Some facts about the pandemic, locally
The indented text is from Facebook by Bob Rutledge, whose posting was linked by Hugh McGuire. The posting was made today, Friday, June 12.
Mr. Rutledge is an Associate Professor at McGill. I don’t know him, but I do know Hugh and trust his recommendation.
I was going to edit this down, but on rereading, I think I’ll leave it as is.
I can no longer find covid19 daily case and deaths data on public Montreal city websites. That data belongs to the public, and it is essential for understanding our current situation which I regard as extremely poor.
Montreal Gazette published this data, up through June 11, today at the following location: https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/coronavirus-live-updates-most-quebecers-think-worst-of-pandemic-is-over-poll-finds/wcm/dcfba92a-3fad-41ad-9108-8eb3e4708ce3/
- The current fatality rate in the city of Montreal due to covid19, averaged over the previous 7 days, is **16 deaths/day**. For a population of 1.8M, this corresponds to an annual mortality of 324 deaths/100K population/year (i.e. 16 deaths/day * 365 days/year/(18 * 100K population)).
- In comparison with “norms” in Canada: The annual “all causes” mortality in Canada is 700 deaths/100K population/year (from 2018). Covid19 remains the single highest cause of death in Montreal; compared with causes of death across Canada from previous years, Cancer is #2, with 214 deaths/100K population/year. Thus, Montreal’s current 7-day average fatalities from covid19 is over 45% of its all-causes mortality, and it remains the number 1 source of death in Montreal. It also targets the disabled, elderly, people of color and those without the best access to healthcare. It is all our responsibility, to protect all. Source: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1310039401
- In comparison with “norms” across North America. At 324 deaths/100K population/year, Montreal has the highest mortality of any major metropolitan area (>1M population) in North America.
In that context, these are current headlines from the Montreal Gazette:
- “Rebooting Quebec: A timeline of reopenings in and around Montreal”
- “Montreal Restaurants are set to re-open June 22. What are the main concerns?”
- “Quebec not planning to make masks mandatory — for now”
As a point of contrast: Houston, TX is talking about “spiking case rates” and re-closing-down their city. The case rates are associated with a mortality rate of 13 deaths/100K population/year – 1/25th of Montreal’s.
Finally, the attached figure is from a Quebec Santé report, “Épidémiologie et Modélisation de l’évolution de la COVID-19 au Québec: Rapport 3, 28 Mai 2020”. It shows that our current fatality rate is the planned fatality rate during re-opening, for the forseeable future amidst the re-opening of all services (note that this is for “Greater Montreal”, while the city’s figures are for the City of Montreal).
That is, this is their (the Province’s) plan, maintaining the current fatality rate. There is no plan for bringing the fatality rate ever closer to zero.
From Montreal’s and Quebec’s public health and political officials, I should like to know:
- Why is there no plan to lock-down and make covid19 irrelevantly small as a public health threat?
- What are the target mortalities – in deaths/100K population/year – that guide planning for Montreal, and for Quebec?
Douglas 16:44 on 2020-06-12 Permalink
White educated male that went to every single Ivy League university makes $100K/yr at a cushy teaching job and still getting paid a nice salary during covid, telling everyone else to keep shutting down.
White privilege is dripping from every pore of his body and he can’t even see it.
It never crosses his mind that “opening up” means “putting food on the table”.
JaneyB 16:45 on 2020-06-12 Permalink
Rutledge is an astrophysicist. A fine, disciplined mind no doubt but even different branches of medicine have trouble finding consensus because of the focus of their training. Within medicine, cardiologists, virologists, epidemiologists, and public health people and the blizzard of pre-print (not yet peer reviewed) material have all been doing their best to make sense of trends and data but they notice different things.
Santé Montreal changed their lay-out. The numbers and neighbourhood breakdown are here and are as current as they’ve ever been: https://santemontreal.qc.ca/en/public/coronavirus-covid-19/situation-of-the-coronavirus-covid-19-in-montreal/#c41383
It’s worth remembering that Quebec is very anomalous in some important and relevant ways. It has 3x the number of people in seniors home residences as anywhere else in the world. Until birth control pills became available in the 70s, Quebec was the only industrial society in the world with Third World birth rates. Those babies are the people in the seniors homes now. The vast majority of Quebec covid deaths have occurred there.
So, some important factors to consider.
JP 17:21 on 2020-06-12 Permalink
Yes, and those seniors homes have employees who use the STM, go to grocery stores, live with other people. They’re not isolated little bubbles. In any case, I sympathize with those who have struggled financially, and I sympathize even more with anyone who has suffered due to contracting COVID or having a loved one who has. I’ll continue to avoid non-essential appointments & restaurants (I’m fine with takeout).
Also, yes, people in seniors homes are elderly who will die sooner rather than later, but they still deserve to be able to have visitors & die in dignity surrounded by loved ones. That can’t happen until we get this under CONTROL.
