I’ve really only spent significant time in the DFW area as a student in Dallas Children’s, and in rural west TX where my wife was born. But even though Dallas is HUGE, I was shocked at how spread out it was. Still relatively easy to get personal space. Even though Dallas is more dense than Atlanta (city proper), it feels quite the opposite, imo.
Yep, I have never really felt cramped in any Urban area in Texas except maybe downtown Houston. Get out west of I35 and you can go for miles without seeing a soul.
To date, 82% of COVID fatalities and 54% of COVID hospitalizations in FL residents were people 65+ which represent 14% of cases. 31% of FL resident COVID fatalities were residents of long term care facilities which represent 4% of cases.
So how many did we have?
You can't just erase the over 65 death rate and then say that's what the number would have been. We would have called it a bad flu, and not have instituted mitigation procedures. Then it would have spread farther and faster than it did resulting in millions of more cases before the vaccine went into use. A consistent percentage of deaths in the under-65 population occur, and if you multiply that out in 50 million cases or 100 million cases instead of 30 million cases there would be a higher raw total among younger people. Also, the smaller percentage of case --> deaths might have removed the impetus for Warp Speed, and we might not even have a vaccine, or the vaccination rates we have at this point, so even more risk of variants and infections. More infections X consistent death rate (even though it is smaller for <65 than 65+) = more deaths for that cohort.
I'm not saying ignore them. Track them, study them, but make public policy decisions based on confirmed threats, not potential threats. That's me looking at this through a systems engineering window....another challenger looking for a shot at the title.
Variants are of concern because of biology...they have the POTENTIAL to cause problems. Doesn’t mean it’s a guarantee...but that doesn’t mean you ignore it.
public
Health
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Please don't bring well documented facts into this argument.
The problem with taking that approach with a virus is that by the time it's a confirmed threat, it's already too late...which is EXACTLY why we're where we are right now in a pandemic.
Texas was hit hard after we opened up in September. Anecdotal for sure, but I know a lot of people who got sick but didn't get tested. Likely a result of Texas culture, don't need to go to the doc unless necessary - "I don't need a test to know I'm sick or have Covid."Dropping state mask mandates didn’t mean no Covid mitigations. Many businesses continued their same policies. From friends and co-workers I know in the Houston area not much changed when the gov dropped masks. Most businesses continued to require them as well as most employers. That hadn’t started to change until recently with the new CDC rules for fully vaccinated. That’s part of the answer.
We also have 3 highly effective vaccines and 56% of the adult population in TX has been vaccinated with one. As @Abs pointed out above the urban centers in TX are even higher than the state average and that’s where population density comes into play. So when you combine the vaccination rate with the natural infections there’s a high level of immunity there even though the state level is below the national average. That’s the other part of the answer.
The biggest risk is there are pockets where large numbers of people are unvaccinated that could result in a localized outbreak. I am hopeful that at this point we are far enough along that a statewide spike won’t be long lived or dramatic if it happens. I will feel better about that if/when we get some more people vaccinated. Keeping my fingers crossed
That's a huge shame. During a public health emergency, the more accurate the data collected is, the better.
Texas is a very libertarian state
I'm not a hoaxer at all, but I'm also not an alarmist.
I can attest to this attitude as well down here. The doctor is a last resort for almost everyone I know personally and have been around.
Yeah, back in the Fall/Winter everyone got hit with wave 2. I don’t think that was 100% linked to re-opening anything just the nature of the beast at a time before we had vaccines. The other poster was talking specifically about dropping the state wide mask mandates in March.
They can be whatever number people advocate for them to be.
