As has been explained in other diaries, Florida has been engaging in a horribly duplicative duplicitous practice of reporting Covid-19 deaths based on date of death, not date of report. This has led to the kind of totally misleading chart such as the one today on the CDC Covid tracking site:
Fig. 1 — Florida Daily Deaths for 8/25/21 as reported to CDC
Hey look! Everything’s good, nothing to see here. Deaths are dropping, right off the cliff. Why, there were only EIGHT Covid-19 fatalities in Florida yesterday. WOW!
On the other hand, as of yesterday, Florida had reported to the CDC a total of 42,731 Covid-19 fatalities:
Fig. 2 — Florida total deaths as reported to CDC on 8/25/21
And here’s today’s report:
43,632 — 42,731 = 901. So how does 901 = 8?
It’s easy. Here’s the daily totals as reported on 8/24/21 matched up to the daily totals reported on 8/26/21:
Fig. 3 — Florida daily death comparison
So the 6 deaths reported on 8/23 morphed into 53, and even the 126 deaths reported on 8/1 is STILL going up more than 3 weeks later, from 126 to 130.
It’s impossible to get a good estimate of how many people are actually dying from Covid-19 because of the way deaths are being reported, but the (current) total for the week beginning 8/5 is really scary: 1,400 Floridians died of Covid-19 during that week which is 200 per day.
And that total of 1,400 is going to go up even more, for several more weeks, as the DeathSantis administration here in Florida continues its deadly game of misdirection by pretending that death totals are going down precipitously, when in fact, they are nearly as high as they were a year ago, and trending higher.
Not a happy time down here in Florida.
Edit 8/26/21: changed duplicative to duplicitous.
