2021-12-23 General

Variants I have been frustrated with some of the talk around Omicron’s virulence, and this tweet made me realize what my problem was: we shouldn’t be talking about THE virulence (usually expressed as the Case Hospitalization Rate or CHR) as a single number. There is a different CHR for the general population (the observed virulence)… Continue reading 2021-12-23 General

2021-12-23 BC

IMPORTANT! If you tested positive on a rapid test in BC and did not get a PCR test, pub health asks that you please go to https://www.vch.ca/covid-19/you-have-tested-positive, click on the purple “Complete your assessment” button, and fill out the form. (It’s easy, takes five minutes.) I cannot speak for pub health, but I can imagine… Continue reading 2021-12-23 BC

2021-12-22 BC/General

I am going to take the rest of the day off as a mental health break. Brief bits from what I have already seen: UK had 100K cases yesterday, which sounds like an unimaginatively huge number until you realize that’s ~6K cases/day when adjusted for the different population — which is only two doublings from… Continue reading 2021-12-22 BC/General

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2021-12-21 General

Variants More qualified good news: this preprint out of South Africa says that Omicron is only 70% as likely to send someone to the hospital as Delta. All the same caveats I’ve made previously apply, though. This Twitter thread does an estimate of the Case Hospitalization Rate (CHR) in New South Wales, Australia. This is… Continue reading 2021-12-21 General

2021-12-18/19/20 BC

Mitigation Measures Today’s press release strongly implied that there would be additional mitigation measures announced at tomorrow’s press briefing. Testing This article reports that there have been really long lines at testing centres. Sometimes testing workers have gone down the line giving rapid tests. They ask that if you do not have symptoms, to please… Continue reading 2021-12-18/19/20 BC

2021-12-17 BC

Vaccines This article talks about how a number of vaccine clinics will be closing for the holidays. Press Briefing The big news was that the Province amended a number of Orders to make them more restrictive. They start early Monday morning and go through the end of January. From their press release, the measures include:… Continue reading 2021-12-17 BC

2021-12-17 General

I remember thinking it was really strange that more people died in the second year of the Spanish Flu pandemic than the first. I’m not surprised any more. Vaccines Someone asked me today, “would Omicron still have arisen if we’d had equitable and effective vaccine distribution globally? At first I hedged, and said we couldn’t… Continue reading 2021-12-17 General