Thought of the Day - October 10 2021 - By the Numbers

The world is still doing very well. Weekly case and death counts are again down by close to 10%.

And, And, Canada's fourth wave did peak at the start of the month! As discussed on the blog at the beginning of September, Canada is following the US lead, a month in arrears ( Thought of the Day - September 5 2021 - By the Numbers ).

Contrasting this fourth wave to our third wave in the spring it looks like:

• We came in slightly below (60%) of spring (third wave) peak in cases (thus better than when the US is compared to their last wave);

• Our current hospitalizations are also about 60% that of our spring peak (thus below the 3/4 of the last peak seen in the US);

• However, our deaths will probably be much closer to that of our third wave (thus we have improved less than the US). This means, unfortunately, that our case fatality rate is worse than in our last wave. This is actually unsurprising as against the growing Delta variant we have done little to improve our treatments ( Thought of the Day - September 9 2021 - Theoretical Therapeutics ).

Please note we are comparing Canada's current wave to our last wave, and then to the US' last to their previous wave on a per-capita basis. Overall Canada has been doing far better than the US in both of these waves.

While deaths have actually decreased over the past week, hospitalizations are still on the rise. Thus, it will be a couple more weeks before the impact of this latest wave fully plays out. But the good news, like the US saw in September, this wave should be behind us by the end of this month.

Of course, things are not that rosy in various parts of the country.

The territories, lead by NWT, are really in trouble. Manitoba and New Brunswick continue to struggle. It is hoped that BC, Saskatchewan, and Alberta have now turned the ship around. And, the real reason that Canada's fourth wave is in overall decline is still thanks to Ontario and Quebec.

Looking once again at the University of Washington model, they have now totally changed their predictions for Canada. Rather than a very significant fourth wave (that they were suggesting less than a month ago ( Thought of the Day - September 19 2021 - By the Numbers )), they are now predicting a fifth wave near the end of the year. So much for modelling.

Vaccine deployment slowly continues to roll out. The Yukon has the highest double-vaccinated rate, now over 77%. While Nunavut is now by far the lowest at 56%. Canada, overall, is now closing in on 72%.

This week's shout-out goes to Ontario. Our most populous province continues to have case rates and COVID deaths less than half the national average - let's hope they keep up the good work.

Cheers

Cliff