Covid numbers du jour
Covid numbers continue to rise. François Legault can’t be thrilled that we’re likely to hit a cumulative 200,000 cases in Quebec at the cusp of the new year; we’re also likely to reach 10,000 deaths by the end of January at the current rate.
Patrick Lagacé ponders the current issue of people travelling as the pandemic worsens, but concludes it’s up to the federal government to limit travel now.
Douglas 13:52 on 2020-12-30 Permalink
Looks like the government was lying to us when they said infections were happening in sit down restaurants.
Restaurants and other retail businesses are just a scape goat.
Kate 14:02 on 2020-12-30 Permalink
Douglas, you say these things, but you’re thinking like a customer. You’re not thinking about the people who work in those establishments. Contagion can happen anywhere people are working in proximity and sharing the same air.
Nobody should be risking their health so you can shop or eat in a restaurant.
You’re always looking for a gotcha. There is no gotcha.
Thomas H 14:45 on 2020-12-30 Permalink
The complete and utter failure of Quebec and Canada’s response to COVID is becoming more and more exposed by the day. Instead of following the lead of nations that have reduced community transmission to nearly zero through massive efforts in increased testing capacity and contact tracing, we are pouring all of our energy into lockdowns, shaming of rule-breakers, and paid television advertisements telling people that missing Christmas gatherings isn’t that bad because you won’t have to see your annoying uncle. And the numbers just keep climbing.
What our leaders and many others seem to lack is any sort of imagination that things could be so much better here, as they are in South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Uruguay, Australia, Slovakia, or New Zealand. To shame people for travelling south (something I would not personally do for a variety of reasons) seems to me a massive distraction from the fact that the government has achieved NOTHING from a three-month lockdown except considerable collateral damage in terms of mental health and the economy.
What is needed, in my opinion, is for every adult in Canada to receive an at-home COVID test and to isolate until they receive a negative test. We will have no handle on asymptomatic transmission until we tackle this. That should drive the case loads down 60-80%. Do it once more, and dramatically reduce transmission again. Then we would have a manageable, low number of COVID cases that could be effectively managed through contact tracing. Then, we could open things up in small, measured ways and let people see their loved ones safely; but instead, let’s all give the side-eye to a few thousand people who show up in a few weeks with a tan, indefinitely suspend social activities of any sort, let millions live precariously on EI, and give ourselves a little pat on our back that we all showed a little solidarity while our cases and fatality numbers just keep climbing.
jeather 15:43 on 2020-12-30 Permalink
I think these people who are travelling are nuts; and the story of the person who went to England, came back before the ban, and then somehow infected their family members despite “following quarantine orders” shows that we are screwing up utterly in quarantne when people cross the border. I understand why, say, truck drivers would need to be exempted, but almost no one else should be. (This will really fuck over people in Windsor who work in Detroit, but also I don’t care.) Politicians everywhere are telling us to follow the rules and then breaking them themselves.
We need much, much better contact tracing — I have friends w kids in schools that had outbreaks, and they just say “nope, no contact for you” and no one knows HOW they define contact. Classmates? Same grade? What about siblings? (And of course, we need to figure out how people got it and then find the person who gave it to them and trace who they saw, because as we now know most cases come from only a few people.)
Everyone is having secret family parties indoors because they’d be caught outdoors. This thing is a mess.
Tee Owe 16:55 on 2020-12-30 Permalink
I am with Thomas H and Jeather on this. Test Trace Isolate. The virus needs new hosts. If it does not find them, it dies out. The TestTraceIsolate irecipe is intrusive and yes, draconian, but it works – do less and we are saying that we are willing to live with this pandemic. Our choice.
Tee Owe 16:57 on 2020-12-30 Permalink
Oh and yes, vaccinate – do both!
Kevin 18:39 on 2020-12-30 Permalink
Governments should have gone into full lockdown a month ago and they did not.
They are still acting as if people are obeying their mixed lame ass messages.
People are lying about staying in isolation after testing, travelling, and more.
So I hope nobody breaks a leg during the next ice storm—you won’t be getting surgery quickly.
jeather 19:07 on 2020-12-30 Permalink
On Christmas day I lost my footing on my stairs and slid down a bit and I was panicking imagining needing to go into the hospital on a holiday in a pandemic. (I’m fine.)
Ephraim 19:23 on 2020-12-30 Permalink
I don’t know about others, but if I was the cause of my parent’s or grandparent’s death (or even suffering) because a effing holiday… I don’t know if I could live with myself. Really, I can manage to connect with them by phone, by zoom, standing from a window a safe distance outside and talking from a mobile phone. This isn’t that effing hard, to live a year without being typhoid Mary.
@Kate – I don’t know why you bother answering anymore, it’s a shampoo bottle without the realization that it’s not a loop…. shampoo, rinse, repeat.
Kate 19:58 on 2020-12-30 Permalink
Ephraim, I’ve been trying to shut him down before anyone else gets involved in tangling with him, but he’s getting into pain in the ass territory here, I can see.
