Thought of the Day - May 16 2021 - By the Numbers

The World

The good news is, although things are still very bad in the country, it looks like India may have peaked a few days earlier than forecast. On the other hand, Nepal's case rate is still going up. Looking at countries with the highest official level of cases and deaths, many are still from eastern Europe and South America.

Vaccinations

Canada's vaccination rate continues to improve. Canada is now second in new vaccinations per capita, just behind Uruguay.

As the top countries start to hit the vaccination wall, Canada's rate continues to move ahead.

We now stand ninth in total vaccinations per capita across major counties.

You can see the effect of vaccines across these leading countries in reducing severe disease by the reduction in hospitalizations.

Canada

Here in Canada, cases are down 21% over the last two weeks.

Alberta has crested the wave, and now Manitoba is taking a turn.

Ontario still has the highest fatality rate.

Variants of Concern

Variants of Concern (VOC) are subtle mutations that make the virus more transmissible. Over time they become the dominant strains migrating through a population. Here in BC 80% of all cases are now VOCs.

The primary global variants of concern are UK (B.1.1.7), Brazil (P.1), South African (B.1.351) and Indian (B.1.617.2).

Below is the national breakdown from the Federal reporting site. As you can see across the country, the majority of cases are the UK variant. The exception is here in BC where we seem to have largely escaped the UK variant; here over a third of the cases are Brazil.

Despite the Indian variant being talked about on this blog a month ago and the fact it was confirmed in various provinces across the country on April 22nd, Canada still only reports on the first three. Heck even the WHO, who are always well behind the times, declared the Indian variant a VOC early this past week.

In short, if you see a significant outbreak in a particular country there is a good chance that it is related to a new variant; thus the reason for the colloquial naming by country.

Speaking of naming, you'll never guess the acronym for the system that is used to designate these variants. It is called PANGOLIN. I kid you not. Makes me think when the "experts" were trying to come up with a plausible explanation as to how SARS-CoV-2 could have come from bats, someone mentioned PANGO Lineages, and another said, "Pangolin, of course! Why don't we blame it on those little guys".

Shout Out

This week's shout-out goes to Alberta. Despite the high case counts of late, ten days ago double the Canadian average, they have turned things around. All the while they kept their fatality rate low.

Cheers

Cliff