Thought of the Day - May 9 2021 - By the Numbers

The World

Cases continue to climb in India. Unfortunately, it is thought they won't peak for another ten days or so.

As expected things are also bad in Nepal. Indeed a report from a few days ago confirms that even the base camp at Mount Everest is now infected - 17 reported so far. You will also note that while Bhutan is seeing some increase, there has not been any increase in Pakistan or Bangladesh - and Canada still has not explained why we cut off flights from Pakistan a few weeks ago.

Canada

Meanwhile, the third wave continues to slowly abate in Canada. Cases are down 10% over the past two weeks and deaths by 13%.

But there is a notable exception. No, not the much-reported hotspots in Ontario, it is the province of Alberta. Last week Alberta was double the national average in new cases, now they are two and a half times.

And it is not just one or two hotspots, there are high case counts across the province.

That said, Alberta's medical system is doing an admirable job. Despite now having 10% more people per capita in hospital, Alberta's death rate is less than a quarter of that of Ontario.

Vaccinations

Here in Canada, about 38% of Canadians have had a vaccine dose. So we are a quarter of the way through our first full vaccination program.

As you can see, Pfizer is the predominant vaccine being administered in Canada. Roughly 25% of Canadians have received Pfizer, 5% Moderna or 5% AZ/Covishield. The other two categories are J&J (labelled as "Unknown" by CBC as it is unknown when J&J will get their US manufacturing fully up to speed), and "Vaccine not reported" means the people that have gone to other counties (mostly the US) for vaccination.

Looking around the world, here are the top countries.

A recent study from Israel is very encouraging. It stated that vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19-related hospitalisation, and death exceeded 96% across all age groups.

But what about "herd immunity"? If you look at the three charts below (amount of vaccine administered, new cases and deaths) you can see that there is no real correlation between the vaccination program and the level of COVID in the general population.

For example, the US and the UK had decreasing cases and deaths, just like Israel, despite having administered less than a fifth of the vaccine. These graphs reaffirm that "herd immunity" does not start to occur until regions are well over 50% vaccinated, and possibly might require a 75% vaccination rate.

Moreover, if you look at daily doses now being administered in these countries you will note that they are falling (other than Bahrain but their figures are very strange). What is happening is that countries are finding at around 40% adoption they start hitting a wall. First, there is the cross-section of people who cannot yet be vaccinated (children and those with medical conditions for example) estimated at about 25% of the population. More significantly, the remaining 35% of people are reluctant to get vaccinated in the first place.

All this to say, it is no wonder Canada is having difficulty setting a target for vaccinations. The latest incantation by Health Canada is the 75%/20% rule. They are thinking that a good time to start easing restrictions is when 75% of Canadians have had some form of vaccination and 20% are fully vaccinated. Macleans did an extrapolation as to when we might optimistically reach this level in adults.

They conclude that Canada will not recommend easing restrictions after the May Long weekend, as people may have been hoping, but rather at the end of June.

This week's shout-out goes to the people of the Atlantic Provinces. They showed the rest of the country that restricting travel is key to managing COVID. Despite still having the lowest case and death counts in the country, they have once again bitten the bullet and chosen to suspend the Atlantic Bubble indefinitely.

Cheers

Cliff