Photo: Getty Images
Top Three Takeaways – November 30th, 2021
- Vaccinate the world. Remember when we were told if 70% of Americans were vaccinated against COVID-19 we’d reach herd immunity and would put the pandemic behind us? According to the CDC over 74% of the US population 5 and older has been vaccinated against COVID-19. Now President Biden’s message for us is that we still don’t have enough vaccinated people, everyone who’s been vaccinated must get boosted and we must vaccinate the world. Yes, the world. As he stated on Monday it’s our moral responsibility as Americans to do these things. While it was encouraging to hear that he didn’t intend on introducing any additional heavy-handed policies, beyond the first wave of travel restrictions (and of course his administration's unconstitutional workplace vaccine mandate currently stayed in federal court), it’s clear the message about vaccinations has no end in sight. It’s only a matter of time before his administration redefines what it means to be fully vaccinated. The moving of the goalposts regarding what gets us out of this pandemic has become more common than new variants of concern being named by the WHO. But whatever will be with this variant and the decisions by the Biden administration as to how they decide to react to it...Governor DeSantis made Florida’s position crystal clear as he said Monday: In Florida, we will not let them lock you down. We will not let them take your jobs. We will not let them harm your businesses. We will not let them close your schools. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Meanwhile...
- In the Mayo Clinic I (want to) trust. It’s probably safe to say we’re in one of the most important windows of time for whatever will be this winter during the pandemic. It’s no secret that last year the holidays, starting with Thanksgiving were catalysts for what became a winter surge in COVID-19 cases. That was true across the country, not just in Florida. But will this year be different? For starters, Florida currently has the fewest population adjusted cases in the country, which is already different. We’re also averaging over 6,000 fewer daily cases over a year ago as well. The point is there’s the least COVID-19 floating around our state right now that we’ve seen since early June of last year. The question now becomes where do we go from here? Can Florida avoid a winter surge in cases as has been predicted? According to the Mayo Clinic’s highly accurate 14-projection tool the answer is yes...and no. But mostly yes. According to the Mayo Clinic’s current two-week projection, Florida could see anything from a 79% increase in new COVID-19 cases (which sounds huge and obviously wouldn’t be good but would still place us just back over 2,000 daily cases) to a 40% decrease in cases. The most likely scenario though... is another 6% decrease in cases over the next two weeks. If we’re able to come out of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah against the backdrop of the omicron variant and still see a decrease in COVID-19 cases from our already year and a half low... there would be lots to feel good about in Florida. Speaking of which...
- It ends today. I’m talking about hurricane season. But then again didn’t it feel like it ended in September? It turned out to be quite unusual. All told there were 21 named storms and 7 hurricanes, a well above average season as was predicted. Fortunately for us we never had so much as even a close call this season in South Florida. Also, never has such an active season ended with so little activity. This year’s season wraps up with the third most named storms in recorded history – behind 2020’s 30 named storms and 2005’s 28. But it was really like a tale of two seasons. While this year ranks as the third most active, with only one named storm during the final two months of hurricane season, we had one of the top ten least active finishes to the season in recorded history. Let’s hope that’s a trend that carries into next year, along with Southeast Florida’s relatively good luck over the past 16 years.