Variants There has been difficulty figuring out how badly Omicron is going to hit the hospital system first because it is a lagging indicator, second because Omicron affects vaccinated and unvaccinated people so differently, and third because of poor-quality data around the holidays. Still, there are hints that, as this tweet from New York says,… Continue reading 2021-12-25/26/27/28 General
Author: Ducky
2021-12-24 BC
NB: I have a tendency to say “we” when I am talking about BC public health. I am not employed by pub health (or actually anyone at the moment). I say “we” as a British Columbian invested in the system. It is OUR health care system. Press Briefing Testing Case counts continue to soar. Yesterday… Continue reading 2021-12-24 BC
2021-12-24 General
This is short because Happy Christmas Eve! Testing This paper from October says that there is 1.7x variation in PCR test results over the course of a day, with 2pm being the time when an infected person will have the highest viral load. This article says that it’s not legal for you to redistribute rapid… Continue reading 2021-12-24 General
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
2021-12-21 BC
Mitigation Measures If I had known about the cap on food delivery fees (at 20%), I had forgotten it. Yesterday, the province put out a press release announcing that it had been extended until the end of 2022. I hope that doesn’t mean that the pandemic is going to last until the end of 2022!… Continue reading 2021-12-21 BC
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 General
I knew this was coming. I knew this was coming. I knew this would be bad. I predicted that the health care system might collapse in multiple jurisdictions in the West. I’m still somewhat shocked at the ferocity and this wave. There are lots of people saying that Omicron is milder than previous variants (see… Continue reading 2021-12-18 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