Sick of a pandemic that killed and sickened millions and wore down everyone else on the planet over the past two years, its survivors and those who managed are winding down in every way as masks are doffed, restrictions are lifted and health departments end their alert status. News reports about it will also wind down.
Flagler County recorded just 36 confirmed cases of covid in the week ending today, the lowest weekly total since June 18. Just three patients were at AdventHealth Palm Coast on a primary diagnosis of covid.
Two weeks ago the Flagler County Health Department ended Covid testing. Soon after it lifted mask requirements at its facilities, making masks voluntary (the governor’s bullying notwithstanding). Today, two years to the day when the World Health Organization declared a worldwide pandemic, Bob Snyder, the director of the county health department, said “we are winding down our covid operations in a significant way” and returning the department to its other, significant but non-covid related core operations. As-needed employees are seing their employment terms end.
The department is no longer doing contact tracing. The Flagler County school district is no longer reporting daily covid totals. A district spokesman confirmed that the reports have been discontinued. Its last report was on march 1, when it reported two positive students and one staffer, out of a total student body of 13,384 and 1,804 employees. “We are transitioning from pandemic to endemic. The data certainly backs that up,” Snyder said.
With the state Health Department and Florida’s surgeon general going the route of covid and vaccine denialism, especially for children, it is unlikely that local health departments will be in a position of leadership on covid matters anymore, possibly even if there is a new variant or a resurgence: Joseph Ladapo, the surgeon general, has made his position clear, as did Gov. DeSantis last week at somewhat of an echo-chamber “round-table” of hand-picked physicians who mirror Ladapo’s approach: the covid response that involved masks, social distancing, restrictions and vaccines was a “failure.” The governor’s and the surgeon general’s assessments rest on a scholastic rather than empirical reading of the evidence, starting from a premise that only admits evidence verifying pre-determined conclusions. The assessments are not supported by more objective evidence.
But local department chiefs who challenge the state’s approach are sidelined: Orange County’s health department administrator, Dr. Raul Pino, has been placed on indefinite administrative leave. He had called it “irresponsible” for staffers not to be vaccinated against covid. The state health department ignored a public record request for the email Pino had written, causing his suspension in January.
The pandemic–more frequently referred to as an endemic now–is not over: Flagler County recorded 331 deaths as of this week, an increase of 20 just in the last two weeks, adding to Florida’s staggering total of 71,860, which is still rising rapidly. Florida has the 18th-highet rate of deaths by covid, proportional to its population. The still and sharply-rising number of deaths and the seeming indifference, compared to more anxious and mournful communities in the earlier phases of the pandemic, reflects a more jaundiced winding down that also mirrors the endemic psychology: deaths are now accepted as part of the equation, like deaths in any flu season even though the two diseases, the toll they exact and the violence of the deaths they entail are incomparable.
The total for the United States will exceed 1 million this month, double the number of people who died in the country in the Kansas (or “Spanish”) influenza pandemic of 1918-19, keeping in mind that in 1918 the American population was less than a third its current number.
Leave a Reply