COVID-19 positive tests are hovering around 6% nationwide but recently Florida is getting a lot of attention from, most notably, the president. The Governor who is a fan of that sovereign thing, told to him to back off. To be fair to the Governor, COVID-19 hospitalization are up but nothing like last summer or winter. In other words, Florida is handling the surge and most systems are operating normally.
The CDC continues its mission drift into the unknown. Their on-again-off-again mask guidance with few discernible objective metrics to define it has left most serious scientists scratching their heads. Now comes the a scale change used defining what is "high transmission" and thus worthy of Non-pharmaceutical Interventions. I won't steal his thunder entirely but Bruce Quinn spells it out in his usually witty way. LinkedIn post here.
The short version is that for much of the last year, the CDC has normalized cases based on case per 100k population per day. They shifted that to cases per 100k per week. As Bruce points out 7 cases per 100k per day is about the same as 50 cases per 100k per week. The difference is the former would not be considered "high transmission" but the latter is now defined as such.
Fun with numbers.
Emily Evans
Managing Director – Health Policy
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