Thought of the Day - June 28 - By The Numbers

The great news is Canada continues to fall in the charts for the number of cases and number of deaths per capita against other countries. Last week there were a little over 2,000 new cases and 100 deaths in Canada, the lowest in quite a while. More charts here: (https://clifffraser0.wixsite.com/covid-19/the-numbers).

In BC, Phase 3 reopening is in full swing (https://clifffraser0.wixsite.com/covid-19/post/thought-of-the-day-june-25-happy-phase-3-bc). This is great news as we can now address the indirect issues created by the pandemic itself and our remediation measures.

But we need to remember that the coronavirus has not gone away. Saturday the tragic milestones of ten million official cases, and half a million deaths was reached, and worldwide the daily rate of new cases continues to increase. The easing of restrictions has meant the start of second waves in countries like the US, Israel and Spain.

Canada, like most counties, is encouraged to largely show shown charts that depict Canada situation in a positive light, but have a look at this:

Here we can clearly see in Canada that the ratio between the number of people that have died against the number of people who were "official cases" is appalling. Indeed Canada and most provinces did a very poor job of ramping up testing, as I have talked about before, as for a while largely all we did is confirm hospital cases. This means our case numbers were low. That said, Quebec has seen one of the highest death rates per capita in the world.

However, look at the USA. Looking good right? Well, the reason for their improved numbers is not that they do not have a growing mortality, but that they are still having significant growth in case rates both real (they just recorded an all-time high) and also due to the fact they now have one of the highest testing-rates in the world (indeed in Canada only Alberta has managed to keep up with them)! But, remember this is a ratio. So the key lesson is, whatever graphs you are shown remember to "take them with a grain of salt" and fully understand the underlying information.

Here are the associated current CFR and OFR per province. you can see Quebec, while improving, is still our outlier.

Another study, out of Oxford University, looks to link government response, around the time of about 15 reported cases in a country, to the subsequent number of deaths.

Here Canada fares very poorly. Indeed our rating was only 2.78 out of 100, one of the lowest out of the top group (US was over 5). This IS certainly one of the underlying reasons for the high number of deaths per capita here in Canada.

Due to the arrival of Phase 3 here in BC there is a feeling the worst is behind us, but let's not forget that our new case numbers are about the same as back in March and last week six more people died in our province. As we have not yet embraced antibody testing (https://clifffraser0.wixsite.com/covid-19/post/thought-of-the-day-june-11-why-are-we-not-doing-antibody-testing) the number of people who have had COVID-19 in Canada is still not know with certainty. But be sure on one thing, we are just at the start of the pandemic. With all the "reopening", cases will increase. Below is my best estimate of the current situation:

The good news is this means over 1.5 million Canadians have contracted some level of COVID-19; the vast majority of which are now fine and are thus hopefully immune. But this also means there are still 36 million or so Canadians that are still at risk, and you are probably one of them.

So now, more than ever, let's be diligent and make sure we don't start a second wave.

This week the shout-out goes to our two eastern provinces, PEI and Newfoundland&Labrador, who have hung tough on reopening borders (as opposed to recent developments in New Zealand) and have now enjoyed several weeks of coronavirus-free life (https://clifffraser0.wixsite.com/covid-19/post/thought-of-the-day-may-22-covid-free).

Cheers

Cliff