Michael Black 18:07 on 2020-06-12 Permalink
People are arguing with figures, and then implying something sinister if the figures they are using disappear for some reason. They act like a dictator is in charge, making arbitrary decisions. But any leader has surely seen all the studies and all the figures that people trot out. Or at least they get synopsis from people who understand.
Any leader is stuck in the middle. Go one way, and people will complain, go another way and others will complain. They have to synthesize between the two points. They can make mistakes, and regret if they are wrong. But there’s no ulterior motive. They want what’s best, but here the two paths are so far apart that it’s really hard. They know people want this or that.
Lots of people are working. They have no choice, either they need the money or what they do is a necessity. Not just medical people or grocery clerks, but way up the supply line. Lots of things can be found to be useless, but society would collapse if a while lot of things didn’t keep going. It’s a weird situation to sit at home and say “we shouldn’t open things up” when it’s already open for those people.
The money can’t keep churning out, but it’s wrong to talk about “reopening the economy”. It’s really about getting back to normal. People need things. Life is on hold. “I’ll do this when…” .
In twelve weeks I’ve been somewhere twice, both times to hospitals. I know what would happen if I got the Virus, I can picture specific nurses, they aren’t just figureson paper. But oddly, a more immediate reason to not go anywhere is because I don’t think I can live with the rules. I see their value, I just can’t fit in, maybe especially because for over a year things haven’t been normal for me.
An awful lot of money and time is spent keeping people alive in normal times. I just had an IV yesterday that was at least a thousand dollars, I need it every six months. It keeps my disease in check. withiut it other things will do damage. I’ve never been sick enough to need medical attention since I was a kid, and oddly the pill I was originally given for this caused a bad reaction after I got home last fall, though I have never before had a reaction like that to anything. This is what the government/society does, none of what’s going on now is arbitrary or careless.
I don’t know where the answer is. But I don’t think things are helped by arguing figures. Yes figures make a viewpoint seem stronger, but it then becomes duelling figures.
Kevin 04:57 on 2020-06-13 Permalink
Douglas
What do you for a living?
Kevin 05:12 on 2020-06-13 Permalink
I popped into a store Friday and I noped right out of there.
Nobody was even trying to physically distance—the single most crucial step to slow the spread of the disease.
Not a single employee was wearing any sort of PPE.
One customer was masked.
And this is in a store where people try stuff on before they buy.
Nope. Unsafe, unclean. Goodbye
Alison Cummins 06:55 on 2020-06-13 Permalink
“There is no plan for bringing the fatality rate ever closer to zero.”
Aww, crap. NOT what I wanted to hear.
If we do contact tracing and testing, we can approach zero and life will be normal again. Without it we’re stuck with social distancing forever.
What social distancing means: closing university dorms. Niece was supposed to move from Vancouver to Montreal in the fall to attend Concordia, but without the option of living in a dorm she’s deferred a year.
That’s money not coming to Montreal for a year, or perhaps not at all if the dorms never reopen and she ends up going to a school in a different city where they are managing their covid without social distancing because deaths are down to zero. Like Vancouver maybe. They have multiple days in a row with ZERO DEATHS. It can be done.
Typically what privileged young people do during a voluntary gap year is travel. Well, other countries aren’t letting us in. If we continue to maintain high infection rates, countries like Australia that have achieved ZERO DEATHS from covid (it can be done) will continue to not let us in.
So Niece is living with her parents and has built a chicken coop. In place of university or travel she will raise four chickens. Yay.
Her deferral means society has lost a year of the contributions of university-educated Niece.
She isn’t the only one. Deferrals will stress our universities, as they lose income for this year and try to cram more students in next year.
Educational opportunities will be denied to people who won’t be able to get admission to university in 2021 because their spots are taken by deferrals. (Alternatively, if dorms close permanently in Montreal then there will be lots of extra spots open for locals as students from elsewhere stop coming here.)
University students who opt for distance ed instead of dorm life will receive a poorer education, which is a significant long-term cost to society.
University students who opt for a combination of distance ed and apartment living will take up our scarce housing and drive up the cost of rentals.
There’s a cost to doing nothing. This is just one tiny example.
We’ve chosen the absolute costliest option: all the costs of three months of lockdown but none of the benefits. I don’t get it.
DeWolf 11:04 on 2020-06-13 Permalink
Deaths *are* heading towards zero. Keep in mind that many of the deaths reported every day happened weeks or even months ago. Here’s a Montreal Gazette chart that shows deaths by actual date:
https://twitter.com/fagstein/status/1271476349920858113/photo/1
As you can see, the number of deaths in the whole of Quebec has been under 20 per day since the beginning of June, and in past few days there have been fewer than 10 deaths per day.
Doomsday rhetoric doesn’t help anyone. The best we can do is to follow the guidelines, encourage others to do the same and make sure the government is actually preparing to avoid or at least better manage a second wave. Pushing for mandatory mask-wearing in public spaces is productive activism. Claiming the government is hiding “the real numbers” and suggesting we’re sitting on a ticking timebomb is just fearmongering.