinics and home health agencies that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding will have to be vaccinated.
There will be similar requirements for teachers and staff at the Head Start early education program and other federally funded educational settings, such as schools on military bases.
A COVID Surge Is Overwhelming U.S. Hospitals, Raising Fears Of Rationed Care
Shots - Health News
A COVID Surge Is Overwhelming U.S. Hospitals, Raising Fears Of Rationed Care
6 Strategies To Make Classrooms Safer As The Delta Variant Spreads
Back To School: Live Updates
6 Strategies To Make Classrooms Safer As The Delta Variant Spreads
The government also plans to boost access to home tests for COVID, buying nearly $2 billion in tests for a variety of settings ranging from shelters to food banks. Walmart, Amazon and Kroger will sell home tests at cost for the next three months, according to the fact sheet.
The Defense Department plans to send more teams to states where hospitals have reached capacity with COVID patients, and the government also will ship more monoclonal antibody treatments.
The COVID context
The speech comes as the United States has already recorded more than 40 million confirmed cases of the virus, with some 650,000 American lives lost as a result, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University.
COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths have spiked recently, due in large part to the delta variant, which experts say appears to be twice as transmissible as the highly contagious original strain.
The vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths in the current surge are among the unvaccinated. About a quarter of U.S. adults have not gotten a vaccine dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Biden has overseen ramped-up efforts to combat the virus through vaccinations and mask usage, but vaccine hesitancy — particularly among white Republicans — and the politicization of masks have hindered the nation in the fight to stamp out the virus.
And as children and teenagers return to school and the weather begins to cool, experts have warned that the country is likely to continue to see virus surges if more drastic steps are not taken. "
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/09/09
ReplyDeleteI wonder if McMillan former OSHA director would take an appointment to the D2 seat if Governor would remove current COVID denier. (If he is even still around or would take it--IDK)
ReplyDeleteI'm really fed up with politics and want proper government irregardless of personality or party. or farcebook.
It was ruled that it is the states' responsibility to protect public health over one hundred years ago but the federal government can step in also.
You said your son is in law school and your brother also knows law. We are governed by laws in our constitutional republic of the USA and we have overcome pandemics before.
Get it together.
At your level you approve the budget for employee insurance, I hope your HR department paid it, it looks like the county should mandate employee vaccines.(and masks)
Sure you might get blowback but it is the right thing to do. In fact now I think it is going to be a federal law.
Sometimes that is what it takes. A coordinated response.
I've been looking over some of the vaccine hesitant sites and have a pretty good grip of what some of them think but you can't fight them one at a time.
FreeDUMB is not the proper response at this juncture.
Now people will hopefully will think. "Biden can't MAKE ME get a vaccine. Imma gonna do it because I researched and I decided to and I want to... I know my rights"... Whatever... Lawyers making a buck. Republicans talking about the constitution.
ReplyDeletePoliticians getting their face in the news.
Stupid people will still be stupid.
I got the vaccine. Watching football.
Welcome Fall.
3 more million dollars for employee insurance. As far as taxpayer I think employees should get a vaccine or go home. And not collect unemployment.
For Facebook people -- check out For the Greater Glory of Science or One Vaxxed Nurse pages and please stop typing ignorant excuses for not taking preventive measures to get this pandemic undercontrol.
The law
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449224/
JACOBSON V MASSACHUSETTS 1905 Supreme Court
excerpts:
"There is, of course, a sphere within which the individual may assert the supremacy of his own will and rightfully dispute the authority of any human government, especially of any free government existing under a written constitution. But it is equally true that in every well-ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand"
".....As similar health problems increasingly affect people all across the country, the federal government has assumed substantial regulatory authority, just as it did for civil rights protection during the 1960s and environmental protection during the 1970s.108–112
During the past decade, the US Supreme Court has recognized some limits to the federal government’s constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce when it intrudes on matters traditionally considered part of the police power.113–116 But, despite rhetoric about the importance of state sovereignty, its decisions have not expanded state power.43,117 The power of a sovereign state can hardly be increased. Instead, the Court has struck down federal remedies for individuals who suffer from abuses of state power.118,119
Even with this caveat, the federal government remains a major player in national public health matters. In addition to direct regulation under the Commerce Clause, it wields considerable influence over state and local public health activities with its power of the purse. In practice, therefore, the states’ power is exercised in a somewhat more restricted sphere of human and commercial activity. Yet within this sphere, current constitutional law recognizes few limits on the states’ police power, except in the rare circumstances when it unjustifiably restricts important personal liberties."
"Given the changes in constitutional law, public health, and government regulation, what kinds of public health laws that address contagious diseases might be constitutionally permissible today? A law that authorizes mandatory vaccination during an epidemic of a lethal disease, with refusal punishable by a monetary penalty, like the one at issue in Jacobson, would undoubtedly be found constitutional under the low constitutional test of “rationality review.” However, the vaccine would have to be approved by the FDA as safe and effective, and the law would have to require exceptions for those who have contraindications to the vaccine. A law that authorizes mandatory vaccination to prevent dangerous contagious diseases in the absence of an epidemic, such as the school immunization requirement summarily upheld in 1922, also would probably be upheld as long as (1) the disease still exists in the population where it can spread and cause serious injury to those infected, and (2) a safe and effective vaccine could prevent transmission to others."
GET A VACCINE
https://www.osha.gov/coronavirus/safework
ReplyDeleteThis will probable be undated soon
"OSHA emphasizes that vaccination is the most effective way to protect against severe illness or death from COVID-19. OSHA strongly encourages employers to provide paid time off to workers for the time it takes for them to get vaccinated and recover from any side effects. Employers should also consider working with local public health authorities to provide vaccinations for unvaccinated workers in the workplace. Finally, OSHA suggests that employers consider adopting policies that require workers to get vaccinated or to undergo regular COVID-19 testing – in addition to mask wearing and physical distancing "–
Good News for schools
ReplyDeletePfizer and BioNTech will likely apply for approval of their vaccine for children as young as 5 years of age within the next couple of weeks, according to recent news reports. The news comes as schools have reopened across the U.S., amid a sharp rise in children hospitalizations due to the dominance of the highly-transmissible delta variant.
So now the Governor says he will fine you $5000 for every worker if you mandate the vaccine.
ReplyDeletePoliticians-- eyeroll.
Nice to be put between a rock and a hard place. /s