Assholes
This article says that a guy who harassed three local journalists (who focused on COVID-19) via email about COVID-19 was convicted of criminal harassment. (I didn’t know that convictions ever happened for this type of harassment!) It also points to this study of mental health in media workers, which says things got worse during the pandemic.
This article says that a nightclub owner, asked for her trial (contesting COVID-19 non-compliance tickets) to be in French. The judge said no: the owner is a monolingual English speaker and so there was no reason to put it into French. (I’m kind of baffled as to what would motivate the owner to do so. Does she think francophone judges are more sympathetic to nightclubs?)
Statistics
As of today, the BC CDC weekly report said that in the week ending on 11 March there were: +374 reported cases, +102 hospital admissions, +31 ICU admissions, +18 thirty-day all-cause deaths*.
As of today, the weekly report said that the previous week (data through March 4) there were: +347 reported cases, +108 hospital admissions, +18 ICU admissions, +28 all-cause deaths*.
Last week, the BC CDC weekly report said that in the week ending on 4 March there were: +347 reported cases, +79 hospital admissions, +17 ICU admissions, +19 thirty-day all-cause deaths*.
Last week, the weekly report said that the previous week (data through 25 Feb) there were: +404 reported cases, +123 hospital admissions, +24 ICU admissions, +20 all-cause deaths*.
*All-cause deaths in people who had a positive COVID-19 test in the prior 30 days, that is.
The BC CDC weekly report says that there are 222 in hospital / 17 in ICU as of 16 Mar 2023.
Charts
From the BC CDC Situation Report page as of 16 March (with data through 13 March):
From the BC CDC VoC report of 15 March (with data through 26 Feb) :
It looks like XBB.1.5 is growing linearly.
From the BC CDC Vaccination Coverage report as of 12 Mar (with data through 5 March):
Wastewater
NOTE! The BC CDC wastewater page has a notation which, if it was there before, I missed it: “On February 28th 2023, BCCDC began using a more sensitive test for SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater. Increases in the viral signal after this date compared to before it may be due in part to this change. Please use caution when comparing data before and after February 28th, 2023.” This means that the huge spikes in late February might be measurement ah issues. They happened a few days before Feb 28, but maaaaybe on Feb 28 they used the new technique on samples which had been collected a few days earlier?
Regardless, maybe that means that there was not really a huge spike in wastewater levels. This kind of makes sense, since we haven’t seen a big spike in cases or hospitalizations… but also makes me really frustrated. How are we supposed to make decisions when the data is such dog vomit?
Wastewater levels per capita from the Province’s wastewater page as of 10 Mar with data through 5 March:
