Forgive me this Captain Obvious moment, but the New York Times is out of touch with reality. They are operating in an alternate universe that gives little credence to facts, actual science and perspective. I live in Florida. Great place to live. Imagine my surprise yesterday when this headline flashed on my smart phone:

Floridians are out and about and pandemic restrictions have been lifted. There’s just one problem: The virus never went away.

Guess what? The flu never went away. Nor has cancer or heart disease. But the New York Time’s intent with this article is to crap on Florida, specifically Governor De Santis, and wrongly state that the Covid menace continues to rampage:

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“If you look at South Florida right now, this place is booming,” Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, recently gloated. “Los Angeles isn’t booming. New York City isn’t booming.”

To call what is happening in Florida an actual boom is a stretch. . . .

Yet in a country just coming out of the morose grip of coronavirus lockdowns, Florida feels unmistakably hot. (And not just because of global warming.)

“You can live like a human being,” Mr. DeSantis said. “You aren’t locked down. People aren’t miserable.” . . . .

To bask in that feeling — even if it is only that — is to ignore the heavy toll the coronavirus exacted in Florida, one that is not yet over.

More than 32,000 Floridians have died, an unthinkable cost that the state’s leaders rarely acknowledge. Miami-Dade County averaged more than 1,000 new coronavirus cases a day over the past two weeks, one of the nation’s most serious outbreaks.

Wow. A 1,000 new cases a day. Run for the hills. This is both disingenuous and dishonest. How many of the 1,000 are in the hospital? How many in ICU? And how many are dying? Are the bodies stacking up in the morgues?

Let me give you the reality for Sarasota and Bradenton area. You can go back and read my previous updates on Covid in Sarasota (A Covid Panic Update and Why Does the Liberal Media Refuse to Report Meaningful Data on Covid). So what is the current situation?

I am using the latest data from Sarasota Memorial Hospital (one of the largest in the area).

Covid is not overwhelming hospital resources in Sarasota:

Hospital / ICU Capacity

Today’s patient census: 757

Today’s COVID-positive patients total: 32 (34 yesterday)

Today’s ICU census: 58 (64 yesterday)

COVID-positive patients in ICU today: 8 (no change from yesterday)

Total hospital beds: 839

ICU bed capacity: 72

Only 13% of the patients in ICU are there because of Covid. Compare that to November 19, 2020–one out of four (i.e. 25%) of the patients were battling Covid. Total Covid patients as of Friday, March 12? Thirty two. That’s a significant decline from December 15, when there were 78 Covid patients in the hospital.

Covid test results are falling as well:

7-Day SMH positivity rate: 2.6% (3.4% for week ending March 1)

Patients who have tested positive (excludes repeat positives): 3,080 *

Patients who have tested negative: 60,356 *

Most importantly, the death rate hovers around 1 per day:

Patients hospitalized since outbreak began: 2,191 (2,188 yesterday)

Patients treated/discharged: 2,548 (2,543 yesterday) {outpatients treated in the ER but not hospitalized and inpatients who have been treated and discharged or cleared by infection control but not yet discharged}

Patient deaths: 226 (no change from yesterday)

It is not just the New York Times working overtime to paint Florida as a horror show. The Los Angeles Times jumped into the act as well:

California has a lower rate of deaths than Florida

If California had Florida’s COVID-19 death rate, roughly 6,000 more Californians would be dead. And if Florida had California’s death rate, roughly 3,000 fewer Floridians would be dead from COVID-19.

For every million residents of California, 1,385 Californians have died of COVID-19. But for every million residents of Florida, 1,538 Floridians have died of COVID-19.

But this is a case of lying with statistics. Consider the following. Florida has a larger number of people over the age of 65 (4.4 million) compared to only 1.8 million in California. We know that the age group most likely to succumb to Covid are the senior set, i.e., 65 and up. You would expect more people would die in Florida given that dramatically larger number of senior citizens running around, especially given that Florida is open for business. But that did not happen. Total deaths in California (as of this writing) is 54,892 dead compared to Florida’s 32,285.

What separates Ron DeSantis from the Governors of New York, California, Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts is that our Governor protected the seniors inhabiting nursing homes and assisted living facilities. The Governors of those blue states allowed Covid infected people to be housed in senior facilities. Cuomo reportedly has the blood of more than 13,000 on his hands as a result of his insane policy.

New York’s nursing-home death toll from COVID-19 may be more than 50 percent higher than officials claim — because Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration hasn’t revealed how many of those residents died in hospitals, state Attorney General Letitia James announced Thursday.

As time goes on the policy to battle Covid in Florida will vindicate Governor DeSantis and expose the folly and recklessness of former blue-state darlings like Cuomo and Newsom.