View topic - Tripping in the age of COVID

@ canoeguitar

Your geographic location clearly matters in this case, and I'm not saying that people shouldn't isolate, I'm saying that the government should put out the information that they have to educate people, and let them make their decisions rather than forcing businesses to close and go out of business. Put yourself in the mindset of someone who is at a greater risk. Is it easier for you to stay isolated for a roughly 4 week period or for an indefinite period? Those at risk should have been isolated while the general population gets on with their lives(as they choose) in order to build herd immunity, and to maintain the economy. Mental and physical health problems, along with suicide are absolutely risks from this extended situation. I'm not comparing lives to dollars, I'm comparing lives to lives.
As for comparing Canada to North Korea, obviously I don't think that is completely true. But if you don't think that our freedoms are slowly being eroded, you are also fooling yourself. Its tough to name many activities today(of any significance) that you don't either have to beg and plead the government to be able to do and/or pay them large sums of money for the privilege.

The herd immunity approach to COVID-19 has been pretty well debunked. Even in Alberta.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6802755/coro ... -immunity/

The fact is that you need to keep as many from getting it as quickly as possible.

Fixing the economy, job losses, and other issues will be enormously difficult, but is easier than bringing back all of the people we would lose otherwise.

If geographic location matters, why did Nuuk have 11 cases? They have a population of 18,000. They are in Greenland
Which also banned alcohol sales.. aak.

All it takes is one

We can let it run its course once we have means to identify carriers and isolate them and control spread. Herd immunity may eventually take over.

I know his words say that herd immunity won't work but his numbers show a different story to me. The experts in the article give a better description of their thoughts, but there are medical experts that have also been saying that herd immunity would be a better option, and in past cases have limited the likelihood of subsequent waves.

If you look at Kenney's numbers in that video, people 60 and older represent 24% of the cases, and 88% of the fatalities. Clearly they are at higher risk, so like I've mentioned in a previous post, would it not be easier for seniors to isolate for 4-5 weeks than for an indefinite time? The longer this drags on, the higher the likelihood that people who are isolating have to come into contact with other people.
For people younger than 60, .29% of confirmed cases have resulted in fatalities. In reality, the death rate is something lower than that, because as ALL medical experts are saying that many people can have the virus and show little to no sign of it. Therefore, clearly more people have the disease than are accounted for in the "Cases" statistic because lots of people will never be tested, when we can be fairly certain that all of the "Deaths" have been accounted for.

https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/aa3bce6 ... report.pdf

Looking at population statistics above, there are roughly 4.37 million people in Alberta, with people over 65 representing 13.3% of that. In order to try and make a somewhat fair comparison I will estimate that people over 60 represent 20% of the population. So now if you look at the fatality rates against the total population who are younger than 60, there is a .000058% chance of fatality. I know these numbers will/are increasing slightly, but you are still more than twice as likely to be struck by lightning at those odds(depending on source somewhere around .00014% in a given year).

Exact numbers of hospitalization stats for Alberta are hard to find, but a cbc article posted around the same time as this video states that there were 44 people hospitalized. In Saskatchewan they have these numbers posted on the government website and currently show 8 hospitalizations. Now I don't know what the hospital capacities in either province are, but its not much of a stretch for me to assume that those numbers aren't exactly overloading the healthcare system.

If you want to make a case against herd immunity, I'm sure there are more compelling numbers out there, but I'm sorry, the numbers in Alberta don't make that case for you.
THIS is why I say location matters. Now obviously lower population densities help in this area, but at least the area of Saskatchewan I live in, it doesn't appear that people are even doing that good of a job of social distancing and the numbers are very low.

yup. We're doing the same on a local home-lined calm fjord. Public put in, crown land (not park) take out for a half way rest and then return for a nice easy 25km day trip.

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There are some issues with your numbers here. Because the 0.2% fatality rate of cases is based on current number of infected and hospitalized (which assumes normal medical care is available). But you then extrapolate that to the uninfected population which assumes that they would remain uninfected if you opened the lockdown. In order to build herd immunity, you need people to be infected and develop the antibodies to become immune.

