Thought of the Day - September 24 2021 - Curve Flattening

Remember last year when "Flattening the Curve" was the mantra. Notice you don't hear this as much anymore. There are two ways to flatten a curve. The first is to shave off the peaks, this is what we were told last year, make sure to shave off the peaks so that the medical system does not get overwhelmed ( Thought of the Day - October 22 - Healthcare Workers ). As it turned out we did a pretty good job, there were a few scrambles in the eastern provinces but in general, we did okay; likely there were more deaths from cancelled procedures than lack of COVID care. Of course, this strategy was also coupled with the expectation at the time that vaccination would lead to herd immunity.

But this year the variants have arrived. This year, countries that did not build up natural immunity are actually in more trouble than others - case in point Australia. As we have talked about before, for much of the population natural immunity is better than repeat booster vaccines ( Thought of the Day - September 7 2021 - The Best Way to Top-up Immunity ). Canada has 1.5M official cases, the truth is probably five times higher, but this does mean, unlike many countries, probably only a fifth of Canadians now enjoy natural immunity.

As a consequence of our great job in 2020 at "Flattening the Curve" our current wave may turn out to be worse than that of the US or the European countries that had previous major outbreaks. Maybe for this fourth wave, as well as shaving off the peaks, we will also introduce the second flattening technique, maybe we also fill in the valleys. In this way, we more rapidly complement vaccines with natural immunity.

Case in point, the UK, for one, is taking this approach. After measures to curb the July peak, they have introduced very little in the way of interventions since. Thus, they have managed to fill in potential troughs. In the UK over thirty thousand people a day are getting their natural COVID immunity booster.

Only time will tell what strategy works the best in the long run.

Cheers

Cliff