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

2021-12-16 BC

Cases are going up fast. Omicron is here! Testing This article says that testing sites are getting backed up. Statistics +753 cases, +3 deaths, +5,350 first doses, +2,678 second doses, +26,963 other doses. Currently 184 in hospital / 70 in ICU, 3,878 active cases, 218,616 recovered. There have been 135 cases of Omicron to date.… Continue reading 2021-12-16 BC

2021-12-15 BC

Assholes This article describes how somebody phoned the Lynn Valley Care Home early in the pandemic, pretended to be a health inspector, and told them that essentially everyone was infected and that nobody could go in or out. He pled guilty today to “conveying a false message with intent to alarm”. Side Effects This article… Continue reading 2021-12-15 BC