OT: LOCAL COVID19 - PART II... Seriously, local only

[Nac Mac Feegle]

The ICUs aren’t that big a problem. It seems that the variant is causing people to need oxygen but not severe disease and mechanical ventilation amongst the vaccinated. I heard a University Health Network doctor today saying most variant ICU cases are amongst people 25-55 who are unvaccinated. He says the elderly have been staying out of ICU due to the extremely high rate of vaccination.

This will probably sound a bit harsh, but we're also looking at survivorship bias, as well. The elderly who were most susceptible to dying from covid already have.

 

[Xspyrit]

The vaccinated are READY to live with the virus "freely", it's the unvaccinated who aren't and in a country as "politically correct as Canada", they won't abandon them to their fate

After a country/region get over Omicron and the vast majority of their population get their booster dose, I think they'll let the vaccinated live the life as normal as possible

But at some point, governments will have to accept that the unvaccinated made their choice and let them live with the consequences

my understanding of the logic is shutting down these venues is about reducing spread, Omicron in particular appears to have little issue infecting vaccinated folks, but thankfully the severity is reduced.

We shut down vectors for transmission, not to directly protect the people that go there, but to protect the population as a whole by reducing total cases and total community spread. The problem is the fully vaccinated guy going to the gym can still catch Covid, and infect his family (vacinnated or not) who can then as a group go out and infect the unvacinated guy in line at the grocery store, the healthcare provider he rides the bus with, the LTC worker who shops at the same store, and so on.

Bringing it back to how Unvaccinated might be the reason for these lockdowns, if we are trying to protect ICU capacity, then reducing spread seems to be the only way to impact it if unvaccinated folks are the ones who are predominantly occupying those spots.

It's not a question anymore though, all of this is understood by now

Governments have no choice to slow the spread SIMPLY because health systems can't support such waves of hospitalizations. Countries who have a lot more hospital capacity don't have to do as much effort. A country like the USA are in good position because they have a lot of capacity and people pay for their own medical bills so they can just leave them the responsibility, don't have to hold people by the hand like they have to do here lol

Seriously, if unvaccinated people had to pay their own medical bill, it will influence many to just get the vaccine

 

[GCK]

The vaccinated are READY to live with the virus "freely", it's the unvaccinated who aren't and in a country as "politically correct as Canada", they won't abandon them to their fate

After a country/region get over Omicron and the vast majority of their population get their booster dose, I think they'll let the vaccinated live the life as normal as possible

But at some point, governments will have to accept that the unvaccinated made their choice and let them live with the consequences



It's not a question anymore though, all of this is understood by now

Governments have no choice to slow the spread SIMPLY because health systems can't support such waves of hospitalizations. Countries who have a lot more hospital capacity don't have to do as much effort. A country like the USA are in good position because they have a lot of capacity and people pay for their own medical bills so they can just leave them the responsibility, don't have to hold people by the hand like they have to do here lol

Seriously, if unvaccinated people had to pay their own medical bill, it will influence many to just get the vaccine

The bolded doesn’t align with reality. The US has a much lower vaccination rate than Canada. Unfortunately the unvaccinated just aren’t smart enough to make a proper risk assessment and you can’t fix dumb.[/QUOTE]

 

[Cosmix]

Friend of mine a few weeks ago stated that the big difference between us and the US is that they have about 8x as much ICU capacity. I haven't verified that but it is certainly believable.

As such, they don't need to be nearly as cautious as us to guard against overwhelming their system.

Of course, you do still read stories about a city / county / hospital in the US being ICU overloaded and people not getting beds. But I think it'd be much much more prevalent here if we had their case rates.

I wonder if the USA has 8X the ICU capacity of Canada on a per capita basis. Anyone know?

 

[Cosmix]

The bolded doesn’t align with reality. The US has a much lower vaccination rate than Canada. Unfortunately the unvaccinated just aren’t smart enough to make a proper risk assessment and you can’t fix dumb.

[/QUOTE]

Not just dumb. Its also about income too. Everyone in the USA does not have the income to afford good health care.

 

[Ralph Malfredsson]

I wonder if the USA has 8X the ICU capacity of Canada on a per capita basis. Anyone know?

