Awesome, thanks for the reply, I'll see if I can bring some clarity to my thoughts, it may be a bit long but I just want to get it all out there.
Mr.
@NaffNaffBobFace , my aunt is elderly and very traditional so every morning I wake up she is reading the newspaper front to back and has the local morning news playing for a couple hours. The news station is based out of Tampa, one of Florida's larger metropolitan areas. People are asked to contact their doctor via phone or video health if they believe they have COVID or are showing signs of respiratory illness. I do not know the procedure from there, I'm assuming you will self isolate and be taken care of at home unless your symptoms get worse and require emergency care. So that would mean there are people I am not seeing who have covid and are recovering at home which would be part of the 28,000 confirmed cases for the year I assume, as it doesn't specify where these patients are or how they were diagnosed.
When I recently took my ambulance ride, once I calmed down, and to help keep me calm I struck a conversation with the EMT (in an ambulance I have ran patients in myself it turns out). I am definitely curious about COVID obviously and this is what I learned: they "hardly have any covid patients" and "it is no longer protocol for us to suit up for every call, just the ones that they suspect may have covid through a screener" (they once had to go to every call with full ppe). As I felt like I was dying, I cant tell you how much I enjoyed a several minute long questionnaire from the emergency operator! So they do a very thorough screening on every call it seems so they know which precautions to take. As far as I know, there is no special covid intake center for emergency calls. They ended up taking me into a smaller ER in the area where I was taken to a room and taken care of. None of the nurses were wearing masks, only the doctor when he popped in (as they normally do, they dont spend much time hanging around patients) had a mask on. They did however put a mask on me before the doctor entered the room, which makes sense as these masks arent for the protection of those wearing them. The doctor had on what looked like a respirator so thats a bit different. EDIT: When I was being wheeled through the ER, I did not see many rooms with patients in them. Im not saying it was dead, but from what I saw it wasn't full or packed.
A previous visit to the "second busiest ER in the country" I keep talking about, due to my grandmother falling ill, this is what happened: I walked into the ER intake, or the triage area as its called and there wasnt anyone else waiting. Absolutely crazy sight as I have spent hundreds of hours in this emergency room doing clinicals for EMT / Paramedic school (just about a decade ago that is) and it has always been absolutely packed with all sorts of complaints / illnesses. We were taken through the ER to our room and I noticed the place was dead. No patients in any of the rooms I passed, and I only saw a few rooms across the way with anyone in them. Now, this isnt indicative of how many patients are there with covid currently, as they have an entire floor quarantined for covid patients. However, they do keep the patients in the ER initially. Im not sure if they stay in the ER until a lab confirms a positive test (im not sure how long a test takes in hospital) or if they get transferred to the COVID unit under suspicion. Anyways, while in my grandmothers room, I got to talking with out nurse, and the take away from him was that they have so few patients that he is there part time and they have had to lay off part of their staff. My grandmother was his only patient. He wore a mask. He said he has seen hardly any covid patients (there were no details to elaborate on that). He told me about the quarantine floor when I asked what they do with the ones that do have it. My grandmothers doctor was also a good friend of mine i worked under for years. Walked in without a mask and shook my hand in close proximity. We werent there for anything respiratory related so thats nothing out of the ordinary, but he didnt have a mask on his face or anywhere visible. The ER only allowed one close family member in as a visitor.
A previous visit to the same ER for my aunt via ambulance didnt give me too many details. As I didn't have to drive her, I didn't want to go to the hospital to visit her and risk picking up the virus. The EMT's showed up in full ppe as her questionaire hinted at her having an infection causing her to have a fever.
I have not heard any special guidance other than "call your doctor" or to call the local / state health department. Testing in most places is done by appointment only. There are many reasons why the number of patients in the ER could be so low considering the abnormal circumstances we are all now facing on a day to day basis in our lives.
I don't go out on a daily basis so I don't have the best picture of what life is like on the outside for the surface dwellers, but when I do go out, these have been my observations. Some places have signs requiring you to wear a mask, others don't. The gym doesn't require masks, neither do some restaurants. I can only guess that national chains like walmart do. I know best buy was open at 5am on black friday with lines wrapping around the parking lot, no social distancing and everyone in close proximity. When I went to eat the other day, no one in the restaurant was wearing a mask while waiting at their table and I saw everyone who walked in the door take their mask off before they sat down as they saw everyone else not wearing one, a very interesting thing to see. I felt that same feeling of not wanting to feel out of place by being the only one to wear a mask. The waitresses did wear their masks around 75% of the time. Occasionally you would see a girl with it hanging off of her ear, or another with her nose exposed. At the gas station, no one is outside their car with a mask on, which is somewhat understandable, youre not near anyone and youre outside. Going to the VA for lab work, everyone was required to wear a mask and I was given a COVID questionnaire while also being required to use hand sanitizer in the presence of an observer before entering. The staff all wore masks.
My uncle is a firefighter / paramedic in Miami-Dade county, in the inner city and runs calls to the major hospitals all the time. He too has told me that there isn't anything abnormal about the number of patients he is running or special precautions he has had to take for anyone not suspected of having covid. He has said a couple of his coworkers have however contracted the virus and were out for a couple weeks. He gets tested tri-weekly. He said jackson memorial hospital (largest hospital in miami, which takes a lot of patients in internationally as well) isn't overflowing but they do have an old hospital that is empty they have set aside as overflow incase they need it.
Ok cool, so my observations are out of the way. On to the numbers.
Listed below are the links to the data I am pulling from. State charts with almost all the numbers you could ask for and where I am personally pulling my data from.
This first link is to the flu report for the state for this week, week 47.
This is the link I am using that shows the deaths per year from Influenza / pneumonia.
These two links seem to give death counts and death rates, however I have been unable to successfully navigate them to retrieve the data I am looking for.
This is the link for the current COVID numbers in the state. You can click on each county and see whats going on in each of them. I live in Polk County, the large one in the center of the state.
@Michael
The 145 per 100K I mentioned previously was deaths per 100,000 (flu / pneumonia) as far as I'm aware, but you have the sites I was looking at to pull this data from now so I might be mistaken. I multiplied 145 by 7.24777 (724,777 being our counties population) to get 1050, which I was using as the total number of deaths specific to influenza / pneumonia in our county alone. I didn't see that data in the charts (doesn't mean it isn't there). I was using 28,000 out of 724,777 to show that just over 3% of the counties population has tested positive for COVID. It would be nice to have the numbers of infected for flu / pneumonia but it seems the weekly chart only shows percentages of lab tests that have come back positive. Im hoping one of you might want to scrub the data to be able to paint a clearer picture.
I think that about clears up my thoughts and where it has lead me. I understand I do not live in a metropolitan area and population density also plays a big role.
EDIT: Just to throw some more stuff into the mix. My little sister tested positive then tested negative within 2 days a while back and was asymptomatic. She got the test because her boyfriend works at a government building and they decided to get tested just because.
Also there's Uncle Elon:
View: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1327125840040169472
EDIT2ish:
Heres a link showing the number of patients Lakeland ER has seen relative to the rest of the countries ER's in 2018. It ranks #2. That's the ER I am saying is dead and has hardly seen any COVID patients.
EDIT3?:
I don't like other people linking me political commentary so I get it if you don't want to watch it, but this 30 minutes is a good video to watch if you want to see how all of us in the US are getting F'd in the A by our government. It shows you how the US is handling everything, it shows you whats happening to people who have zero support, it shows you what the governments priorities are right now. Spoiler alert, it's not us. If you want to know his political bias, he is a green new deal supporting progressive bernie bro.
