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Someone has to track down what policy change happened a few months ago.

It's not a secret. Florida doesn't report a COVID death until they have a death certificate from an ME. Then, they report the deaths to the CDC for the date the death occurred, usually about 3 weeks but sometimes as long as 8 weeks after the death. Because of this, the deaths for "today" are almost always zero. Today's deaths won't be reported for 2-5 weeks. Check back in 4 weeks and I guarantee you it won't be single digits.

Here's an explanation:

There’s No Mystery in Florida’s Covid Reporting

FL was hit pretty hard by Delta and has a pretty high vaccination rate, and I think that will make Omicron a bit easier for them. The large elderly population, one that increases in winter, won't help.

Excellent data. I had vaguely heard there was a significant delay, as is so on the CDC’s Excess Deaths. It takes time to get data to the tabulator.

FL’s decline from their summer peak seems overly sharp, but your data plus people going home from DisneyWorld (where proximity to people makes them more vulnerable) may have steepened the decline.

The slope of curves is important. It was why I suspected the Vax was not all that great. The slope descending from Jan 2021 Did Not Steepen, in fact, it went more shallow. That was pre Delta and with more and more Vaxed, it should have gone nearly vertical. It simply did not happen.

Anyway, excellent info.

Re: "Florida doesn't report a COVID death until they have a death certificate from an ME."

That is exactly the same way that the National Center for Health Statistics (CDC) reports deaths from all causes, which is the gold standard for mortality data.

NCHS receives 95% of USA death certificates, most of them digitally, within eight weeks.

The Covid fatality numbers that Johns Hopkins and Worldometer put out every day are estimates, but usually quite accurate estimates.

Bottom Line - if the word COVID appears anywhere on a death certificate, the chances are good that will be classified as a Covid death.

That is NOT how influenza deaths are calculated. Final flu deaths typically come out around September of the following year, and they are based to a great extent on statistical models.