Ontario's capacity is 600 Beds for a population of 14M (approx 1 ICU bed per 23k people)
New York has 4500 beds for a population of 19 M (approx 1 ICU bed per 4.2k people)

so around 5-6x more critical care beds per capita between just those two bordering subnational entities.

 

[Xspyrit]

The bolded doesn’t align with reality. The US has a much lower vaccination rate than Canada. Unfortunately the unvaccinated just aren’t smart enough to make a proper risk assessment and you can’t fix dumb.

Well I am trying to avoid saying that

Note that some people do not care, they have "money to burn" or just can't control themselves and will overrule rationality and common sense. Like this dude below (François Amalega Bitondo), I guess being a "contrarian" was more important than his own finances lol. In september, he already had 41 742$ of bills to pay

Quebec anti-mask protester convicted of obstructing police officers | Montreal Gazette

There's also what we call in french for psychosocial intervention "la pensée magique". I don't know how to traduce it exactly but it's like wishful thinking that nothing bad will ever happen to you. I worked 3 years as a psychosocial worker which was an awesome experience but I have seen a lot of tragedies because of that wishful thinking, young people getting into deadly road accidents by driving really fast and irresponsibly, like if they were invincible. So anti-vaxxers don't think they'll get sick and if they do it'll be nothing more than the flu... However for some... it became deadly

LA man who mocked Covid-19 vaccines dies of virus :

LA man who mocked Covid-19 vaccines dies of virus

Even when he was really sick, he was continuing "Please pray y'all, they really want to intubate me and put me on a ventilator"

Look at this one. A trio of conservative radio hosts died of Covid. Will their deaths change vaccine resistance?

A trio of conservative radio hosts died of Covid. Will their deaths change vaccine resistance?

Each had publicly either mocked vaccination or derided broader vaccination efforts. Bernier, who called himself "Mr. Anti-Vax," said on Twitter that the Biden administration's push for vaccine intake was Nazi-esque

Farrel posted to Facebook in July: "why take a vax promoted by people who lied 2u all along about masks, where the virus came from and the death toll?"

Fair to say life answered their questions. I could feel sadness, but frankly, not really. They basically asked for it, too bad for them but game over.

‘I thought this was a hoax’: Man, 30, dies after Texas ‘COVID party’

A 30-year-old man has died of COVID-19 after attending a party meant to prove the coronavirus was a hoax, according to a hospital official in Texas.

Enough said?


The internet is filled with these stories, and yet there's still a lot of people who continue to defy life fatality. I guess not everyone loves life like I do.

But one thing though, I really hope the big voices that brainwashed efforts against covid prevention since the beginning, will be persecuted for "crime against humanity", responsible for the deaths of a lot of people

 

[Micklebot]

The bolded doesn’t align with reality. The US has a much lower vaccination rate than Canada. Unfortunately the unvaccinated just aren’t smart enough to make a proper risk assessment and you can’t fix dumb.

I don't know that you can make a direct comparison like that; Vaccination is highly politicized in the states, maybe if they had universal health care, the vaccination rate would be even lower than it currently is. When there is a financial penalty to not getting vaccinated, more people will likely to get vaccinated, look at the rates of vaccinations between workplaces that require vaccination and those that don't, I imagine you'd see a correlation with higher vaccination rates.

 

[FunkySeeFunkyDoo]

I wonder if the USA has 8X the ICU capacity of Canada on a per capita basis. Anyone know?

There were a few other posts after mine that dug up the correct number.... 2x per capita ICU capacity.

 

[Beech]

Ontario's capacity is 600 Beds for a population of 14M (approx 1 ICU bed per 23k people)
New York has 4500 beds for a population of 19 M (approx 1 ICU bed per 4.2k people)

so around 5-6x more critical care beds per capita between just those two bordering subnational entities.

https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/en/data-insights/intensive-care-beds-capacity
Intensive care beds per 100,000 people

Two source. However, data is not reliable. If you search hard enough you get different results. Some of which are ridicules. One site had Monaco at ~1110 ICUs per 100,000 people. Idiotic.

These sites suggest
Germany is a world leader with anywhere between 33-45 ICUs per 100,000
The USA is 14-25 ICUs per 100,000
Canada is 8-12 ICUs per 100,000

so the USA may be at 1.5 to 3 x our capacity. Germany is 4-5 x. But the German system is renowned. It is a hybrid of of ours and the USA's.

