Secondary Effects
This article reports that the pandemic has altered how people use electricity. The peak morning use has shifted later (probably because people who no longer have to travel to their workplace can get up earlier), they shower less, and the stream video way more.
This article says that a lot of women didn’t get their cervical cancer screening during the pandemic: ~40% fewer got tested in 2020 than in 2019. Now they are all trying to get it done, and that’s causing backlogs. Furthermore, there are staffing shortages and the labs have more work (from COVID-19 tests), so that was causing backups of like five months to get results back. The province recently switched to a different type of pap smear test which can get processed much faster; the article says that new pap tests are turning around in 20 days. (Unfortunately, the backlog of old tests is still going to take a long time.)
The article also says that BC Cancer is trialing an at-home cervical cancer test (verified by this website, which is also where you go to sign up). Not everybody can participate in the trial, only residents of Coquitlam, New Westminster, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Belcerra, Anmore, Earl’s Cove, Langdale, Madeira Park, Pender Harbour, Sechelt, Robert’s Creek, Gibsons, Pemberton, Port Alberni, Parksville, Qualicum Beach, Lighthouse Country, Coombs, Errington, and Nanoose Bay. (Yeah, okay, it’s not COVID-19, but it’s important and this is my blog, so there.)
Wastewater
Jeff has improved his charts to annotate when various things happened. The wastewater looks like it is spiking again, but that might be an artifact of more sensitive testing because they changed their testing strategy on 28 Feb. Who the hell knows?
It would have been nice if they could have given us data with the old way of measuring and the new way simultaneously so we could see how they compared. Sigh.