So using your numbers for population, if we assume that 3.4 million Albertans are under 60. Assuming that we could provide the same level of medical care that we are currently able to, should everyone get infected approximately 6880 would die. The important thing is that the assumption is that we maintain the same level of medical care currently available. This is only possible with maintaining a lockdown.

3.3% of people under 60 in Alberta with confirmed Covid cases require hospitalization. 25% of those hospitalized under 60 require ICU.

https://covid19stats.alberta.ca/

So let's make some assumptions. If we could safely isolate everybody over 60 all of them - remove them from the equation. That leaves 3.4 million Albertans. If cases were to go back to exponential expansion in the absence of a lockdown. If we start back at 1 case, and assume a growth rate of 22% (doubling every 5.5 days which is slower than Alberta initially showed), you would reach full saturation (all of the population infected) in 76 days. We know that currently 3.3% require hospitalization. So you would need 100,000 hospital beds and 25,000 ICU beds in the next 2.5 months - just for corona. That's what would be required to maintain the current fatality rate for those under 60.

Alberta currently has 704 ICU beds.

This is why we lock down.

Now if you want to make a case for Taiwanese style intervention to slow the rate of spread - then I'd be supportive, except that it requires supplies that we currently don't have (medical masks for everyone), and discipline that we don't have (hand washing, sanitization, etc.). So it would require a lot of discipline on individuals and enforcement by the government.

My numbers may not tell the whole story, but neither do yours.
Even if every citizen went around licking the handles on their shipping carts, 100% of the population would not be infected, and even if they were, the 22% growth rate would not stay constant throughout, it would peak and decline naturally, making the time period much longer than 76 days.
Your numbers also assume that the ICU beds will all be needed at once, and doesn't account for people getting better(or passing away), thereby freeing up a bed for others. You also don't account for the people that will choose to distance and protect themselves based on the recommendations that are being shared, without the force of government.
I'm not saying that deaths due to Corona aren't tragic, but deaths due to issues arising from prolonged lockdowns will be equally as tragic.
The government shouldn't be able to force people to close their businesses and lose their jobs - people need to be allowed to choose which risks they are willing to take on their own.

"but deaths due to issues arising from prolonged lockdowns will be equally as tragic."

What pray tell, would be some examples from this statement.......

MikeD.

Interesting exercise with the numbers from both perspectives, thanks for that.



The challenge I see with this in terms of public health and the role of government is that people wouldn't just be choosing their own levels of various competing risks - in doing so they change the risks to other citizens.

I assume the math and assumptions done by the health and economic leaders showed that people choosing to keep their businesses open wouldn't be a good balance with the risks imposed on other people and the systems, and I'm OK with accepting that for now. It's the basics of that saying "your right to swing your arms around ends at the tip of somebody else's nose".

It's a mess for sure either way when flu health, economics and mental health are all in competition. As concerns about the spike on the system ease, we'll see how it goes as various activities and business re-open and up the health risks. I expect the trade-offs will be a bit up and down. There's no right answer with trade-offs, but in the case of an unprecedented global pandemic, I prefer a common source of action over everyone choosing "their own" risks.

Also, we don't just need to look at theoretical numbers. We can see the actual numbers from other places. I assume what we've seen elsewhere was an influence on decisions here. Also, decisions here seem to be in-line with decisions everywhere - in different ways in different places, closures were deemed to be necessary for the public interest. I hear the criticism that it's been too much taking away of rights. I certainly also hear the criticism that restrictions weren't put in place early enough. Either way, it's not like Canada is out on its own with this. In fact I assume we are not as "locked down" as many other countries have been.

Are there not some jurisdictions/states that have decided not to regulate closures and we can see what happens there? Or other examples, like Mardi Gras or other events where people defined their own risks and attended get-togethers despite the news?