Get on Worldometer (again reliability is an issue). But in cases per million, deaths per million, tests per million (and therefore cost!!) we are best. All our numbers are way better than theirs.

If you look at England/The UK.. Their ICUs are 1/2 or ours. Their covid numbers are a catastrophe. BUT, looking at their testing. One of the highest.

The only pattern that I see is: Lockdowns and restrictions work. Added ICUs (Germany) does not. Added testing (the UK) does not. The going through the eye of the storm (the UK and The USA) definitely does not.

Australia and New Zealand have less ICU than us. Tested way less. Cracked down hardest. Spent the least. Survived it the most.

 

[Beech]

This will probably sound a bit harsh, but we're also looking at survivorship bias, as well. The elderly who were most susceptible to dying from covid already have.

not even close.

The UK, ~ 150,000 deaths'. Articles have been written about the bounce deaths (People dying within 6 months of hospital release. At the time ~ 10%). That would suggest that the UKs real deaths are ~180-190,000 K. People above 70 and with issues ~ 15% of society. so in the UK (Pop. 68 million) ~ 10.2 million vulnerable. Scientist in late 2019 early 2020 were calling for a 3% death rate. so ~ 306,000 should be those unfortunate that do not survive it.

At 180-190, the UK has seen approximately 60%.
The USA , possible deaths: 1,62 million. Real deaths and bounce ~ 1 million. They too are sitting at 60%

Canada; 175,500 possible deaths. Total to date (With bounce) ~ 40,000...22%.

The tragedy is; this is not a fixed number. Each year we age and more people develop issues. And so the number that die is easily surpassed by new people entering the vulnerable pool.

 

[DaveMatthew]

Omicron Is Milder

A few weeks ago, many experts and journalists were warning that the initial evidence from South Africa — suggesting that Omicron was milder than other variants — might turn out to be a mirage. It has turned out to be real.

Omicron is not just less likely to send somebody to the hospital. Even among people who need hospital care, symptoms are milder on average than among people who were hospitalized in previous waves. As Dr. Rahul Sharma of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell told The Times, “We’re not sending as many patients to the I.C.U., we’re not intubating as many patients, and actually, most of our patients that are coming to the emergency department that do test positive are actually being discharged.”

Given the combination of surging cases and milder disease, how should people respond? Dr. Leana Wen, Baltimore’s former health commissioner, wrote a helpful Washington Post article in which she urged a middle path between reinstituting lockdowns and allowing Omicron to spread unchecked. “It’s unreasonable to ask vaccinated people to refrain from pre-pandemic activities,” Wen said. “After all, the individual risk to them is low, and there is a steep price to keeping students out of school, shuttering restaurants and retail shops and stopping travel and commerce.”

Consider this: Before Omicron, a typical vaccinated 75-year-old who contracted Covid had a roughly similar risk of death — around 1 in 200 — as a typical 75-year-old who contracted the flu. (Here are the details behind that calculation, which is based on an academic study.) Omicron has changed the calculation. Because it is milder than earlier versions of the virus, Covid now appears to present less threat to most vaccinated elderly people than the annual flu does.

 

[Ralph Malfredsson]

https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/en/data-insights/intensive-care-beds-capacity
Intensive care beds per 100,000 people

Two source. However, data is not reliable. If you search hard enough you get different results. Some of which are ridicules. One site had Monaco at ~1110 ICUs per 100,000 people. Idiotic.

The data is indeed craptastic. The notable differences are also because the definition of critical care bed is heterogeneous between jurisdiction.

Note - there is also flexibility in creating critical care capacity in emergency (as we did in some hospitals in Ontario when taking in Alberta's cases in Wave 3 - where ORs, PACUs, etc. can be fitted with ventilators and HCW trained in critical care). This can almost double Ontario's critical care capacity, at least in theory.

 

[Stylizer1]

Omicron Is Milder

It's funny how the Government and the media have people running around like chickens with their head cutoff.