Douglas 11:29 on 2020-12-31 Permalink
Government told us all these establishments like retail and restaurants are causing a lot of the infection spreads without showing us any data. You Kate and Ephraim don’t question, you just accept.
Meanwhile in Florida, they traced less than 2% of the infection spreads to restaurants.
We have closed down restaurants and other establishments for 3 months now and infections haven’t gone down at all. Why do you think that is?
People are being shut down from socializing in public and now they are doing it in secret at their homes. 3 months in the government has done nothing about it. Instead of being able to trace back to troublesome establishments, we have done zero to figure out where all these infections are coming from.
If you are under 50 and healthy, you risk your health as much as you do when you decide to drive a car. Covid is a huge nothing burger for the under 50 healthy crowd. One anecdote won’t change those facts.
Douglas 11:38 on 2020-12-31 Permalink
Ephraim, you only like to talk to people that agree with you. I’m sure your world view is picture perfect and every time someone disagrees with you they are just a “shampoo bottle” and you have never been wrong about something in your life.
People that don’t like to read opposing view points have very small world views on things. Very black and white. Very shallow.
Kate 12:46 on 2020-12-31 Permalink
Douglas, do not call out other participants here. You are banned now for 14 days.
Ephraim 13:30 on 2020-12-31 Permalink
1. Statistics and mathematics don’t match what you are saying. Show me the numbers… the numbers constantly show that the more exposed, the faster it replicates. You know, the R number.
2. There are long-term effects and unknown effects of COVID. They can clearly seeing lasting effects to the heart muscle, even in people with mild cases. There are long term effects to the lungs (the alveoli) leading to long term breathing problems. There are also indications that getting COVID may increase your chances of having Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. And then there are the unknown effects of COVID…. these are completely unknown, just like we didn’t know the long term effects of Polio or Chicken-Pox. We didn’t realize that there was PPS (Post Polio Syndrome) and the relationship between Chicken-Pox and Shingles. It’s too new to know what the long term effects are, especially the more long term effects… for example, if this will lower life expectancy in those who have it and/or worse, show itself in other ways, like higher cases on yet unknown diseases or known diseases.
So the more people you expose and who’s body’s can’t fight it, the more people you leave with the unknown consequences for the future. But many people don’t care about that, because it’s in the realm of the unknown. The same people that has condemned generations to possible shingles because they thought that the best treatment was exposing people to chicken-pox.
Sometimes called Rumsfeld’s Wisdom… there are known knowns and known unknown and unknown unknowns. Some people have decided to completely dismiss the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns for the sake of money. But that doesn’t give you the right to do so for others. You can choose what you want to do for yourself, if it doesn’t effect others… but when it does, we have a say. In this case, the say is the cost of your healthcare, the cost to society and the cost to others, who may not agree with the perspective that money is more important than anything else. Many people want to live to see their kid’s wedding, their grandchildren, etc. Money isn’t the be all for everyone.
Raymond Lutz 14:12 on 2020-12-31 Permalink
I didn’t take time to find out some corroborating studies, because this one “Assessing the Age Specificity of Infection Fatality Rates for COVID-19” seems OK and corroborates MY preconception 😎
Tl;dr: Douglas affirmation “If you are under 50 and healthy, you risk your health as much as you do when you decide to drive a car” is almost surely false (or deliberately senseless or incomplete).
From the aforementioned source: for the 45-54 age group, the Covid-19 Infected Fatality Rate (IFR) is 0.23% ie: if you catch the virus, you have roughly one chance in 400 to die from it. Versus if you died in that age group in 2018 in the USA, it had one chance in 7700 to be a car accidental death.
I concede it’s kind of comparing apples and oranges, but it gives you a rough assessment of the relative risks… One should find the odds of dying of a fatal car crash when riding, say, for 1 hour in an urban setting versus the odd of catching Covid shopping or dining out during a pandemic, but since Douglas can’t reply, I don’t care 😎
Daniel D 15:48 on 2020-12-31 Permalink
I think the unfortunate conclusion is the governments have tried to appeal to people’s better natures to follow social distancing protocols, and it’s not worked. It’s also too easy for people with symptoms to remain in denial, and go about their business as usual, not to mention asymptomatic carriers.
More so, as the people who are sticking to the social distancing rules see their neighbours flouting them, the more people are going to wonder why they should be the ones to carry the burden when others won’t. In turn, I think this is leading to a cascade of people giving up on social distancing.
The other contributors in this thread who state we need to test people without symptoms are right on point. I still don’t believe we have an accurate picture on how this virus is spreading, because many months in and the data is still not as complete as it needs to be.
Many governments are clearly still banking on the vaccine as a way of avoiding making those difficult decisions which could be seen to encroach on people’s perceived freedoms (eg: randomised home testing, a proper lockdown).
I truly hope the vaccines are the solutions we all hope they are, because I don’t see the strong leadership needed to tackle this pandemic via the other means which have been shown to work.