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Saphier: Florida has low fatality rate due to focus on protecting, vaccinating the elderly

2021-02-16 | 🔗
Fox News medical contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier compares coronavirus strategies used in different states across the U.S.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Florida has much lower per capita covid mortality, much lower per capita hospitalizations a much lower unemployment rate, open schools, and actually we have businesses starting up anew. Ainsley floridas governor RON, Desantis touting his response to the pandemic, and the data is now backing the Sunshines States approach when compared to the closed states like California. Both states yielded roughly the same results here to discuss Fox NEWS: medical contributor, Dr Nic, sole sapphire, Hey Dr Saphier Good Morning, Ainsley Ainsley good Morning, so lets compare the two states when you look at cases per one hundred thousand people Florida about eight thousand five hundred California, eight thousand seven hundred death per thousand people Florida, one hundred and thirty five, California, one hundred and nineteen hospitalizations per one million people, Florida, two hundred and eighteen California, two hundred and forty four and deaths per one million people on a seven day, rolling average Florida, seven and California ten. So why cant California open up
and do exactly what they are doing in Florida? If the numbers are relatively the same? Well Ainsley its important to highlight that we are still in the midst of this pandemic. We have about sixty five thousand people, still hospitalized and several thousand still dying every day, but at this point we can start to look back objectively at what has worked. What has not worked and start comparing the states outcomes. Florida has been an outliner throughout this entire thing, as you have just pointed out, despite not having the same strict lockdown measures as many of the other states, including California, Florida is actually too long pretty. He will, with one thing that isnt pointed out, we have been trying to compare Florida to say the northeast, which is very difficult to do, because we have different climates demographics, less square footage in the northeast, comparing the sunshine state to the golden state is apples to apples. One thing you have to look at Florida has more greater than sixty five years old, so more senior citizens per capita than California does yet. They still have a lower fatality rate.
Well, when over sixty five years olds comes with a greater than sixty times greater death, you would have expected Florida to have much more deaths. So why is that? Ainsley? And the truth is in the beginning of the pandemic. Some of these restrictions did make sense. We didnt have the ability to test. We didnt know where the virus was. We had limited information and we didnt have any treatments. They do not make sense now the way that we have moved forward throughout this pandemic. Ainsley okay, Florida has focused on presenting the elderly, vaccinating the elderly and putting some of the onus on the citizens of the state. You know how to protect yourself from this virus. Do what you can similar to what happened in Switzerland. While there were not these strict mandates, people were still choosing to stay home a little bit more. They were choosing to wear, masks and thats. Really what Florida has done, Ainsley? What about school closures? Do you think that these schools are safe to open up Ainsley? We have been talking about this for months. The data is clear at this point. It is safe for children to go
back to school, especially when there are physical, distancing measures and wearing masks. We have looked at ninety thousand children across many districts across the United States. There is exceedingly limited spread in the school. In fact, the majority of spread comes from the adults, the staff, the teachers bringing it in to the school from the community and spreading it amongst themselves. So if you want to keep our kids safe, our schools safe, then the adults have to actually be having more responsibility and not bringing infections into the.
Transcript generated on 2021-03-09.