“There are things that, to be honest, we don’t fully understand,” Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told me. Something else seems to be going on, and experts aren’t totally sure what. Chances are Florida’s surge would have been much smaller if it had done better on all these fronts.īut Florida’s example complicates any story of recent Covid-19 surges that focuses solely on reopenings and vaccinations. Social distancing, masking, and restrictions do, too. We know vaccines work to protect people from severe illness, including against the delta variant. This isn’t to say that nothing matters in the fight against Covid-19. Sign up to receive our newsletter each Friday. Vox’s German Lopez is here to guide you through the Biden administration’s burst of policymaking. Some states, like New Jersey and Connecticut, equaled or surpassed their pre-pandemic baseline for restaurant reservations and didn’t see anywhere near the surge that Florida did (although both benefited from significantly higher vaccination rates than Florida). Based on Carnegie Mellon University’s COVIDcast, through August, Floridians were more likely to mask up than New Yorkers or residents in other states that didn’t see nearly as big Covid-19 surges.īased on OpenTable’s restaurant reservation data, Florida was back to pre-pandemic numbers for restaurant reservations around mid-August, but that wasn’t too different from the US as a whole. The same trend holds for other metrics that measure precaution. Neither New York ( about 59 percent fully vaccinated at the time) nor California ( about 54 percent fully vaccinated at the time - not much higher than Florida) saw surges anywhere as bad as Florida’s in August. That’s almost the same as Californians, and actually lower than New Yorkers. Ron DeSantis has taken a more hands-off approach than leaders in blue states, but it’s not clear if this actually led to differences in how the public behaved.Īccording to Google’s mobility data, Floridians around mid-August were about 14 percent less likely to travel to retail and recreational outlets compared to pre-pandemic times. Maybe Florida loosened restrictions too quickly and more aggressively? It’s certainly true that Gov. How Florida’s massive Covid-19 spike got so bad At the peak of its outbreak in mid-August, Florida had fully vaccinated about 51 percent of its population - again, not great, but in line with the national rate. The state ranks 20th for full vaccination in the US, with 56 percent of people fully vaccinated - not great, but a little above the national rate. And lower vaccine rates do correlate with more Covid-19 cases and deaths.īut Florida defies the regional trend. It’s true vaccination rates are low across the South: Seven of the 10 states with the lowest vaccination rates are in the region. The most common explanation for the outbreaks in the South that we saw over the recent summer was the low vaccination rates across the region. But there was and still is surprisingly little certainty, among experts, over one question about Florida’s surge: Why did it happen? Toward the end of the summer, Florida became the epicenter for America’s recent Covid-19 wave - reporting more hospitalizations and deaths than any other state in the country. Would we shut down again? What will the United States do the next time a deadly virus comes knocking on the door?įor the latest news, sign up for our free newsletter. Here’s what you need to know about Arcturus. The latest omicron offshoot is particularly prevalent in India. 1.16, has been designated as a “variant under monitoring” by the World Health Organization. New covid variant: A new coronavirus subvariant, XBB. Here’s who should get the second covid booster and when. The latest on coronavirus boosters: The FDA cleared the way for people who are at least 65 or immune-compromised to receive a second updated booster shot for the coronavirus. Tracking covid cases, deaths: Covid-19 was the fourth leading cause of death in the United States last year with covid deaths dropping 47 percent between 20. Here’s what the end of the covid public health emergency means for you. End of the public health emergency: The Biden administration ended the public health emergency for the coronavirus pandemic on May 11, just days after WHO said it would no longer classify the coronavirus pandemic as a public health emergency.
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