Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[SvennoJ]

JRPGfan said:

EricHiggin said:

Think of trying to end covid-19 like trying to end racism. The media will tell you exactly how that's going to work out. I've also noticed, that other locals around here, are finally starting to notice the media no longer talks about deaths at all, only cases, and they understand why. The news here in ON has been doing a pretty terrible job of keeping the people scared for quite some time. Heck it was a joke to begin with, with how blatantly the reporters weren't even following any of the rules or guidelines and making up ridiculous excuses. Though many didn't seem to pick up on that somehow.

There's a reason why there are flu shots and not 'cold' shots. Trying to properly and completely immunize everyone from coronavirus would be a nightmarish task and isn't even close to worth it for many reasons, and that unfortunately includes the covid-19 strains. The flu was doable though.

It's never going away, at least not anytime in the foreseeable future. People either learn to live with it and the consequences, or humanity lives in lockdown mode for decades. It should be clear to most that people can't and/or won't live like that for long. Not in a free society anyway.

That's likely not what you want to hear, but the sooner people realize this, the sooner they can better plan to protect themselves if more necessary, as well as the system as a whole, within reason of course. The problem with reason now, is things were pushed much to far, so now there's considerable push back by the people. Cause and effect. The people themselves aren't near as much to blame as the professionals and leaders who got us here.

USA: had 1287 deaths due to covid yesterday (~180,000 new cases).   Both cases and deaths are on a upward trend.
Highest case count (active) was 9million, back in jan 2021. Now its close to 7.8m (active) cases of corona.

Canada: had 6 deaths due to covid yesterday (~3000 new daily cases).
Canada currently has 23,000 active cases of corona virus. The issue is the USA has like 400 times as much cases of sick, as canada does atm.


Theres degree's of "learn to live with it".

Canada's outlook is much easier to live with, than the one in the US.
1300 pr day, for a year is still like half a million extra deaths pr year.


Canada has done a much better job with vaccinations than the US.
To be fair, something like 90-95% of the sick in hospitals are unvaccinated (or not fully vaccinated).
Maybe with time, this "problem" (US side) solves itself, as it mostly just kills fools that didnt want to get vaccinated.
Eventually it passes though everyone who hasnt gotten infected yet, or vaccinated.

We're behind the USA and just starting our 4th wave, deaths lag a couple weeks behind.

At the peak of the 3rd wave Canada was at 9100 cases per day and our hospitals were strained to the max, we came very close to having to reject people (emergency triage protocol). Some parts of the country are already getting close to that point again. Less people die now thanks to vaccinations, yet hospitalizations are still needed, although less. Which means other diseases like cancer get less attention and kill more people.

So if we're going to live with Covid-19 with few restrictions, we need more hospital beds and staff. Hospitals in Ontario are still recovering from the 3rd wave and now the next influx is starting. We're getting less updates now because the election has been called, which means the government has switched into caretaker mode until after the election. Plus covid-19 numbers are not good election material, focus of the campaigns is economic recovery. The conservative party is slamming all the measures, enough is enough, time to get back on track (10 year recovery plan).

The problem is, Covid-19 is still far more contagious than the flu, even with 66% fully vaccinated. (going up pretty slow now) and still needs a lot more hospital care than the flu.



https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/vaccines-not-enough-to-stop-fourth-wave-of-covid-19-in-canada-experts-warn-1.5560876

“Unfortunately, when we compare Canada to other comparable countries, our ICU capacity per capita is not very robust,” said Bogoch.

This is what resulted in lockdowns during the third wave, he added, referencing the "dire" situation earlier this year in which ICUs in some provinces hit capacity, patients were sent to other cities, adult patients were in pediatric ICU beds, and surgeries were cancelled.

“We can't let this wave get out of control because the more cases there are, the more hospitalizations, the more ICU [admissions] and tragically, the more deaths we will see this fall,” Craig Jenne, Canada Research Chair in infectious diseases at the University of Calgary told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Tuesday.

What's worrying is that we're in a worse state now than last year

“If you look back to last year’s cases, they really didn't start rising sharply until we got into September with people back indoors at school,” he said. “This year, the cases really have started to go up in a number of places – Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia in early August, basically the wave has a month head start.”

And this year, the plan is everyone back to school and more businesses open, less restrictions, plus a variant that's far more contagious. And at home we're at the junction of, we kept the kids home last year based on the situation then. This year, they really need that school interaction again, yet the current outlook is worse than last year and the measures at school haven't improved at all.