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Top Three Takeaways – December 6th, 2021
- Florida continues to lead the country with the fewest population adjusted COVID-19 cases in the country over the past week. That’s now been the case for six consecutive weeks. That’s the good news as we’re all on omicron watch as to what its eventual impact will be in Florida. However, Florida, like all other states, has started to see an overall rise in cases and hospitalizations over the past week as we begin to see effects from increased travel, Thanksgiving get togethers, and an early Hannukah this year. The increase in cases over the past week has averaged 500 per day statewide, a not insignificant number that would seem to indicate that we’re likely to continue to see cases rise through the holidays. Should that happen, the better news is this...we’re in a vastly better place than we were a year ago today when Florida was averaging about 8,300 more daily cases. And about omicron. While health officials in this country still won’t allow for honest discourse about the new variant, thus we have to look to health officials from other governments, the news continues to be positive regarding its effects. Take this for example, from a leading health expert in India over the weekend: Most people, 70-80 per cent, will not have any symptom when there is spreading and confusing with common cold. Symptoms are less severe. So people will mistake it as a common cold because there is no smell loss or oxygen problem. Infection will be there in all major cities where people have been travelling and now since if person has no contact with any person with travel history, means this is community spread. We are now about three weeks into the first cases having been identified in South Africa and that guidance, from an intellectually honest health official, is where the real conversation stands. As I said last week, should omicron prove to be as mild as the common cold, I’ll be rooting for it to win out. That’s how pandemics end. When less severe versions become the dominant strains. On that note and to the point of my earlier commentary regarding the intellectual dishonesty of American health officials...the continued fear being instilled during this pandemic is...
- Manufactured. That’s a quote over the weekend from Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch. Continuing with what Dr. Risch said: Overall, I’d say that we’ve had a pandemic of fear. And fear has affected almost everybody, whereas the infection has affected relatively few. By and large, it’s been a very selected pandemic, and predictable. It was very distinguished between young versus old, healthy versus chronic disease people. So we quickly learned who was at risk for the pandemic and who wasn’t. However, the fear was manufactured for everybody. And that’s what’s characterized the whole pandemic is that degree of fear and people’s response to the fear. Right, and here we sit with news media and US health officials hyping every new diagnosed omicron case like it’s the onset of the pandemic all over again when there’s an increasing possibility omicron could be a key to ending it. It’s still a bit early to know if that’s where this is going, though three weeks is plenty of time to know that’s how this already went for those who first contracted it. The timeline with the 1918 pandemic lines up almost perfectly with that being a possibility this time around. It’s like this. If you find a doctor or health expert wanting to hype the pandemic and fear monger over this variant, it’s probably time to find a new doctor and health expert.
- The inevitable has happened with sports betting. Yes, the Seminole’s officially shutdown their short-lived sports betting operation over the weekend. No, this is not at all surprising. As I first said on May 13th, after the conclusion of the special session approving the new Compact: It’s increasingly evident most Floridians who voted for 2018’s Amendment 3 didn’t understand what they were voting for. And if the new compact doesn’t come to pass that Amendment is the most likely reason why. I address this topic in great detail in today’s Q&A, but the longer story made short. What’s happened here was inevitable because of what Floridians voted for in 2018.