 

[maclean]

Anyone had covid here? My whole family had this omicron thing, one got tested, we assume all of us have it. Daughter's circle almost all had it and still having it now. It looks like people just delayed inevitable with all those stages of hell. Look at Sens. I am sure they are just a slice of a society. All had covid, or almost all. I believe 30% in the city of Ottawa going around with omicron right now. It is just a bad flu now. And so many people are asymptomatic.

I had covid at the start of December, so probably still delta. I am vaccinated, so I spent a lot of time resting for three or four days, but nothing horrible. I had hints of a cough and if I had tried to just walk it off I could see how it might've gotten bad, but I wasn't out of commission, I was still cooking and taking care of my kids, who didn't catch it from me. A number of my 40-something friends had it as well over the past month, including one who wasn't vaccinated, all more or less a similar story. So, I dunno, obviously it's anecdotal, but... Yeah.

 

[Cosmix]

Ontario's capacity is 600 Beds for a population of 14M (approx 1 ICU bed per 23k people)
New York has 4500 beds for a population of 19 M (approx 1 ICU bed per 4.2k people)

so around 5-6x more critical care beds per capita between just those two bordering subnational entities.

Thanks for the comparison info. That is quite a difference in capability, and cost.

 

[FunkySeeFunkyDoo]

Omicron Is Milder

All of this is good info.

As I mentioned a few pages back, I'd really like to see the models that Ontario is using to forecast their hospitalization and ICU rates.... And whether those values stand up to scrutiny.

It does appear that ICU occupancy is rising steeply, but that could be very short lived --- especially if each patients time in the ICU is really short for Omicron.

 

[GCK]

Thanks for the comparison info. That is quite a difference in capability, and cost.

We have 2343 ICU beds in Ontario. The approx 600 are the currently available. So we actually have 1 per 6000 residents. Fairly comparable to NY state.

 

[GCK]

All of this is good info.

As I mentioned a few pages back, I'd really like to see the models that Ontario is using to forecast their hospitalization and ICU rates.... And whether those values stand up to scrutiny.

It does appear that ICU occupancy is rising steeply, but that could be very short lived --- especially if each patients time in the ICU is really short for Omicron.

ICUs are not really an issue in Ontario but non ICU hospitalizations due to Covid are skyrocketing. Tripled from 480 to 1290 in a week. ICU cases have not even doubled in that time 164 to 254.

 

[Beech]

Omicron Is Milder

Hard to know. The numbers are showing reduced issues. But I have no idea of why? Is it Omicron? Is it the vaccine? Is it the vulnerable hiding? Whatever, the numbers are showing it.

7 day death average bottomed out at 14 on Dec 25. It is now at 34 on Jan 4th. That is now ~2.5 X. Death reflects 14 days previous.
Dec 11, ~3,600 cases...14 deaths...0.4% (about 1/4 of what it was March 2019 to May 2020)
Dec 20, 7,935 cases...34 deaths...0.4% (same as above)
Jan 4, 40,310 case ...POSSIBLE DEATHS on Jan 18 = 161

Here is a test Dec 22 infections ~ 10,000 case. If at 0.4%..we should see 40 deaths. If we see 40 deaths or lower..Covid is over.

Stop all of this on Friday. End all lockdown. Impose mask rules. Distancing rules. AND HERE IS THE HARD PART. Let the vulnerable know they must protect themselves in addition to steps we are taking. After that, it is up to everyone to do his part without the insanity of the last 2 years.

If we are fortunate than it is a combo of all 3. A milder virus, an effective vaccine and a society that has adapted.

 

[dumbdick]

There is a good argument for lockdown measures that scale by a person's risk level.

The government won't say it, but they are looking at herd immunity type scenarios here. Whether they have much choice is debatable, but if they said it, they'd be admitting they're accepting a certain number of deaths and hospitalizations to get past this, so they won't say it.

To minimize deaths while letting this go through the population, a good strategy is to tightly lock up the ONLY the aged and vulnerable until the R0 decreases to an acceptable point. Order people by their capacity to survive covid and remove the restrictions on a sliding timeline.

As a society we've decided that we won't have age-based restrictions or vax requirements, but from a societal good perspective they probably make the most sense.

Luckily I think everyone knows that risk scales with age and I think we're probably seeing people self moderate their exposure according to their individual risks anyways.

 

[AchtzehnBaby]