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Covid-19

Sambo said:
Do you want to lockdown the 20-30 year olds? Those days are probably over. Time to move on.
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Unfortunately, if we have incomplete data and no technical ability to quickly require vaccine passports, if we are seeing an ICU surge from unvaccinated people, our options come back to: lockdown or an even worse ICU surge.

This virus, things don't look so bad until they look very bad, and it seems the decisions being made are to reduce the warning.

We will see where we are mid October and mid November. What we do know is the virus is circulating-it just needs to reach the wrong pocket of people and it will take off. Think a choir, a religious community, a hippy elementary school's parent group and their parents, maybe middle age+ party people, a curling team, a call centre or open office where only 40% are vaccinated.
 
The UCP's strategy seems pretty clearly aimed at encouraging the virus to wash over the entire population. Why else remove isolation and testing, place no restrictions on unvaccinated people, and force university students back into stuffy, crowded lecture halls?

Once again this same attitude of "why can't everyone just suck it up, and get back to normal?!?!?" is going to run into some very simple math problems.

36% of our population is completely unvaccinated. Another 10% is only partially vaccinated. 15-40% of vaccinated people are still capable of getting infected and spreading. The virus has spread to less than 10% of the population of the past year and that still overwhelmed our ICUs twice (driven by cases among younger people). The virus still has a lot of population to spread to. It could overwhelm the ICU several times over and still keep spreading for years to come.
 
Sambo said:
Do you want to lockdown the 20-30 year olds? Those days are probably over. Time to move on.
Click to expand...
Depends entirely on what happens with the hospitals. The Conservatives can stick their heads in the sand and pretend it's all over, but we don't know what is going to happen. Caution should still be the policy, not pretending this is all over.
 
Without comment but in response to the above:
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The media will continue to use case counts and total active cases as the headline. With the vaccination rates as high as they are, the more meaningful data is hospitalizations. Keeping those to a minimum is, and was the sole reason for shutdowns, mask mandates etc. By the end of August, we should have a pretty good idea whether hospitalizations are keeping pace with increased cases, the way they did with previous waves. Early indications are they are not ... thanks to vaccinations. Like many, I am a little concerned with 'back to school'. No one under 12 has been vaccinated yet and and the percentage of ages 12-19 still has a little ways to go, compared to other age groups.
I agree with Deena Hinshaw. We have to learn to live with COVID. It can no longer be the sole driver behind decision making on healthcare, the economy and social norms etc. The neglect of other health care issues because of COVID has gone on too long. We may never know the residual cost of all this. The solution to getting out from under COVID is pretty clear .... get vaccinated.
 
darwink said:
Without comment but in response to the above:
View attachment 340903
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Obviously if Rt stays constant indefinitely and exponential growth continues at the current rate, then the UCP plan doesn't "work".

Some combination of enough acquired immunity through infection among unvaccinated people, combined with changes in private behavior, will bring Rt below 1, regardless of government intervention. See Lousiana from https://covidestim.org/us/LA

1628782172712.png


The questions for whether the UCP plan "works" are:

1) How bad will the hospital situation be when we get to that point; and
2) What will the political consequences be

I think (1) is mostly a function of what the hospital/case ratio is in this wave, hence my previous comment. On (2), it is a question of how much Albertans are willing to accept a lot of (90-99% unvaccinated) people suffering and dying. In Lousiana, Florida, and Texas, it seems like the answer is "very willing," at least within their respective state governments.
 
JonnyCanuck said:
We have to learn to live with COVID. It can no longer be the sole driver behind decision making on healthcare, the economy and social norms etc. The neglect of other health care issues because of COVID has gone on too long.
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I really don't understand what this statement means. The only way we can take care of other health care issues, grow the economy, and get back to "normal" is by controlling COVID. When COVID19 patients currently occupy 15% of expanded ICU capacity and cases are starting to go up again at an exponential rate, COVID19 is once again threatening our health care system's ability to deal with regular issues. Elective surgeries and other procedures are going to have to be put on hold again if doctors are worried about future ICU capacity (which they are).

Again, the only way to "live with COVID" is to control its spread. And to control its spread, we need increased vaccinations and masking in high transmission situations.

Instead of learning to live with COVID in this province, we have ridiculous situations like what's happening at the University of Calgary. University leadership refuses to impose vaccine and mask requirements, so instead they've allowed classes to be held online again for the third academic year in a row! Let me repeat this: the University has decided it would rather impose another lockdown than require masking and vaccinations! This is total insanity when we literally have millions of unused vaccine doses sitting around in this province.
 
^ Don't for one second believe the university decided to do this in isolation. the province gave them the lanes they needed to stay in, and the university built a plan that works somewhat with it. Just like many large businesses, I have no doubt they would prefer a vaccine passport type system. The issue is provincial indications of 'we don't think you can legally do this'. Don't for one second assume that the university thinks this is the optimal choice.
 
darwink said:
^ Don't for one second believe the university decided to do this in isolation. the province gave them the lanes they needed to stay in, and the university built a plan that works somewhat with it. Just like many large businesses, I have no doubt they would prefer a vaccine passport type system. The issue is provincial indications of 'we don't think you can legally do this'. Don't for one second assume that the university thinks this is the optimal choice.
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For sure, blame ultimately lies with Kenney. But, just like Hinshaw, if the University administration is going to play along with the charade that they are acting on their own initiative, then they deserve all the condemnation they are receiving.
 
Some members of city council (Farrell, Gondek among them) are calling for a vote on a modified version of a mask mandate. Here we go again except this time, the push back from the public is likely to be pretty fierce, if it does pass.
The numbers are pretty clear ... 85% of new cases are either people who have not been vaccinated (vast majority) or have had only one dose.
While I agree, we need to take measures to protect kids in school who have not been vaccinated and this may include mandatory masking; for the rest of the public, leave masking to the discretion of the individual. I am tired of hearing the rhetoric from the 'nannies' on city council. They are no more versed in the current state of the pandemic, than the average person.
 
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