Thought of the Day - March 13 2022 - By the Numbers

Globally, the number of official cases is approaching half a billion, with over 6 million deaths.

Over the last week, hospitalizations in Canada have reduced by 7%, while new daily deaths have decreased by 17%. However, they remain stubbornly high, reminding us that there are still considerable pockets of infection. When all is said and done, I estimate that official COVID fatalities in Canada will total roughly 40,000.

Despite making up only a quarter of a percent of Canadians, care home residents have accounted for almost half of the COVID deaths in the country; one-fifth of all residents have died.

One way to look at the effectiveness of the measures taken during COVID is to look at excess deaths over the last two years (many countries do not record these figures and so there is no "world average" to compare to). This is an important figure as managing COVID is a bit of like whack-a-mole, if you put too much focus on specific COVID measures, deaths from other neglected issues will increase.

Countries that went for COVID-Zero (mostly island nations) fared the best in general. Their COVID measures also reduced deaths from things like seasonal flu or car accidents - due to working from home policies. Thus, they actually had fewer deaths than normal over the last two years.

On the other hand, Canada fared fairly well when compared to countries that had more limited public policy change. Compared to the US for example, it appears we were six times more effective.

Despite actions from the provinces in stepping down COVID measures, overall Canada's stringency index still remains about the same (remember if there are regional differences the most strict continue to be used as reference) as we await further news from Ottawa.

This week BC joined the rest of the provinces with plans to wind down their COVID passport system and vaccine mandates (I think I saw that for some unexplained reason unvaccinated medical professionals in BC may still be required to advise their patients).

It looks like Canada will end up around 10th in the world for vaccination compliance across major countries.

This week's shout-out goes to friends, family and neighbours. While I am sure there are still some bumps ahead, particularly economically, for now it looks like we made it!

Cheers

Cliff