Thought of the Day - January 16 2022 - By the Numbers

Guess what? Official cases in Canada peaked last week. Why? We have now reached our testing capacity and indeed provinces such as Ontario, Quebec, BC and Alberta have actually started decreasing the scope of their testing. In my view, this is a good thing as it is simply a waste of resources, but it does mean, as mentioned last week, that doing case number comparisons is now even more meaningless. So no, unlike the UK that peaked this week, we still have a couple of weeks to go here in Canada.

Alberta says that they estimate there are ten times more people becoming infected in their province than they are now detecting. This could mean Canada is now experiencing close to half a million new infections a day and thus, by the end of January, half of the population of the country will have been infected. That said, most, those who have natural immunity, have already had COVID, have a good constitution, or got the right vaccination regimen, will probably not even know they have been infected.

While the vast majority of hospitalizations until this point were from the Delta strain, we are now seeing there are a number of people being overwhelmed by the less virulent Omicron. Unfortunately, hospitalizations continue to rise. BC, and possibly other provinces, have also just changed how it reports COVID hospitalized cases. Now they will include anyone who tests positive for SARS-CoV-2 even if they actually came in for a broken leg. As a result, BC hospital figures went up 25% in one day. So now comparing hospitalizations with historical figures is also meaningless.

Here is a new baseline of the number of people in hospital last week who tested positive for COVID in each region. It will be interesting to see how this changes over the next month.

Up until now almost all deaths, from the fifth wave that started in early December, were from Delta. By next week we will have an Omicron baseline for deaths as well. Hopefully, how this measure is counted will not be changed as well.

This week I am going to try to unpack another set of data - Excess Mortality.

We have talked before Excess Mortality is a really most important figure ( Thought of the Day - September 19 2021 - By the Numbers ). It gives a feel for the overall effectiveness of how COVID was addressed. In short, if you do nothing COVID deaths will be high, however, if you focus too much on COVID then deaths from other causes increase.

One of the challenges in making comparisons across provinces, let alone across countries, concerning COVID deaths is the infamous "from" versus "with" definition. With excess deaths, this is largely removed as all fatalities are in one bucket.

As you can see compared to our nearest trading partners Canada has been faring quite well in excess deaths.

I added Sweden just to see the effect of a minimalist policy.

I also added Australia to illustrate that if you managed to cut yourself off from SARS-CoV-2 and also restrict dangerous activities (such as driving), and still keep your medical system open for business you can in effect save lives despite the pandemic.

While the story is far from being told, again you can see Canada has faired well. While we had significant COVID deaths, most were the elderly in care homes that, unfortunately, would probably have passed away over the last two years anyway.

Unsurprisingly, the big story is the USA. It turns out the collateral damage that their disparate policies, misinformation campaigns, lack of universal health care, unhealthy lifestyle, and a host of other factors, could have caused as many collateral deaths as from COVID itself.

To wrap this up, it will be interesting to see how these figures progress. Countries that had a high infection, and death, in the past, may now have a natural level of immunity that will help them resist Omicron. Only time will tell.

This week's shout-out goes to the Territories. Despite significant case outbreaks as of late, at the end of last week, none of them had anyone in hospital due to COVID. Of course, they could always change the criterion as others have now done.

Cheers

Cliff