Florida blogger's take on NCAA issues, including football

[Chin Diesel]

Right... did Florida make the change or is it still reporting only Florida resident deaths w/ confirmed positive tests? I'm not that close to it, I only remember reading that Florida has a very narrow reporting focus and that was the genesis of my original comment.

From April 23rd: >>Florida, which currently reports 960 deaths, has continued to report only fatalities with a confirmed positive test for COVID-19, according to a statement from the Florida State Emergency Operations Center. The agency told MedPage Today that its counting method is subject to change, and it is up to Florida County Medical Examiners to attribute cause of death.<<

Florida only counts state residents for deaths but counts out of state cases and hospitalizations.

 

[BlueDogs]

As one who works in the Emergency Management and Public Safety space around the country, all I can say is you would be disgusted and shocked by how broken the system is and how ill equipped our supposed leaders are to respond with any plan beyond “what do we do today?”

 

[Watchdog]

Florida Medical Examiners Commission chairman says state officials asked them to withhold coronavirus death figures

The Florida Department of Health asked the Florida Medical Examiners Commission not to release the commission's comprehensive list of coronavirus deaths, the commission's chairman told CNN on Thursday.

www.cnn.com

... but since I always cross-reference CNN articles when something’s catches my interest (didn't care about testing/positives just was looking @ deaths):

Florida Stops Medical Examiners From Releasing Coronavirus Death Data

"This is no different than any other public record we deal with," Dr. Nelson said Wednesday. "It's paid for by taxpayer dollars and the taxpayers have a right to know."

www.newsweek.com

The difference in the Medical Examiners' numbers and those of the Dept of Health differ by about 10% because of how each count deaths of seasonal residents and out of state visitors who died in the state. The Health Dept says they want to avoid double counting, as do most states, so if an out of state resident or seasonal resident dies in FL from this virus they will not count them as a FL death.
The other thing most may not know is the CDC gave guidance to local health departments to count any death as a virus death if it's even suspected that the patient may have had the virus even though they weren't tested for it. That probably affected early death counts before testing was available. Thus, an 88 year old, obese, diabetic, with COPD and congestive heart failure would have been counted as a Covid-19 death under CDC guidelines.