Staff Reports
Last Call — A prime-time read of what’s going down in Florida politics.
First Shot
Florida reported 901 COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, the highest single-day increase to date.
The deaths did not all occur on the same day, and the spike is partially attributable to a change in the way the data is reported.
However, the CDC-published data does show the vast majority of those deaths were from the past two weeks and that 899 of them happened after July 25.
The grim record came in the same report that saw the state record another 21,765 COVID-19 cases.
The latest batch brings the running total of confirmed cases to 3,151,909. The virus has also caused 43,632 deaths in Florida since March 2020.
A silver lining in the data: Hospitalizations are starting to ratchet down. According to U.S. Department of Health & Human Services data, 16,833 coronavirus patients take up beds across 256 Florida hospitals.
That is a decrease of 331 patients over the past 24 hours. Still, COVID-19 patients make up 28.76% of all patients in Florida hospitals.
Among them are 3,688 people taking up intensive care unit beds — that number is up 54 day-over-day. Statewide, 55.28% of ICU beds are filled by COVID-19 patients.
Evening Reads
“Trumpism has entered its final form” via Peter Wehner of The Atlantic
“How the Senate botched the Afghanistan withdrawal” via Greg Greene of The New Republic
“Why some White evangelical Republicans are so opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine” via Natalie Jackson of FiveThirtyEight
“A science in the shadows” via David Willman and Madison Muller of The Washington Post
“A stranded interpreter, and the soldiers who would not let go” via Farnaz Fassihi of The New York Times
“A cheap, generic antidepressant has emerged as the next promising weapon against COVID-19” via Kelsey Piper of Vox
“Why is the supply chain still so snarled? We explain, with a hot tub” via Austen Hufford, Kyle Kim and Andrew Levinson of The Wall Street Journal
“Gov. Ron DeSantis spreads word on monoclonals; faces pushback from big school districts, cruise industry” via Diane Rado of the Florida Phoenix
“The new college football ‘alliance’ is not one” via Alex Kirshner of Slate
“DeSantis, angel of death, says Joe Biden should follow his lead on COVID-19” via Bess Levin of Vanity Fair
“When it comes to FL politicians and the environment, a myth is as good as a mile” via Craig Pittman of the Florida Phoenix
“Now isn’t the time to abandon contact tracing” via Joanne Silberner of WIRED
“Many measures of Earth’s health are at worst levels on record, NOAA finds” via Sarah Kaplan of The Washington Post
Quote of the Day
“You cannot flagrantly disregard statutes and orders in violation of law. It’s pretty clear. It’s a tenet of what our country is built on.” — Attorney General Ashley Moody, on school districts ignoring the mask mandate ban.
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