The COVID-19 pandemic

[jeffster]

Current 7-day Covid-19 cases per 100k

• Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox & Addington Public Health 493.6
• Halton Region Public Health 216.0
• Toronto Public Health 174.8
• Ottawa Public Health 174.4
• Leeds, Grenville & Lanark District Health Unit 161.7
• Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health 158.1
• Hastings Prince Edward Public Health 157.3
• City of Hamilton Public Health Services 156.5
• Timiskaming Health Unit 149.9
• Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit 148.1

• Region of Waterloo Public Health and Emergency Services 139.5

• Peel Public Health 106.6
• Eastern Ontario Health Unit 105.9
• Grey Bruce Health Unit 104.2
• Huron Perth Public Health 85.1
• Peterborough Public Health 80.4
• Porcupine Health Unit 68.3
• Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge District Health Unit 61.4
• Renfrew County and District Health Unit 51.6
• North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit 37.8
• Thunder Bay District Health Unit 33.3

• TOTAL ONTARIO 148.5

[jamincan]

For what it's worth, I think there are a lot of cancellations happening, so it's worth going back to check for earlier openings. I finally managed to book my appointment for later today at Cambridge - Pinebush this morning (I tried earlier and the site was bugging out on me) and there was still a lot of availability.

[Rainrider22]

I am in disbelief that all residents of Kitchener must make their way to Cambridge or Waterloo for a booster... A city the size of Kitchener should have at least on location

[jeffster]

For what it's worth, I think there are a lot of cancellations happening, so it's worth going back to check for earlier openings. I finally managed to book my appointment for later today at Cambridge - Pinebush this morning (I tried earlier and the site was bugging out on me) and there was still a lot of availability.

Interesting: my co-worker tried to get a booster from either one of those sites (Waterloo and Cambridge) and earliest booster was in February.

I’m getting mine done next Monday, at Rexall.

I won’t bother with the regional portal after the shit earlier this year.

[jeffster]

I am in disbelief that all residents of Kitchener must make their way to Cambridge or Waterloo for a booster... A city the size of Kitchener should have at least on location

I said this before, and will say it again, but these locations don’t make a lot of sense. They really need to be using community centres and arena’s that at least can be local for everyone. And right, Kitchener should have its own large location as well.

[Rainrider22]

For what it's worth, I think there are a lot of cancellations happening, so it's worth going back to check for earlier openings. I finally managed to book my appointment for later today at Cambridge - Pinebush this morning (I tried earlier and the site was bugging out on me) and there was still a lot of availability.

Interesting: my co-worker tried to get a booster from either one of those sites (Waterloo and Cambridge) and earliest booster was in February.

I’m getting mine done next Monday, at Rexall.

I won’t bother with the regional portal after the shit earlier this year.

May I ask how you booked yours through Rexall ?   Did you just phone them ?

Thank you in advance

[jeffster]

Interesting: my co-worker tried to get a booster from either one of those sites (Waterloo and Cambridge) and earliest booster was in February.

I’m getting mine done next Monday, at Rexall.

I won’t bother with the regional portal after the shit earlier this year.

May I ask how you booked yours through Rexall ?   Did you just phone them ?

Thank you in advance

You go online to book it.

https://rexall.medmeapp.com/schedule

I think it took me a week from waitlist to booking.

[ijmorlan]

I am in disbelief that all residents of Kitchener must make their way to Cambridge or Waterloo for a booster... A city the size of Kitchener should have at least on location

I would focus less on the city boundaries and more on covering the city. Would the situation really be any different if the medical buildings at The Boardwalk had happened to have been built where the Walmart is in Kitchener at the south end of the site rather than where they actually are in Waterloo at the north end of the site? But a walkable location in Downtown at, say, the old bus terminal, would make a big difference.

[jamincan]

Apparently there is a location at Bingeman's as well. It's Kitchener, but not exactly an accessible location if you don't have a car.

[ac3r]

Maybe I’m wrong; I don’t know, but I’ve heard bad things about Omicron’s transmissibility.

It's highly transmissible because it replicates a lot easier within the nasal airways than previous strains (rather than replicating more in the lungs) resulting in easier spread. But virtually all evidence of those infected - regardless of the country - seems to conclude that the necessity for hospitalization is very, very minimal. There is countless evidence out of South Africa that was showing that fact days/weeks ago (albeit with less proof), but most recently there is even more evidence showing that there is 80% lower risk of hospitalization which is good news as they have the longest term data. Locally in Ontario, Dr. Kieran Moore stated that so far, the hospitalization admission rate for omicron in Ontario is 0.15% and as of yesterday, there are no known cases in any ICU and this is despite it now being the dominant strain here.

This is often the standard evolutionary path of a virus, particularly for a novel one. It starts out impacting those infected very badly because the body just does not have any immune response to it. This kills the hosts, though, so a virus will often mutate into a milder and milder, more transmissible forms, because its only real "goal" is to replicate within hosts indefinitely. It doesn't necessarily want to kill. It also wants to avoid vaccine or antibody immune response and the fact that we now need a booster or 3rd dose (depending on the vaccine one had), this also demonstrates that path.

