Thought of the Day - September 5 2021 - By the Numbers

This week's good news is that the world total for new cases and death continue to drop, this past week by about 8%. Unfortunately, most of the top locations in cases and deaths per-capita continue to be our tourist destinations ( Thought of the Day - July 12 2021 - Is Vaccination a Selfish Act? )

There are signs that the current US COVID-19 wave may be peaking (yes, you heard it first here). Peaking at about 2/3 of the number of daily cases they had during their worst wave back last winter.

Unfortunately, hospitalization rates look like they will reach 3/4 that of the last peak, thus they can't be explained away as "only the unvaccinated have severe symptoms".

The hope is that deaths, which will take several more weeks to peak, may be below these ratios. Unfortunately, they will probably still be over a staggering 2,000 a day figure. We will certainly be studying this carefully in the coming weeks.

Looking at the numbers, it is clear that Canada's current wave is about a month behind that of the US. This means we may peak at the beginning of October and there is no reason to believe we will not see a similar trend to the US: 2/3 of our spring peak in cases and 3/4 in hospitalizations but, hopefully, not in deaths.

This translates to over 6,000 new daily cases, 75% higher than what we are seeing now, and over 2,500 people in hospital.

Once we get a better feel for the trends in the US we will also be able to understand the potential peak in deaths coming in Canada.

This week in "By the Numbers" I will not be talking about vaccination rates, other than to say that the three top large countries in cases are also well up the list in vaccination rates. This coming week I will continue to explore why vaccination is not stopping infection and what this means for herd immunity.

This week's shout-out goes to Prince Edward Island. PEI has remained vigilant in restricting travel into their province. As a result, while not yet COVID-Free, they have had no new cases since the start of the month. This means, despite other Canadian provinces (Saskatchewan, Alberta and soon British Columbia) rejoining the bottom of the US state list for active cases per capita, PEI continues to have the lowest provincial (or US state) per-capita cases. PEI also remains the only province (or state) without a single official death directly attributable to COVID.

Cheers

Cliff