On November 29th I posted a story about how Florida had become the only blue state on the CDC’s heat map. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case, before you begin to worry be rest assured it’s not because any sudden outbreaks in anything Florida, in fact Florida is continuing to do quite well. All across the great state, every single blue county slipped back into the yellow on the CDC’s map, and the most puzzling part it all happened in just one day. Now before you pro lockdown, mandates and masking proponents say, “I told you so” and go off on social media posting how Governor DeSantis is killing everyone, let’s see how the CDC makes “magic happen”. Simple, the CDC re-defined its own blue category! Hey when you’re “the house” you can change the rules to the game anytime.

Now while the transmission rate threshold for blue status remained the same, 5%, a county now ALSO must have fewer than 10 cases per 100,000 for a week to get to blue now. It used to be 50 per 100,000. So, the bar now has been set 80% lower for counties, which means that while Florida has the lowest numbers in the country, 44 per 100,000 they still go from blue to yellow

Of course, this couldn’t have had anything to do with politics, I’m sure it was all science, nothing to see here just keep moving along. Couldn’t be that the motivation for moving the goalposts was to draw attention away from Florida of those who were beginning to ask, “how is it that in spite of Florida doing the opposite of what the experts are saying they’re doing better and better?” Maybe the folks who run the CDC simply don’t like the colour blue and yellow is more to their liking.

Okay let’s look at the numbers without the “smoke and mirrors”, based on the weekly numbers it appears that Florida is at historic lows. Back at the bottom of the summer cycle in early June, Florida cases ran around 10,000 to 11,000 per week for most of the month. For about a month now they’ve been hovering around 10,000. On top of that the lowest reported cases since early 2020 came in this week, coupled with a few other interesting figures.

First off cases fell from 10,828 last week to 9,663 this week, breaking through the 10K floor. The statewide positivity rate fell slightly, from 2.5% to 2.4%. Even though Florida fell back into the yellow (thanks to the CDC’s reinterpretation of blue) their cases per 100,000 fell, yet again, from 49.3 to 44.0.

However, the most interesting data point was our R-naught (R0). R-naught (R0) is a value that can be calculated for communicable diseases. It represents, on average, the number of people that a single infected person can be expected to transmit that disease to. In other words, it is a calculation of the average “spreadability” of an infectious disease. The goal is always to be < 1, as this signals that the disease is begging to run its course. Florida fell from 0.58 to 0.40 — the lowest R0 on record. That means cases are STILL FALLING.

A couple of things to keep in mind, traditionally numbers start ticking up for the winter wave (as we’ve seen with the flu and Covid previously). That hasn’t happened yet, at this point the numbers are still heading down. Back in June, right before the numbers began picking up again the R0 figure rose over 1.0, as one would expect.

If the RO figure continues its downward trajectory, it may (a very hopeful MAY) mean a muted winter wave or on the off chance no winter wave at all. We should all be praying for Florida, because if Florida beats the winter wave and does so while defying the “expert recommendations”, they will become the Sweden of the U.S. and their success will be hard to ignore by all the naysayers and maybe even by the “illusionists”.