By some reports, Jacksonville is leading most all of the US in this COVID wave. CNN posted an article tonight with this quote from UF Health's staff:
"We could be an entire hospital full of Covid in a matter of a month if things don't begin to slow down or vaccinations don't increase," Neilsen said. "We need policymakers at a higher level though to really listen to us. Start doubling down on vaccinations pushes, stop with disinformation campaigns on social media. And really start helping the health care community because we are starting to reach a breaking point across the state."
Staff at one Florida hospital figured they had seen the worst of Covid-19. They may be proven wrong
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/20/us/florida-hospitals-coronavirus/index.html
Looking back over this thread, it is really outrageous that some posters accused those of us warning of this wave as fear mongers. It is just plain factual and commonsense that with over half the population unvaccinated, mask mandates banned by the governor (and the governor undermining Fauci's standing), people letting their guard down on social distancing and a variant twice or more contagious that anyone couldn't see this coming.
Now, if any of us have a serious illness requiring attention from a hospital, we are at great risk due to a lack of resources that are devoted to unvaccinated persons. I don't want anyone denied medical care but, in fairness, the hospitals really should prioritize taking those that are vaccinated with ailments over the unvaccinated with COVID as the latter chose, with few exceptions, to put themselves in this position and the former are victims of those decisions.
I just talked with a highly exposed person (they serve the public) this week who doesn't believe anything positive about the vaccines, feels they haven't gotten it yet so won't likely get it going forward, claims to be in good health (even though they are a chain smoker) and believes COVID is less risky than taking the vaccine and akin to having a cold at worse. Nothing I could say would get them to waiver from this position. They appeared to totally tune out anything to the contrary to this position indicating that no matter what info was available supporting getting vaccinated, it wouldn't "reach" them. They also had no problem risking closing their business (and losing its income) for at least 2 weeks should they get COVID. If this is typical of many of the unvaccinated (and based on conversations with others, it appears to be a common attitude), mandating vaccines for most activities maybe the only way to push them to get it done as they will have a hard time living daily life otherwise. Yet, this too, has been opposed by the governor.