Detailed numbers aside, we know that 1) the more people circulate the more the virus spreads, and 2) the spread is fast enough to overwhelm our health systems. So, I get that managing it as it has been for now seems to be a reasonable call (easier said for those who have not had to close businesses), though not without other consequences for sure. No matter you want to slice it, it's not good, but to me it would seem not smart on the whole to have everyone making their own decisions about what stays open.

The support programs haven't been mentioned. It's not like government hasn't recognized the economic and mental health impacts. For those reasons relief programs have been put in place at the same time as closures - so that's the balance. Again, not ideal, but at least they are not asking businesses to close without also changing the support available. Seems like a decent effort at balance in a bad circumstance.

P.

_________________
Learning to paddle is like learning a language:
It's easy to learn the basics, but will you be understood in a strong wind?

There are many reports that isolation greatly increases mental health issue which will cause deaths in the short, medium, and long terms.
There is plenty of data that shows suicides greatly increase from a regular economic collapse.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehai ... 0ecbf07ae2
My personal opinion would be that an economic collapse during a lockdown would be even worse since human connection generally helps people with mental health issues and its harder to make those connections when isolated.
There's also lots of indications that Canadians are on the brink of financial problems and have been for some time:
https://nationalpost.com/news/nearly-ha ... poll-finds
There are many reports from around the world that domestic violence has drastically risen(including deaths due to domestic violence).
Maybe a little less so in Canada, but reports around the world have indicated that many people are dying from starvation due to the lockdowns.
Since many areas have stopped or drastically reduced "elective" surgeries, even in locations where there are few Covid patients, there will be premature deaths from people not receiving their medical needs. Not to mention that people who do develop mental health issue don't really have access to medical help at the moment.
If the lockdowns stay in place for 12-18 months like Trudeau hinted toward, you will have looting and violence as people run out of money and food. This would start to happen in poorer neighbourhoods long before 12 months.

I agree 100% with this.

The part I disagree with is that choosing to open a business forces risk on anyone else.
Employees are not forced to go to work - they can choose if the risks of the virus outweigh the rewards of their paycheck(obviously many factors go into that decision).
Citizens are also not forced to patronize the business - they can weigh their risks vs. rewards as well.
If its a physical location and being open somehow increases the likelihood of emergency responders, those people also have the decision as to whether or not their job is worth the risk.

Forcing businesses to close is the only scenario that actually forces risk onto people. (different risk than the virus, but still very much risk)

Although it can be said that employees and emergency responders have rights and choices about not showing up, we need to recognize those are very complicated and difficult decisions in practice. So, another form of impact on those people under that scenario.

It comes down to trust. If businesses were choosing to stay open, I don't think vulnerable or concerned people could trust unconcerned people to make decisions based on any anything other than self interest (which can be legitimate pressures for sure), and in a nutshell we're being asked to do more than that now.

I guess that's what some don't like about the directions to close - it basically says that government/society doesn't trust individual decisions at this time. That's what it comes down to. But we can't take that personally. It seems collective action is wiser than a collection of individual decisions, and that collective action needs to be assured as much as possible. Some people will take their lumps more than others, from business owners and those who lose their jobs to healthcare workers separated from their families. There's no way around that under any scenario, so we need to support each other as best we can under whichever decisions are made.

P.

p.s. Sorry, I added to my previous post as new posts were made...

Are there not other jurisdictions we can watch where closures have not been mandated?

_________________
Learning to paddle is like learning a language:
It's easy to learn the basics, but will you be understood in a strong wind?

"Maybe a little less so in Canada", but reports around the world have indicated that many people are dying from starvation due to the lockdowns.

JVK. Knock off the hyperbole. You need help.

MikeD.

India:
https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/india/t ... 6956637547

Canada:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/food-s ... -1.5520492

Heck, let me google that for you:
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GC ... CAw&uact=5

India, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, that's just the first few search results. Or do people in those countries not matter to you?

Utter nonsense. You claimed that people in Canada are starving due to lockdowns. That's what your sentence implied, which is beyond the pale. I have no doubt that in other regions of the world their situation is dire, but to try and conflate what's happening in India or Zimbabwe with Canada is ridiculous.

You are a troll.