Thought of the Day - October 24 2021 - By the Numbers

Again another week of steady improvement for much of the world. Unfortunately, increases in cases across Europe continue to predominate world figures. While North America is still giving Europe a run-for-their-money as far as new deaths per capita are concerned, Europe is sure to be ahead by the end of the month.

Here in Canada, we are coming close to the end of the fourth wave. This wave's cases ended up peaking far below, around half, of our third wave in the spring.

Unfortunately, deaths are now peaking at close to the same level as our last wave. So this means case fatality rates are actually higher now than six months ago (doing a quick calculation, Canada's case fatality rate for April was 0.47% but for September was 0.74%). Why is this?

Could it be that we are simply identifying less cases? It is true we are now testing less - testing is now at 80% of the level in the spring, and for some reason vaccinated people believe they are immune so are less likely to get tested. Maybe we are not counting cases or deaths in the same way? Possibly, as this wave was more prevalent in different provinces than the last, and we know provinces count differently. Or more likely, despite all the vaccination efforts that have occurred over the last six months, could it be that Canada's COVID fatality rate has actually increased since the spring due to the prevalence of the Delta variant?

One in twenty-five Canadians has now tested positive for COVID. Sorry to confirm, as I have always said, our current vaccines do little to reduce transmission. There has been a statistical study of cases across 68 countries, by Harvard researchers published in the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine at the end of September, which comes to the unsurprising conclusions:

1. There appears to be no discernable relationship between the percentage of the population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases.

2. In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association, such that countries with a higher percentage of the population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases.

This week's shout-out goes to Canada. There is good news after all - our fourth wave continues to abate. Cases are down over 10% this week, and both hospitalizations and deaths are down over 7%. Given the successes in Ontario and Quebec in curtailing this wave, there is now a good chance we will not see a fifth wave, at the country level, before the new year.

Cheers

Cliff