What Corona-Virus?!?
A public health emergency was announced by President Trump on January 31st, 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It was WILD, to say the least! By January 31st China had already seen 213 deaths and 11,200 infections and counting. By February 15th their count had risen to 68,300 confirmed infections and 1,662 deaths. The ENTIRETY of media at this point was engulfed by Covid-19 news and the world was “collapsing”.
While we in the US started truly experiencing the effects of this disease at home by March, at this point, we know Taiwanese officials had contacted the World Health Organization (WHO)“asking for more information about atypical pneumonia cases” on December 31st, 2019. The WHO on January 14th stated, “based on the available information there is no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission”. A tone that was adopted from China’s official statements.
By March, I felt the growing consensus was evident and we may have to take this virus seriously in Florida. April 1st rolled around and NY started to see their death toll climb, fast! It was starting to get real and I was watching the numbers pretty much on a daily basis. On April 2nd, Florida reached 2,052 confirmed Covid-19 infections for the day. At this point, I felt it was about to get worse in our beautiful state.
It only seemed obvious because in FL we are a state which relies heavily on international tourism with 126.1 million tourists recorded in 2018! New York City recorded half that many at 65.1 million visitors that same year. On top of this, we have an immense population over 65, making up 20.5% of the population per the US census bureau. New York in comparison has the same demographic age group at 14.1%, also per the US census bureau. If that’s not enough we have 4 major cities, albeit not as densely populated but still with fairly large populations. But wait there’s more (infomercial voice)! In Florida, we have 6 cruise ship ports, 14 commercial seaports, and 16 international airports!!! So I added all of this up plus our state and local government’s relaxed Covid-19 guidelines, and I was ready to go FISHING!!! Why do you ask? Because I was done going to the grocery store!!
I had been vindicated! Everyone thought I was crazy for having 13 fruit trees on my quarter acre, growing herbs and veggies, even raising ducks at one point (they were delicious!)!! We named them food names for when the day came, Stir Fry, Foie Gras, and Crispy!! I’m not kidding…That day was here! I wasn’t happy about it in the slightest but I thought to myself, “so we’ve survived every hurricane for this?!?, greaaatttt…”. We didn’t load up on toilet paper because we figured if we ran out of food, what’s the use in toilet paper? Plus being born in Central America, I asked my mom what she used growing up since she was born in a very small town with not even potable water at the time. She replied nonchalantly, “newspaper” and kept watering HER veggies. I thought, “eh, I can handle that…”. I did, however, stock up on ammo like I had been wanting to for a while. Didn’t want anyone THINKING of snagging one of my tomatoes!
April passed, my brother-in-law and I were the only ones going to the store at this point in FULL PPE!! My whole family was working from their homes. My parents Airbnb had lost all of its reservations with the short-term lease ban (if you’re looking for a place, Click Here) and the economic shutdown.
By April 30th we were down to a daily number of 497 confirmed cases. I didn’t get it… It felt like we had prepared for a Cat-5 for a week straight, 10 hours a day and it went to the North Atlantic but the news was telling us it was still coming by way of “the 2nd wave”!
Now we have been completely open for almost a month. Beaches are packed, pools are full of people, infection numbers are rising. While you would think this reinforces what I thought back in March of a perfect storm, it doesn’t. Not one bit. The only thing it reinforces is the number of questions I have for our brightest scientific minds who promised they were telling us the truth about masks and then later admitted they weren’t.
To start, it’s been now almost 6 full months since the WHO has known about this version of this virus. We have heard what I consider, tons of rumors of what might help stave off the infection. From warm client (FL) to Vitamin D (Sunshine State), there seem to be many things swirling around which may help but have not been fully confirmed. Why? There have been 4.5 million Covid-19 recoveries throughout the world, of which 990,704 within the US. How? While 120k deaths are scary, it sounds to me like hearing nothing at all about all the recoveries makes it scary!
Where do we go from here? Shouldn’t we be told what is different between Florida and other highly affected states? At the very least more detail should be distributed about how people have recovered.
Time for more masks…I know I’ll wear mine because I can’t get ANY answers and I don’t have any…