Day 5: The whole family is still here. We’ve not been apart for more than an hour. I introduced the boys to Minecraft this weekend. The six year old can basically function in the creative world, the four year old still needs some help. They’ve definitely figured out how to blow stuff up with TNT. If this goes on, I’ll introduce them to Halo or some other sort of shooter, spend three weeks owning them, and the rest of my life damning their shorter nerve pathways and sharper reflexes.

I did not realize that a corporation could be found guilty of a crime.

By the end of this week, we should know if it is really going to get bad.

I’ve been watching the FL Dept of Health (FDOH) reporting because I have some insight into their practices. Heartening to me is that the percentage of negative tests continues to be high through the weekend (1171 positive, 11063 negative as of this writing). FDOH is following CDC guidelines for testing which are primarily: 1) Hospitalized with flu/COVID symptoms 2) Symptomatic people who have traveled to a known outbreak locale in the last 30 days 3) Anyone who has had close contact with a positive test person in the 14 days before they became symptomatic. High ratio of negatives probably indicate that at least (3) is 90% or better negative. Thus, community transmission remains low, at least here, and appears to correlate well with population density (although since total population does the same… its difficult to tease those apart. Duval and Pinellas have high populations, but a moderate density, and 4.5 cases/100k residents. Alachua has fewer citizens but higher density [University of Florida]* and has 12 cases/100k residents. Dade and Broward (13/100k) are more dense and have more cases. This tracks with other national data. I have not attempted to correlate with travel to infectious areas, although FDOH numbers have it at about 1 in 3, but about 1 in 3 are “travel unknown”. Big possible variance.) We should know by the end of the month if that is going to continue.

One additional fact. Florida had over 200 deaths due to regular pneumonia and influenza last week. Over the last 4 years, deaths per week in this time frame have been between 200-300 per week. As of now, the additional COVID deaths are within the year-to-year variation and H1N1 has killed more Florida residents in any given week. This is another metric I’ve been watching.

Again, we are probably at least a week away from really understanding the growth trend. Data continues to track away from the worst case, but a single cluster of positive tests could move us away from the “don’t worry” line. IF slowing/delaying the infection was the goal, we will also know by the end of the week if that happened. SLD, I am not making value judgments about whether what is being done is worthwhile or right.

*Average density of Alachua is probably lower than our “moderate” cases, but it would be a dual peak of apartment complexes right on top of each other and farms.