Covid, just a cold?
François Legault says Covid is just a cold, pretty much – although experts beg to differ.
But look what he’s achieved here. One, he’s a superman for whom Covid is just a passing indisposition. Two, by implication, anyone who suffers worse symptoms than him is weak, and it is probably their fault.
MarcG 09:49 on 2022-04-07 Permalink
Our very own Jair Bolsonaro. What a pack of dangerous idiots these politicians are.
Kate 11:05 on 2022-04-07 Permalink
Thursday’s tally: 42 new hospitalizations, 28 more deaths.
Joey 11:16 on 2022-04-07 Permalink
The ‘net hospitalizations’ number you posted (+42) masks the uptake in recent days: last Thursday, there were 151 new hospitalizations, meaning 151 people were admitted to the hospital with COVID. Since 113 were discharged, the net figure was 38. So it would appear that hospitalizations only grew by +4 in a week. Except that today’s figures show that 221 new hospitalizations (226 yesterday, 219 on Tuesday). The net figure takes a while to adjust to the latest trend – the new hospitalizations figure shows a 46% increase in a week’s time. Fortunately, those people just have a cold.
mare 11:45 on 2022-04-07 Permalink
And fortunately, only a very small percentage (say 10*) of healthcare workers are at home with that cold. (I’m sure a lot of them are actually happy to get a break, but at the same time feel guilty their colleagues have an even higher workload.)
The positivity rate is a whopping 19.2 %, and a lot of those PCR tests are mandatory—healthcare workers get tested twice a week—not people who decide to get tested because they have symptoms.
Blork 12:23 on 2022-04-07 Permalink
So 28 people died of a cold in Quebec yesterday. Right.
Those rapid tests are not very accurate, BTW. It seems like almost everyone I know has come down with COVID in the past few weeks, and most didn’t test positive until their illness was well under way. One specific case out of many: I know a woman whose boyfriend got quite sick and then tested positive. They had spent a lot of time together recently. A few days pass and then she started getting symptoms. She’s sick like with a bad flu now, and has been for four days. She’s testing daily and only today (day four) did it report “positive.”
I’ve seen some reports that the failure of rapid tests might be due to how people are using them. So tests of the tests might show they’re fairly accurate, but in real-world use maybe not so much.
qatzelok 12:37 on 2022-04-07 Permalink
“So 28 people died of a cold in Quebec yesterday. Right.”
Quebec has a large percentage of seniors; and for many of them, a cold can be life-threatening.
Joey 13:06 on 2022-04-07 Permalink
@Blork there was a story in La Presse yesterday indicating that we will likely be soon instructed to swab our mouths in addition to our noses when conducting rapid tests:
« Un comité d’experts dont je fais partie a décidé de recommander l’usage simultané de la bouche et des narines pour les tests rapides », explique Cédric Yansouni, spécialiste des diagnostics de maladies infectieuses au Centre universitaire de santé McGill (CUSM). « On savait depuis longtemps que le virus n’apparaît pas au même moment dans la bouche et les narines. La bouche vient en premier, mais on faisait le test dans la narine parce que la charge virale y est plus grande. Mais avec l’Omicron, l’intervalle est plus long. Il peut y avoir un ou deux jours de symptômes sans que le virus soit très présent dans les narines. »
Apparently adding a mouth swab reduces false negatives from 22% to 5%. So it’s not that the tests aren’t acccurate, it’s that the instructions haven’t kept up with the relative sensitivity of Omicron detection. That said, the first time I did a rapid test I was surprised that the instructions weren’t clearer – the steps are different depending on whether you have a nasal swab or a nasorpharyngial swab and there’s nothing written explaining what your kit contains (some googling led me to conclude it was the latter). Anyway, a couple of videos from other jurisdcitions’ public health departments were helpful, but it was obvious that not everyone is administring the same tests in the same way. Who knows wow error-proof these things are?
CE 13:08 on 2022-04-07 Permalink
I just got over a Covid infection and if it’s “just a cold” I never want to get a cold again. I was the sickest I’d been in decades! I can’t imagine what it’s like for the people who end up in hospital.
Meezly 08:58 on 2022-04-08 Permalink
I’m no medical expert, but last I checked, a cold didn’t require periodic vaccinations to mitigate its more serious symptoms in the general public.
Tee Owe 11:21 on 2022-04-08 Permalink
Debated with myself whether to join in here but my inbuilt pedantry won out – many people, and I know some of them, have had mild Covid, indeed just like a common cold – not to deny the Jair Bolsonaro authorito-personalities but to say, it does happen. Had it myself and I would agree with CE, was more my experience – technically ‘mild’ and I have recovered, but definitely not a common cold. Still, people’s experience varies.
As regards antigen tests, the routine I followed was throat followed by nose (your choice to do the opposite ha ha) and I had a clear positive before symptoms (PCR confirmed) with a clear negative after the acute symptoms were over, about 8 days later. So I agree with Blork and Joey, the reliability of these tests has a lot to do with the sampling, not the test itself – omicron is more throaty, if you only sample the nose you can miss it.
Tee Owe 12:08 on 2022-04-08 Permalink
Should have added ‘ people’s experience varies’ but they shouldn’t impose their experience on others
Kate 09:53 on 2022-04-09 Permalink
Tee Owe, and they really should not when they’re leading a province with the highest Covid counts per capita in Canada, thousands of deaths, and messes like CHSLD Herron to their government’s account.