Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has managed to move his state past New York in the number of Covid-19 deaths without much fanfare in the press. For the past few months he has decided to change how the state counts their covid-19 deaths and his sneaky method has garnered him very little push back even though the number of dead have been averaging over 200 per day. Just yesterday, Thursday, October 7, 2021, the state of Florida recorded 782 covid-related deaths, but not one major news outlet screamed that it was 537 more deaths than Texas's gawd-awful 245 deaths. New York reported only 20 deaths.
His sneaky tactic is to count the reported deaths on the day the victim died, not the day it was reported. The vast majority of deaths are reported a day or more after the person's passing, thus Florida's total yesterday was only 2 deaths. This doesn't change the amount of suffering that Floridians go through during this pandemic, but it keeps Ron DeSantis out of the limelight, which is job number one for any slimy politician.
According to Worldometers.info, the total deaths as of yesterday were Florida 56,407 and New York 56,151. On September 1, 2021, their respective totals were Florida 44,571 and New York 53,875.
1