This was the initial response in South Africa when it was hitting them hard: they said that this mildness could be a good sign that the virus is mutating into something increasingly benign and may start to signal the end of the pandemic, assuming it doesn't make some sort of strange, wild mutation that once again begins becomes deadlier.

[danbrotherston]

Maybe I’m wrong; I don’t know, but I’ve heard bad things about Omicron’s transmissibility.

It's highly transmissible because it replicates a lot easier within the nasal airways than previous strains (rather than replicating more in the lungs) resulting in easier spread. But virtually all evidence of those infected - regardless of the country - seems to conclude that the necessity for hospitalization is very, very minimal. There is countless evidence out of South Africa that was showing that fact days/weeks ago (albeit with less proof), but most recently there is even more evidence showing that there is 80% lower risk of hospitalization which is good news as they have the longest term data. Locally in Ontario, Dr. Kieran Moore stated that so far, the hospitalization admission rate for omicron in Ontario is 0.15% and as of yesterday, there are no known cases in any ICU and this is despite it now being the dominant strain here.

This is often the standard evolutionary path of a virus, particularly for a novel one. It starts out impacting those infected very badly because the body just does not have any immune response to it. This kills the hosts, though, so a virus will often mutate into a milder and milder, more transmissible forms, because its only real "goal" is to replicate within hosts indefinitely. It doesn't necessarily want to kill. It also wants to avoid vaccine or antibody immune response and the fact that we now need a booster or 3rd dose (depending on the vaccine one had), this also demonstrates that path.

This was the initial response in South Africa when it was hitting them hard: they said that this mildness could be a good sign that the virus is mutating into something increasingly benign and may start to signal the end of the pandemic, assuming it doesn't make some sort of strange, wild mutation that once again begins becomes deadlier.

This is not true. Data remains preliminary on all fronts, but evidence from the UK found no evidence that Omicron is less virulent than other variants.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthc...021-12-20/

It is very difficult to remove the confounding variables of increased immunity from both previous infections and vaccinations, but accounting for that data is very much unclear but it is clearly untrue that "all" evidence shows this to be less virulent.

In fact, the statement on virus evolution in general has the same confounding variables, viruses may mutate into less harmful forms, but they may also kill all the vulnerable hosts (and those who aren't killed have some immunity).

[jeffster]

Regarding some of the latest numbers, the unvaccinated are:

0.9x as likely to contract the disease as vaccinated
4.4x as likely to be admitted into the hospital as vaccinated
8.1x as likely to be admitted into the ICU as vaccinated

Time for your booster, guys

[ac3r]

Okay but overall it's still mild overall for those infected. We know human coronaviruses generally impact vulnerable hosts the most which has been true of HCoV-229E/NL63/OC43, MERS-CoV and both SARS-CoV viruses. For the vast majority of people, it may not be big deal and that's even more true with high vaccination numbers this time.

You've got to look at all of the data coming out of the US, EU, Canada, Asia, the WHO, the CDC et al. If you Google search "omicron mild" and you get a plethora of reports from countries all around the world stating that it doesn't appear to be any worse than what we've seen before and in some cases is having even less of an impact on people likely due to accrued natural immunity or vaccination, which is what we wanted all along.

Each variant (there have been dozens now, with only 5 ever becoming a cause for concern), each wave, each season is going to be "the one" that throws us all back into the dark ages of hoarding toilet paper and treating everyone like they're a zombie to avoid. Time and time again we hear that and apart from delta having easily the worst impact on us, we've managed to keep it together here and have not crushed our hospitals or had thousands of elderly dying in their own feces in LTC homes to the point the military had to come in. As each day passes, the situation only seems to be holding steady or even improving. Compared to delta, hospitalization rates and deaths don't seem to be worsening which is a very good sign that this may not do the damage we think it is going to this winter season.

[jamincan]

This is not true. Data remains preliminary on all fronts, but evidence from the UK found no evidence that Omicron is less virulent than other variants.

Most people seem to interpret the Imperial College study as showing evidence that Omicron is no less severe than Delta, but when I look at the research paper, it doesn't seem to say that at all. Instead, the data for hospitalization is too limited to draw conclusions from. When they say that they found no evidence that Omicron is less virulent, that doesn't mean that they found evidence that it is equally or more virulent, simply that they couldn't confirm the hypothesis that it was less virulent.

Perhaps someone better versed in statistics can interpret their results better, though? https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperia...ort-49.pdf

In any case, this data is now one week old. I would expect they could draw far more meaningful conclusions now.

[Rainrider22]

Apparently there is a location at Bingeman's as well. It's Kitchener, but not exactly an accessible location if you don't have a car.

Unfortunately that site is only for 3 days.   And you hit the point that disappoints me.   Access, it is fine if you have a car to go-to Cambridge or Waterloo, but more difficult if you have to use transit.   I just think we should have a site in central Kitchener as well.